Whoa! Been doing the law enforcement thing at Mt Rainier for about 3 weeks now. It's been a ride so far. My first week was fairly uneventful, but for one old fella who took a tumble and fell down an embankment. He had neck pain, so we sent him out by ambulance. Then the weekend started, and it stayed pretty quiet, which is somewhat surprising for a weekend. Then on Sunday at about 4:00 PM, I heard my supervisor report over the radio that there was a truck with camper attached which had gone through the guard rail, and over the edge, ending up about 30 feet below the road.
I responded from my perch high upon the hill, and I showed up in time to help put one girl on a backboard. Once patients were whisked away, someone noticed a sheen of oil already on a nearby lake, from the wrecked truck. I took my pickup down about 6-7 miles to a ranger station, and picked up some supplies to hopefully help with the cleanup. On the way back, I helped a nice lady and her son get their car unstuck and turned around, and then made it back up the hill to the accident site. Not much for me to do, so I was assisting traffic control, when one of the visitors rolled up and said, "Hey, did you know a truck's on fire back there?". I asked him where, and sure enough, a column of smoke was rising down the hill from us. So, some of us roared down the road and watched as a truck got engulfed with flames. Pretty amazing seeing the tires explode. The poor fella who was driving it, was also towing a small cargo trailer with $100,000 worth of guns in the back. A Forest Service LEO went in, while one of our rangers kept a small spray of water on him from our small wildland fire engine, and unhooked, then towed the trailer away from the burning truck. A local structure fire crew eventually showed up with their structure engine, and put the fire dead out. I helped with cleanup of both that, and the previous wreck, and was out until 1:00 AM. Showed up at 8:00 AM the same morning to finish cleaning up the first wreck. That was grunt work, and we finished up around noon. Afterwards I drove to a nearby town and gassed up my truck. On the drive back I noticed a fellow standing outside of the his pickup, talking on his cell phone, blocking the entrance of a driveway into a campground. It looked odd, so I flipped around, and stopped to check it out. Sure enough, he'd smacked into a rock wall, and I was first on scene. I couldn't get out on cell or radio(he'd been trying to make a call, but wasn't connecting either), so I flagged down a motorist and luckily enough it turned out to be one of the local firefighters. He took over EMS and had his wife drive up the road to call 911. Soon enough the Ambulance showed up, the fella was packaged up, and sent off. I was free to go, so I headed back into the park.
At the White River Ranger Station, I ran into another ranger who asked if I wanted to go up on the highway in the park, and run some traffic stops. I declined, I was hungry, and was going to head up the hill to my apartment to grab a bite to eat. I made my way home, and was boiling up some brautwurst when I heard my supervisor radio to that other ranger to stand ready at the highway, a speeding motorcycle was heading his way, and he wanted an intercept of some sort. When the motorcycle went by, it was doing 116 mph according to the radar. I heard this on the radio, and almost headed out the door, but I was at best 20 mins away, so I continued eating my food. Then I heard that the bike had stopped at the boundary of the park, and that the fella had a felony warrant. They were also running information on 3 other individuals. I decided it was a good idea to head down the hill and assist. They called for me when I was halfway down the hill. By the time I got there, 2 of the individuals had been let go, the girl that was on the back of the bike didn't have a motorcycle endorcement, so she couldn't ride it. It was going to be impounded. She was taken to a nearby forest service visitor center, and made arrangements to be picked up by family there. Her boyfriend was in cuffs and in the back of one of the rigs. They asked if I would go along for the suspect transport, and I was fine with that, something new. When transporting we're supposed to have 2 rangers or LEO's in the vehicle. We went a good distance to transport the fella, and I was in bed at about 12:30 that night. I worked the next day, and all was quiet.
Just this past Sunday, I responded to a bicyclist vs. Deer(amazing, I'd never heard of such a thing). And when we were just wrapping that up, a call came in about a motorcycle accident at one of the hairpins on the road up to where I live. We roared up there, and sure enough, poor guy had some road rash, jammed thumb, and a very sore back, also was short of breath. He got packaged up, we drove him down to a nearby airfield, and met with a Lifeflight chopper there(Airlift Northwest). Then it was home, and a fairly uneventful day after that.
Pretty crazy, It will some time before I pass judgement on whether I like this job or not. It can be pretty exciting.
