Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Trauma Today

Today at school, during silent reading, we heard the loudest crashing sound.  The students looked at me and asked, “What was that?”  One of the boys said, “Oh, I just dropped a book.”  Really?
It was only a few minutes before their music class, so I dropped them off, and on the way back to my classroom, I saw that an airplane had just crashed across the street from my school.crash1
Of course, no emergency crews had responded yet.  I watched as they arrived and pulled out the red tarp.  The plane was small—used for flight training.
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Here you can see the proximity to the school  The  kindergarten children had left only minutes before—their parents pick them up in the U-shaped driveway.  There were no students on the playground you see as the large grassy area on the right.
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More and more emergency personnel respond with sirens blaring.  By now the students know something dramatic has happened, but we quietly and calmly assure them that everyone at school’s OK.crash5
Here they are extracting the bodies of the male pilot and his female trainer.  Both were in their twenties.  By now all access to the street are closed.  Because the children have not been told of the entire tragedy, they are mostly concerned about how to find their parents because the road has been closed.crash2
This is how things look as I leave school.  Our hearts and prayers go out to those who have lost their loved ones, and we are deeply blessed that no home is destroyed with people inside and that our school and the children are safe.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! That is so scary. I hope you could keep it from the kids pretty well.
    Remember the car accident when I was in middle school at PE? (You talked to me about it later and the woman and baby who had died). I was pretty traumatized by that too. I thought about it a lot and had a hard time taking my eyes off of that house when I was on the field or when we drove by. Even this summer when we were there I had to look at that house as we passed it.

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  2. Pretty crazy. Tell that kid not to drop any more books!

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