Emergency Blip

A bit spooked this afternoon after taking this shot (these shots*).

Euan and I had headed along to the same spot as last Saturday to take a second shot for the series but, as we sat on the bench watching and waiting for the sun to slowly make it's way towards us from the east, I decided to drive another mile along the road to this spot to take a picture over towards Alva.

Between the time we left the first spot, before I'd taken this shot, and back along the route we'd just came it turns out there was a pretty nasty road traffic accident going on. And we must've missed it by seconds.

As I waited for the sun to light up the Ochils in front of us first an ambulance, then a police car and finally the fire engine went flying past in front of us. After taking a few more shots we jumped back in the car and headed back along to the first spot. But, as we approached there, all the traffic in front of us was turning around and heading back the direction they'd came so we did the same. By the time we'd made our detour around the police car here had blocked off the road access from the other end and we could only see some vehicles and flashing blue lights around a half mile along the road.

I took a walk back there later and the road was still closed three hours after the incident. From looks of things it does indeed look pretty nasty and I'm hoping that all the safety bags I could see deployed have done their job and no-one's seriously injured.

I've no idea what happened or exactly when it happened (since found out the accident happened near 2:30pm; the time stamp on the first image I took here was 2:35pm) but, seeing how badly mangled the two cars taken away on the recovery trucks were, it just sent a chill down my spine when I think what a close call we might have had here.

EDIT: This has turned out to be a lot more tragic as there was indeed a fatality in this crash. A young lad, 23 years old...

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* This is a composite shot of the three emergency vehicles as in reality they all passed here a few minutes apart.