AT FIRST the story seemed like just another tragic loss of life on the highways. After a high-speed chase, a fleeing vehicle collided with another at a busy intersection, and a passenger in one of the vehicles died. We have too many accidents that take too many lives on this relatively small island, but we’re sort of used to the reports and the gruesome pictures which often accompany them.

But then more details came out. This victim was a child, a very small child, only 4 years old. She wasn’t properly restrained for her size and weight, and somebody had apparently placed the shoulder belt behind her body. Perhaps she had done that herself. Police found her on the floor of the vehicle that was being chased, still alive but fatally injured. Emergency responders said it wouldn’t have made any difference how she was belted into the car – she needed to be in a special car seat or booster seat.

It turns out the car in which she was a passenger was being chased by the police, at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour. That’s when this story became more than just another accident. What could have prompted such a high-speed chase? How could the pursuit of a vehicle on Guam at 100 miles an hour possibly be justified? Where was this driver going to go? Get his license number, radio for more GPD backup, or just pull back and let him escape. It won’t be that difficult to search for the car.

Such high speed cannot be justified on any of Guam’s roads. We are not familiar with the police department’s policies on hot pursuit of a vehicle, but this one seems to have exceeded anything that could be construed as reasonable or prudent. An internal investigation into this tragedy is certainly warranted.

Smart meters & dirty power

On another subject, a letter in this edition of the Variety Forum outlines the concerns of a resident about the so-called smart meters now being installed by the Guam Power Authority. Opposing the mandatory use of these meters, the writer, Christopher Allen, has filed suit against the utility and the government of Guam.

He also directs our attention to a website (takebackyourpower.net), which we visited. There is much that is troubling about the information presented on that site. The relevance to our situation on Guam is that GPA certainly needs to provide much more information about the safety of these devices, which emit an electromagnetic wave.

Our own observation is that many of us live and work in a veritable sea of spurious electric and radio signals. If you listen to AM radio in your car you can hear the interference as you drive down the road. All that static is caused by GPA transformers and lines throwing off electricity in the form of power signals. The noise is a warning that the power being delivered over those lines is what is politely called in the industry “dirty” power. We live with it all the time, and it may be affecting our health.