NSB News.net photos by Henry Frederick. Observer newspaper Editor Robert Burns wrote in his weekly column this week about an incident that occurred on the roof of his office that landed a New Smyrna Beach man in the hospital in critical condition. See the story already posted on our Web site regarding the circumstances that led to 32-year-old Adrian Fair, falling off the roof Tuesday night and having to be airlifted with critical head injuries while playing on the roof with a skateboard. At left, Burns points to the roof and the fall. Below, Burns shows how the victim and his friends got on the roof.
Burns' column and a photo he took follow:
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Fun and Games turn tragic in New Smyrna Beach
By Robert Burns
“I don’t know if that guy’s gonna make it,” I heard the one paramedic say to another emergency worker as he shut the door to the ambulance Tuesday night, June 16. Now, it was a matter of keeping the injured man stable and alive while they waited for the air transport to arrive. A broken neck? A broken back? Certainly a concussion, maybe more. You can’t fly off a roof, fall 20+ feet to the ground, land on your spine – half on the sidewalk, half in the street, and expect to get up and walk away. No, you can’t.
“It’s alright, buddy. You’re gonna be alright!” said the one skateboarder to his unconscious friend. The paramedics didn’t have time to debate the prognosis, but by the looks on their faces and the determination they were investing into this patient, I think the EMTs might have had a different idea. The way it all started was, after the sun went down, a couple of chums thought they’d have a little fun up on the varied roofs of Canal Street.
Some of those roofs are flat as a piece of glass. Others are undulating. A few have 8- to 12-inch gaps between one roof and the next one over. I’m sure it’s a thrill to fly over that deep, dark void, your skateboard spinning one, maybe two times before your feet come back down on the board. Pure adrenaline.
Then there’s the really great roofs. Just the right length. Just the right angle. Maybe there’s a sharply curved ramp at the end where the surface of the roof smoothly slides up in a graceful arc against the building’s facade. Where, for a moment, you can imagine yourself flying high over downtown New Smyrna Beach. It’s an illusion. I know.
Sitting at my desk in the Observer that night, I thought I heard thunder. A repeated booming echoed through the building. I figured we’d lose electricity at any moment, so I started saving everything I had written. I called home, worried our little 4-year-old might be scared of all the crashing. As my wife answered the phone, I realized it wasn’t thunder.
It was the sound of people on our roof. People I had spoken to before. People I had instructed weeks earlier, to please get off this100-year old roof. People who should know better: 30-year old men on skateboards.
By the time I walked out to the front of our office space, the skating had stopped. Looking out our front window, I saw three upset men, all in their 30s and 40s, cradling another man about the same age. There he was, broken, twisted on the sidewalk, at least 20 feet beneath the air in which the broken man had been seemingly flying only moments before. Sir Isaac Newton never loses.
I dialed 9-1-1.
His friends were trying to get him to move. He just lay there, vomiting. “You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay!!” they kept repeating, as if the mantra was approved by the American Medical Association. Clearly, he was not going to be okay. Even if he survives, there is little likelihood he’ll ever be “okay.”
The police arrived within moments. Seconds later a fire truck and then an ambulance. Police questioned the broken skate boarder’s friends. “It was an accident! Just an accident!” An accident, that young man and his family will have to deal with for the rest of his life. But that’s only if he survives.
Traffic at the intersection of U.S.1 and Canal Street was backed-up in every direction as the rotors from the Sheriff’s Office Helicopter beat the air in the vacant lot near the rail road tracks. This young man would be air lifted to Halifax Medical Center — and then perhaps on to somewhere else. Looking at that crushed and broken man on the sidewalk, you didn’t have to be a diagnostician to come to that conclusion, it would take top-notch physicians and a belief in miracles.
The staff here at the Observer wish the skateboarder a speedy recovery. We wish the men skateboarding with him a healthy summer. We wish them luck, and a renewed awareness of what a 20-foot fall onto concrete can do.
Adventurers, please stay off our roof – and every other roof on Canal Street. They all end abruptly, and the only way you’ll actually fly is courtesy the Sheriff’s Office helicopter. You’re far too old for me to be telling you this, but there you have it.