While most of us were still nursing our third cup of bitter gas station coffee and contemplating the existential dread of another Tuesday in the dust bowl, someone over on North Ave K was having a much more literal “trap” of a morning. Around 8:44 a.m., Lubbock Fire Rescue had to rush to a local concrete plant because—in a move that surprised absolutely no one familiar with our industrial safety standards—a conveyor belt decided it wanted a human snack.
The “Heavy Rescue” team, along with a small parade of trucks from Engine 4 and Truck 4, descended upon the 500 block of North Avenue K. For those of you who don’t venture north of Marsha Sharp, that’s the part of town where the scenery consists mostly of rust, gravel, and dreams that died sometime in the mid-seventies. Apparently, the individual was pinned under the belt, proving once again that the “Hub City” really does just keep spinning until it catches something.
LFR managed to extricate the victim from the machinery’s clutches, and they were whisked away to University Medical Center in critical condition. It’s the kind of high-stakes drama we usually reserve for the opening of a new Chick-fil-A or the annual discovery that our drainage system is just a suggestion, but this time it involves actual heavy metal and a very long recovery ahead.
We’re all pulling for the victim, of course, because nobody deserves to be taken out by a piece of equipment designed to move the very material that covers 90% of this God-forsaken landscape.
Is there any more fitting metaphor for life in Lubbock than being pinned down by the very industry that builds our endless sprawl of strip malls and car washes?
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