Yikes - a cab
rear-ended a double-parked fire truck on Columbus and West 71st Street last night - and there had been two firefighters standing behind the truck. One of the men was thrown on the sidewalk while the other was pinned between the cab and the truck. Firefighters from midtown's Rescue 1 were getting dinner from area establishments - Big Nick's Too and Harry's Burritos - when the accident occured. The victims, John Walters and Mike Schunk, are expected to survive, but Schunk has a crushed leg while Walters is in critical condition. One witness tells the Post the cab "didn't even step on the brakes" while a police source told the Daily News, "He [the cabbie] may have been driving behind a larger vehicle and changed lanes to get around and ran smack into the parked vehicle." Clearly, standing on the street, even in front of a FDNY truck, is not safe. And we see FDNY trucks double parked on the Upper West Side all the time (they shop at Fairway!), so it's not unusual that they are there, but we suppose at 10:30PM, when traffic is lighter and cars go faster, anything can happen.
Photograph of fire truck from Triborough on Flickr
