Dag 10 (15 feb): Politie in actie

This noon, I decided to go to school on foot. When I crossed the Erasmusbrug, suddenly a police car showed up. This car was parked over the road (so that the cars coming from South, over the bridge couldn’t drive anymore). A few young policemen got out of the car and went to the other side of the road (cars coming from Blaak), telling the chauffeurs of those cars that they couldn’t pass the crossing. A few minutes later another police car showed up, followed by two more. All the police cars parked over the road so that they blocked cars. Only the road coming from the East of Rotterdam (e.g. Oosthaven) was still unblocked. Those cars had to drive on, never mind the traffic lights.
This whole action took 10 minutes. Then we waited for another 10 minutes. A girl standing next to me asked the policewoman what was going on. There was a special emergency coming for the Erasmus MC. 5 minutes later, a policeman on a motorcycle passed us, followed by another one, a MUG ambulance, a MUG ambulance with the deadly injured person on board and another motorcycled policeman.
At the end of this passage, the policemen and policewoman got back in their cars and drove off. Then the cars could just drive on.
Now, it was the first time I saw something like this. It really shocked me that the half of Rotterdam had to stand still for almost 25 minutes for an emergency transport which passes in less than 1 minute. I understand the reasons for it, but I think there are better ways. They should time it better. Imagine someone got a heart attack during waiting because of the stress of being too late, then there would be an emergency transport needed again!

Because of this escapades, I was too late in the lesson (only 5 minutes). Only the Spanish girls and I were in the lesson of ‘The digital world and its implications’. Mrs. Stofberg gave us some really good links to sites to use when you’re a teacher (and also when you’re not a teacher). I already knew some because at KaHo we have the course OMI (Omgaan Met Informatie, dealing with information). I already knew about Picasa, Flickr, Slideshare and blogging but still she surprised me with other sites like wefeelfine.org and freerice.org.