My 13yo son Zak and I were the passengers in the Avalanche. All three of us had on our seatbelts, and miraculously survived with aches and scrapes.
This was one week to the day after Ryan Kemp's fatal wreck, at approximately the same time of afternoon. I was even wearing my grey flightsuit to honor Kemp, as he had advised me on how to dye it.
Pic taken of the Ecto by the birthday boy's mom. One of the last shots ever taken of her intact.
I am sharing these next pics just because of how miraculous it is that we were all pulled from the Avalanche as relatively unscathed as we were-- although I recall with shame that it took two grown men to birth my lardbutt out horizontally through that tiny sunroof opening.
But one of my lifelong friends lost a brother in a car wreck and we as a GB community recently lost someone this way, so just in case anyone doesn't want to stumble across such images unprepared, I'm putting them in the Spoiler box.
These were taken by the Cherokee, AL Search and Rescue team, some of the first responders.
One important thing to note is that the trailer itself never rolled, and it also never separated from us. Only the Avalanche rolled. My belief is that Ecto, despite creating the fishtail that caused the wreck, also acted as a three-ton anchor to stop us from rolling further. As I said on FB, her last act was as an ambulance not a hearse. She saved lives.
We were sloshed around so suddenly, I only have flashes of the roll itself. But I do remember fiercely, immediately afterward, Brandon showing far more terror that Zak might be hurt than he did about seeing the damage to Ecto.
Zak asked me once we were out how come we weren't dead. I said it was because God wasn't through with the three of us yet.
The outpouring of well wishes we've received on Facebook has been tremendous. Everyone's saddened about the loss of that beautiful Ecto, but happy that all souls aboard survived. The only truly irreplaceable items we had onboard-- me, Zak, and Brandon-- lived to tell the tale.
Alex