Glasgow 'Bin Lorry' Crash

[joe_lead]

'Like thousands of others I was in Glasgow on Monday, trying to tie up some late Christmas shopping. Being a bloke I had no idea of where I was going, or what I was looking for, and the decision to go into Debenhams for a second time rather than elsewhere is down to nothing more than an idea I had to use the £5 reward voucher Id got from them a few hours earlier (invalid until Today as it turns out).

 

I walked out the shop and turned right, totally oblivious to the chaos and carnage that had been visited upon the city a minute earlier. Where, 100 metres or so away, people lay injured or worse. People who minutes earlier you might have passed on an escalator, rubbed shoulders with in a queue, or stood beside for a few seconds to listen to the carol singers in St Enochs.

 

The arbitrary nature of the event, like that last year at the Clutha Bar, stays in the mind. If only the helicopter fell 10 feet to the left if only the bin lorry was stationary at any number of red traffic lights that dot that part of town when the driver fell ill

 

The immediate thought is that you hope no one you know was involved in it. Today and likely every future Christmas, some poor families will be trying to come to terms with the terrible realisation that it was their loved ones. It seems inadequate to say that your thoughts are with them, but in the absence of anything else its all you can offer.

 

One of the most touching things for me was seeing people sprinting to help the injured, charging straight into a scene of devastation which must have been frightening as well as shocking. To turn on the news any day of the week and witness some of the stuff that happens in the world can regularly leave you in despair at the depths of depravity that people are capable of reaching. So to see people run into possible danger in order to help those suffering was humbling. To know that there are people, strangers, who will literally drop everything to rush to your aid, to comfort and hold you in your hour of need really does restore your faith in human nature.

 

Condolences to all those who have lost family and friends.