So, to set the scene for today’s Tale of Action and Intrigue, let me explain that my Significant Other lives in a large suburban apartment complex that’s fronted by an irrigation canal. This canal is enclosed on both sides by a six-foot-tall wrought-iron fence, which is presumably intended to keep the neighborhood children out, since it doesn’t do much good at keeping the neighborhood ducks in. Because this canal is so thoroughly segregated by the fence from normal day-to-day activity, I tend to forget it’s even there, or at least I forget that it’s a genuine hazard, and not just some kind of decorative flourish. I drive over it a dozen times a week on my way into or out of the complex, and I pay it no more mind than I do a fire hydrant or a telephone pole. Neither do the hundreds of other drivers who enter and leave through the complex’s driveway every day.

But I can think of at least one person who will be painfully aware of that canal the next time she passes by. That would be the woman whose Jeep Grand Cherokee punched through the fence on Friday and tumbled end-over-end into the water.

The accident happened shortly before I arrived to meet Anne for our evening’s plans. I could tell something was going on as I approached the complex, because there were several police cars lined up along the fenceline with their lightbars flashing. Then I saw the hole in the fence and the rear wheels of the Cherokee sticking up from the canal’s opposite bank, the belly of the vehicle exposed and vulnerable in the harsh afternoon glare.

A sick feeling quivered through my own belly at the sight. I drove around to the rear entrance of the complex so as not to add to the confusion and walked back up front to see what was happening. (I get my curiosity about these things from my dad, who used to be quite the ambulance chaser before he saw one too many disturbing things and gave it up.) A dozen or so apartment residents were clustered at the inner fence, watching as a couple of fire fighters and a tow-truck driver tried to figure out how to get the crumpled SUV out of the canal.

How the vehicle got into its current position was hardly less of a mystery. Actually, the how of it was plain enough, judging from the tire tracks on the front sidewalk and the angle at which the Jeep had come to rest in the canal. It’s the why I’m still wondering about. Obviously, the vehicle had been southbound along the road that runs past the apartments, moving at a pretty fast clip (I think the speed limit in that area is 40 mph). Just south of the entrance to the apartment complex, the canal angles to the southeast and crosses under the road at a diagonal. The tire tracks indicate the Jeep came into the apartment complex’s driveway still moving southbound instead of turning west as if to enter the complex. The vehicle hopped the curb on the opposite side and continued in a more-or-less straight line along the sidewalk, passing between a telephone pole and the fence, which runs at an angle right there as the canal jogs into its diagonal course. The fence is composed of sections of vertical bars joined together at thicker posts, which I believe are buried in concrete. The Jeep knocked out an entire section of fencing and either went into an airborne tumble or rolled down the canal bank towards the water, where its nose jammed into the mud and flipped the vehcile over. Either way, it ended up on its back on the opposite bank, the nose in the water, the roof crushed down to trap the driver. If the Jeep had slipped a couple of feet further down the bank, the cabin probably would’ve flooded and drowned the woman inside. As it was, one of the other gawkers told me she was still alive, but that she’d been cut out of the wreck and airlifted to the hospital before I arrived.

Now, that’s all pretty straightforward, but I’d still like to know why that woman ended up in that position. Did she fall asleep or reach below the dashboard or get distracted by a cell phone? Did she swerve to avoid another car? Was she drunk, stoned or stupid? No one could tell me.

The air was rich with the stink of spilled gasoline and stirred-up river mud. A Fire Department HazMat guy deployed a floating boom to keep the Jeep’s leaking fuel supply from going downstream. I chatted with an elderly man who hadn’t trimmed his nose hair since the Fall of Saigon. And children and adults alike waited to see how they were going to get that wreck the hell out of the fenced-in no-man’s-land that separated their homes from the busy road.

In the end, the solution to the problem was obvious, and surprisingly easy. A crane truck was brought in and its boom angled up and over the inner fenceline. Two cables were paid out, an amusing process that required two men to grab the hooks at the bottom of the cables and pull for all they were worth. One of the men — a cop with knobby knees sticking out from beneath very un-cop-like bike shorts — skidded down the bank when his cable finally gave. He ended up doused to the waistline. The cables were attached to the front and rear axles of the wreck, and, after a dramatic pause while the crane operator double-checked everything, the Jeep was hoisted about twenty feet into the air. It hung there for a couple of minutes, draining green canal water and probably gasoline and oil and god-knows-what-else back into the canal, while debris dislodged during the lift floated downstream. (I watched a Full Throttle can and a bagel bob past me and disappear under the driveway bridge, a sight that was mundane, slightly funny, and oddly unnerving, all at the same time.)
When the Jeep was fully drained, the crane swung it over the fence and lowered it onto a flatbed truck. Five minutes later, the flatbed, the crane and all but one of the police cars was gone.

Now, four days later, the hole in the fence is blocked by a webwork of yellow police tape that flutters in the drafts from passing cars. The mangled remnants of the fence section that the runaway Jeep knocked out have been hauled off, too. I imagine the damage will be repaired within a week or so and that will be that. But I’d still like to know what happened, exactly. I watched the weekend newspapers in vain for some notice about it. If anyone out there knows anything about this woman driver, her condition, or why she drove into a canal, please let me know…