Or not.
Things happen all around you. The larger the city you live in, the more likely you are to encounter a variety of situations where you must decide, sometimes within a split second, whether you will get involved or not, and how involved you'll become.
I admit I finally broke down last week and bought a cell phone. Still not entirely sure how to use the thing and I'm sure when the bill comes due next month, I will cringe. It's 2 week's worth of groceries to pay for this thing and I bought the cheapest plan available. So don't anyone get any bright ideas about calling me. I do have unlimited texting - once I figure it out.
I haven't trained Itzl to alert to it yet, either, so unless I feel it vibrate or the flashy lighty thingie I bought fr it is visible, I won't know you're calling anyway. I usually keep it turned off.
I bought the cellphone because my town and the city where I work are getting big enough that in the space of a week, I encountered the following situations and emergency services won't accept emails or walk-ins, for some reason.
I was driving home from work last week down a residential street near a newly renovated (so newly renovated that they are still building it) little yuppy shopping/culture center when a car slammed through a red light and T-boned a car 2 or 3 cars ahead of me, blocking the entire intersection.
This is happening more and more often. I'm a fairly safe driver - I pay attention to my surroundings, am not distracted by cell phones and radios and such, drive at or below the speed limit, come to complete stops, yield, stop for yellow lights (they're going to be red soon enough, might as well be ready, eh?). My car has enough power to brake quickly or to speed up enough briefly to get out of the way, and since I pay attention to traffic patterns and can generally predict what most drivers will do, I often have a plan for response ready so if something happens, I'm neither the cause nor caught up in the incident. I also keep pen and paper handy in my car, and my camera.
So when those cars got smeared over the intersection, I was going slow enough to stop quickly. Because I had a cellphone, I called 911, informed them I couldn't hear them, then gave them the details of the accident, location, # of cars involved, orientation of the cars, possible injuries. The closest emergency response team was 2 blocks west of the accident and I could see the flash of the emergency vehicles before I'd ended the call with 911., So I did a legal 3 point turn and found a different route home.
There was no need for me to leap out of my car and offer assistance. Help was awesomely close (I knew that because I know where all the emergency response stations are along the routes I usually drive and how long it should take police and emergency responders to arrive). I called for assistance and that was the extent of what I needed to do. My next best thing to do was to get out of the way so the responders could get there and help.
If this accident had happened in a remote area and it could be half an hour or more before help arrived, I have the necessary skills and equipment in my care to provide minimal and essential assistance. I would have snapped pictures of the scene, written down as many details as possible, gotten anyone coherent enough to also write things down (it focuses them and distracts them, too), and waited for help to arrive. Once it got there, I would have given them what information I had and left. again, no sense clogging the place up.
Where I work, I often deal with people who walk in off the streets. Now that I'm taking the place of security as well as my other duties, I deal with all kinds of people walking in past the closed security office to get to me. It doesn't help much that there's a bus stop across the street - the nearest bus stop for the section 8 apartment complex on the opposite side of the company's property. We get a lot of fence hoppers trying to take a short cut to the bus stop, and some of them take an even shorter cut by going through the building where I am often the only person in the whole building.
Most of these people are nice. They are apologetic and didn't mean to trespass.
The ones who come in from the bus stop side aren't always as nice as the fence jumpers. They insist that we are the clinic that is down the street on the other side of the traffic light. A few are belligerent and angry (the bus doesn't go that far, they have to walk the 2 blocks from the bus stop to get to the clinic).
A few are scary - mentally ill and off their meds, usually and they are heading to the clinic to get a new prescription or to refill their prescription. I've been threatened with knives, guns, fists. Itzl is not a protection dog, he is a hearing dog. It is not his job to protect me. When those people enter, I generally put him in the chair or on the floor where he's not visible. He knows to stay there, lie down and be as invisible as possible.
Most of the time, if I just let them rant and rage and pace and all, they will eventually pace themselves right back out the door. If I just nod and smile, and repeat softly that the clinic is 2 blocks east, they will calm down and leave.
But not always.
Since I have my keyboard tray set up to roll under the desk where my hands are invisible, and a cell phone - I could call 911 when one of these people come in and get scary. I didn't have to do that the other day, but with a cellphone, I could have.
