I know no harm was meant, but as one of the first people on the scene before emergency personnel arrived, I find this caption, especially the "Maybe the drivers were distracted by some really nice chinos on display?" comment, horribly inappropriate at best. At the moment this picture was taken I was 25 feet away and there was literally a woman engulfed in fire and burning alive in her vehicle. I couldn't see much more than her left arm due to the flames, but she was moving it. I will never forget that as long as I live. I hope to God she lives.

And from what I understand from people I talked to that saw it actually happen, a medical condition likely caused the accident. It was not "some really nice chinos."

Kudos to the Brookline emergency personnel. Their response time and efficiency I'm sure were life-saving.

To the "paramedic": I was there before you, and I'm thinking you were probably not there at all. And if you were, you might want to seek another occupation. As a former police officer, I know we need to "turn it off" when need be, but I'm still a human being at heart. I'm sure the woman in the car or anyone else who witnessed her horrible suffering first-hand would not agree with you. If it were your mother, sister or girlfriend burning in the fireball in that picture with a flippant comment underneath, you might look at it differently. And if not, well, I guess that's just you.

I don't believe that in my very short statement I said anything about me being on this scene. Moreover, nothing about this post from the Bostonist was disrespectful.

GAinMA, i was not at the scene and i did not know that anyone was inside the burning vehicle. the main piece of information i had--from WBZTV--was that the accident happened in front of the gap store, so i used it in the post. i sincerely apologize for my flippant comment; i had no idea that anyone was in danger or injured. it now seems that someone did die in the crash, and several were injured, (http://wbztv.com/local/brookline.car.crash.2.752572.html), which is of course a terrible tragedy. we'll post more in the morning.

Wow, GAinMA, do you over dramatize everything?

Thanks Litchik for your kind words and understanding. It was bad enough to experience something like this, and worse to have others try to discredit how I feel.

However, I thought about this today and have learned a few things from this experience and these posts.

I can see why gvlad00 thinks I'm overreacting. He/she wasn't there. Hell, if I hadn't been there and didn't know the details, I probably would've raised an eyebrow at the seeming incongruency between a photo with a fireball and a light-hearted caption, but not felt inspired enough to even comment on it. That's where gvlad00 is coming from.

But the thing is, I WAS there, and it was the most disturbing thing I've ever seen in my life--one of those "worst ways to die" things that has popped into everyone's head but you don't dare contemplate in detail because it would be so horrible. Obviously seeing the worst-fears-come-true for someone else first-hand and not being able to get them out of the vehicle GREATLY widened my perception of the discrepancy between the photo and the caption, and elicited a very strong response from me. I'd have to be pretty callous for it not to.

And while that's certainly understandable, I realized today that I also need to recognize that 99.99% of the population of the Boston area was NOT there. And unless they really stopped to imagine what it would be like to witness that, they will never truly understand how I feel about it (if they even could, not having been there), and undoubtedly many will think I'm "overreacting."

Nonetheless, my reaction being what it was, Kerry obviously didn't mean any harm. At the end of the day, from now on she'll probably put a different tone to the captions on photos with fireballs in them, and next time I'll consider the statistical likelihood of the average reader being able to even relate to my experience before I post my thoughts on the internet. In the case of this accident, unless they were there or have enough empathy to imagine it, they'll never understand and it will appear that I'm just overreacting or being overly dramatic.

That's one thing I learned from all this. The others are:

1. You never know what's going to happen next, so make this day your best day.

2. Words are so subjective. In several news reports, they said the woman was trapped "briefly" in her car while it was on fire. Please define "briefly." Yeah, if you were waiting in line to register your vehicle, it was brief.

3. It's amazing how inconsistent the news reports can be, both with each other and as to what really happened. I never paid it that much attention before.

4. Perhaps most importantly, we all are human, we all make mistakes, and we all approach life from our own unique perspectives. There's really no right and no wrong in cases such as these.

Thanks again for your support and understanding. Yes, I'm having a better day today. Not only do they expect that woman to survive, but I've learned a little more about life, from the accident itself and from these posts, and really, that's what it's all about.