"Accident."

I was in the presence of tragedy today, at lunchtime.
I’m driving back to the building I work at when all of a sudden the entire road is sort of blocked off in front of me by a snarl of TV trucks and vans and SUV’s with NewsStation logos on them, and cameras everywhere, pointed towards the big huge cement plant that is about a city block distant, beyond the iron-gated entrance. I got real curious. I could see firetrucks in there, an ambulance, lots of vehicles with flashing lights of all kinds.
So I pulled over, got out, and walked up to this one cameraman who seemed glued to his tripod, and I asked him what was going on. His face would not leave the eyepiece of his camera, but the side of his mouth muttered “Accident.”
Following the angle of the camera I can see that a large crane is supporting a rescue crew on a platform and they are at least 150 feet up, swinging about up there against this huge conveyor belt sort of apparatus that comes out of a huge silo-type of building. Other guys are on top of the building, helping in some way.
So I ask the cameraman... “You mean there is someone trapped in that conveyor belt?”
For the first time he looks away from his camera for two seconds and says to me, “He’s dead.”
He looks back into his eyepiece, fiddles with the lens a bit, and adds “We’re just waiting for the body to come out of there.”
I didn’t say another word to the guy, nor he to me. And I just went back to my car. But as I drove away I turned down my 3 Doors Down CD and just thought about the way the camera dude said that. For the rest of the drive back to work, I re-played that:
“We’re just waiting for the body to come out of there.”
Of course, when it does “come out” he will then snap all manner of zoomed-up shots of whatever mangledness that conveyor belt yields, and then these images will be in turn conveyed to all kinds of people that could not be there to see it in person. And there were many many other lenses pointed that way, from different angles, each truck and van having a different logo on it, a different company. A different slant.
Why is it that we are so fascinated with this kind of tragedy? Like who would really want to see that poor dead guy’s torn up body?
I know I wouldn’t.
And yet, why did I stop my car in the first place to ask about something that I KNEW could not possibly be good? Something that was, in fact, exactly as it turned out to be.... tragic.
Why?
And this morning, the last thing I saw before flicking the TV off and booting it for work was this boat of refugee-type people tipping sideways into the ocean. About a hundred of them spilling out into the water. They were then promptly rescued by U.S. Navy, who were also filming the disaster.
I had just been listening to it sort of peripherally, but at a certain point, the newscaster said “We warn you, some of these images may be disturbing and graphic.” And that is when I turned and gave the screen my full attention. The disturbing part was that they showed a child floating face down on the ocean.
This is what good news is though. It is tragic.
Why?