Column – On my watch
By Anne W. Semmes
So, having a lovely and leisurely breakfast with friends last Sunday morning on Steamboat Road we were interrupted soon after 10 a.m. by the sound of fire engines arriving outside their door. With the sound of more than one arriving we hurried outside to find multiple police cars arriving. We soon arrived at the appalling scene to find a car upside down outside of the Steamboat Road Pier.
We looked down the rocky pier side to see a group of firefighters gathered around the rear of the vehicle with its New York plates, struggling to disentangle the driver from the upside-down automobile. All that was visible of the driver hidden by the rescuers was his mane of white hair. He was slowly being pulled out and the wonder was it was low tide with only the front part of the car in the water.
With the police taking charge the ribbon was drawn across to keep the public out. But as my hosts were members of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club (IHYC) we were allowed in and could follow the action. Another wonder was following the trajectory of that car on its path into Long Island Sound. It had driven through the Yacht Club fence and somehow passed to the left of the Club’s flagpole before encountering the Club’s shrub-planted seawall which perhaps caused the car to then flip over, landing upside down onto the low tide flat below. If it had been high tide, that elderly driver would likely have drowned.
Credit the two young IHYC sailing directors, Chris Foley and his assistant Will Florio who were there readying their Greenwich High School students for some sailing to have heard the crash, and promptly call 911. As we watched the driver being slowly raised up and placed on a stretcher to be taken to the waiting ambulance, the IHYC General Manager Remus Ciolomic had arrived after being called by the sailing directors and was taking in the whole scene. He pointed out the security cameras on the edge of the Club building that would have surely filmed some of the movements of that automobile on its trajectory to the Sound.
As we were talking the stretcher with its accompanying rescuers passed us by on its way around the Club to the ambulance. It would take that elderly driver to Stamford Hospital where he was reported to have suffered only minor injuries. But that bloody ankle was there to be seen as he was transported by us slowly enough that he could softly say, “I’m sorry for all this.”
IHYC General Manager Ciolomic would later fill me in on what that Club film had shown. But the footage he reported had only filmed the car’s movements up until it hit the fence. But “It was exactly what the police had anticipated,” said Ciolomic, “so there was no news to us or to the police when I looked at the footage. He wants to turn at the end of the street when he realizes he can’t go any further. He maneuvered to turn, and when he put it in reverse, instead of pressing the brake he pressed the gas all the way down, thinking he’s pressing the brake probably. And that resulted in him going through the fence and ending up in the Sound.”
“We don’t know exactly how the car ended up with the wheels up,” he continued, “but we can kind of anticipate how that happened. Based on the skid marks on the seawall, it appears that’s what he hit last and that’s what caused him to flip. But again, I have no confirmation.”
And how in the world had he not collided with that substantial IHYC flagpole en route? “I think it just happened,” said Ciolomic. “He wasn’t planning on going through there.”
So, we have the fortune in this tale of it having been low tide, of that IHYC assisting sailing director driver Will Florio having called 911, after first hearing the crash and rushing to the scene to find the driver responsive and alive, and the driver being rescued having suffered only minor injuries. And surely that Lexus frame had done its job of keeping the driver alive.
But it is disheartening to hear of these often deadly, similar scenarios of car accidents happening in our town and elsewhere. Surely with AI cars will someday be designed to not have such accidents happen!
