By M. Scott Carter
The Journal Record
Posted: 10:40 PM Tuesday, July 19, 2011
MOORE – Jade Gilbert thought something exploded. Gilbert, an apartment manager, had just left work and was driving north on Interstate 35 last Saturday when a vehicle passed her. Just as the car moved ahead of Gilbert’s Chevy Yukon, she said she heard a pop like a blowout.
“The car ahead of me swerved and this thing came crashing through the window,” she said. “I slammed on the breaks and fishtailed. I thought a tire had ripped off.”
It wasn’t a tire, Gilbert learned later, but a reflector that had come loose from the highway.
“It smashed a huge hole in my windshield. I had glass all over my face and I was kind of hysterical,” she said.
And while she isn’t sure what caused the reflector to come loose from the concrete that it’s normally embedded in, Gilbert has a suspect – 28 days of 100-degree heat.
“It was around 2 p.m. in the afternoon,” she said. “And I thank God it wasn’t my daughter driving or that my kids weren’t with me. Someone would have been killed.”
Gilbert isn’t alone.
Across the state, the record heat wave is taking its toll on residents – and the roads.
In Enid, asphalt at an intersection of U.S. Highway 412 buckled on Saturday, causing a motorcyclist to wreck his vehicle. The driver, the Associated Press reported, was airlifted to a hospital and treated for injuries including broken bones and an injured back... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Tue, July 19, 2011
by John Cox