Yesterday, as I was driving to work, a tree fell into the street. It just broke apart and dropped a huge section of it into the outside lane, where I was driving. Because I was paying attention, I was able to signal, change lanes, and then signal and return to the outside lane (the slow traffic lane) without any problems. I noted the nearest cross street, pulled into the next parking lat, and because I had that cell phone, I was able to call 911 and report the street blockage, and as I was on the phone, to report the the first car that didn't see the tree in the street and plowed into it, then the car that rear-ended that car, and then the car that swerved to miss those 2 cars and hit an oncoming car.
People just don't pay attention.
Anyway, help was already on the way by the time the third car was crashing into the oncoming traffic - Itzl alerted me to the sirens before I could see the lights. I stayed in the parking lot long enough to make sure all the emergency vehicles were on location and I wouldn't be blocking anyone and went on to work.
I wasn't even late.
This morning, I was at the donut store picking up our Friday donuts (my coworkers chip in for it and I buy them because I'm the one who drives right past the donut shop we all prefer) when the customers ahead of me ordered 4 dozen donuts. They were youngish men. While the donuts were being rung up, they grabbed the boxes and ran for the door, got in their car, and drove off.
I could have tried to stop them. It would have been a simple matter to trip them, but they were young men, they could have bounced back up and smacked me around. I'm an old woman.
What I did was walk to the door, snap a picture of their license plate and car as they were driving the wrong way out of the parking lot. I gave that information to the owner, who came out when the donut girl screamed. They called the police. Now, if that car was stolen, they might not be found. But if they used their own car, they're going to be sorry they robbed my donut place.
In all of these incidences, I had choices to make.
I could have ignored everything, pretended I didn't see anything, and gone on my way. An awful lot of people do this.
I could help in a non-intrusive way - take notes, call 911, that sort of thing.
I could jump right in and get involved.
I could gather up close to watch what was going on - ringside seats, as it were - blocking the First Responders and possibly causing more accidents by being in the way.
Since none of my incidences were life and death, and there was nearby help to handle things, I chose to be helpful in a minimally involved way, and moved out of the way as soon as possible.
Really, I don't need to see blood and gore and I don't need to be vicariously thrilled or need to gossip about how I was right there and got to see it all. Or to brag about how I was the first one there to pull someone from the wreck or to got in the face of the scary woman who was off her meds, or tripped up the donut thief.
I didn't need to escalate any of these situations. I didn't need to go all Rambo.
My rules for handling emergencies I encounter as I move through life in the city are simple, and are simpler now that I have a cell phone.
Call 911 first. Once you are in the middle of things (assuming you jump in) you won't be able to call, and in my experience, most people are too busy recording the accident or taking pictures or jumping in and forget to call. In remote areas, this may still be the first step, but in cities it is definitely the first step.
Assess before acting. Does it look like there are other, more qualified people jumping in, are there downed power lines (if a car hit a utility pole, this is a real possibility), are there other things happening that might put you at risk if you jump in (heavy traffic that you'd have to cross to get to the scene, for example).
Determine the best course of action. Instead of running into the middle of the action like a mad man, take a moment while you are assessing the situation (you've already called 911, help is presumably on the way) to determine if there is anything else you could offer that isn't already happening. It could be anything from grabbing the fire extinguisher from your car to put out flames to setting up traffic cones to reduce further accidents to writing down details. Maybe it does mean jumping right in - if someone was being assaulted or needed CPR right then and not in 5 minutes when the EMTs arrived and no one else seemed willing or able to do it, for example. Most of the time, though, calling 911 is all you need to do, then get out of the way.
Wrap it up. Whether it's making sure the police/EMTs arrive before you leave, giving a statement to the police, calling your lawyer (if you performed CPR or used a fire extinguisher, call your lawyer - you're not protected by Good Samaritan laws everywhere), take a minute or two to close the situation. Take a few deep breaths, and then go on about your business.
Review. I learned in the military to debrief after action. since most of us aren't in the military, I'm not going to use military terms. Debriefing is the same as reviewing what happened, what you did, what you could do to improve your performance if it happens again. If you were in a restaurant and someone choked and you couldn't remember how to do a Heimlich, make a note to relearn it and then do so - take a class or something. If you hopped out of your car and almost got run over by a gawker at an auto accident scene, make a note to park safely before exiting your car to help. if your cell phone battery died, and you forgot to keep an car phone charger in your car, remember to put one in the car.
If everything went right, make a note of that, too, so you can repeat it.
It's not always this exciting - whole weeks pass where nothing more exciting happens than a fight over the bird seed. But when things do happen, I like being prepared, having a plan of action and having the essential tools with me.