by Bobby Akart
Tate found his way to the closest fire hall, Memphis Fire Station #5, located several blocks away toward the river. The fire trucks were parked in their stalls, covered with debris from their own roof cave-in. The buildings along the river had taken a beating. Most had crumbled and fallen into the city streets. They were certainly impassable for large fire trucks.
Firefighters removed the hoses from their fire engines and dragged them through the streets to fight the closest fires first. They worked frantically to rescue the living and confirm others to be dead. Tate begged two of them to assist in rescuing the parents of the children who’d survived the collapse of the Halloran. They ran with him through the streets, but by the time they arrived, more of the parking structure had collapsed on top of the theater, making rescue efforts too dangerous.
The firefighters were unable to make contact with their 911 operators via handheld two-way radios. The earthquake had snapped millions of fiber-optic cables and telephone lines. Cell towers and emergency relay towers were toppled, cutting off communications between first responders while rendering landlines, cell phones, and internet connections inoperable.
It was well after midnight when the firefighters left Jill, Tate, and Emily alone with the fifteen children they’d saved. Emily, who knew them all, and Jill, who was friends with many of their parents, tried to comfort the kids. They did their best to offer them a ray of hope. However, when the firefighters left the children alone, they began to cry.
It was Tate who suggested finding a church that was still standing. They would take the children there and seek counseling for them. It turned out to be a wise decision. They led the children east on Beale Street toward the Medical District.
Emily held her mother’s hand as they walked. Once, she paused and pointed up to a skyscraper and commented, “Look, Mom. Those buildings lost their skins.” Jill grimaced as she looked upward. The historic Beale Street Baptist Church was engulfed in flames, and the orangish glow revealed the broken glass and crumbled façades of the surrounding buildings.
Tate led everyone around the FedEx Forum. The arena, used mainly for basketball and concerts, was a logical place for refugees to gather. They soon learned the ceiling had collapsed during the earthquake, killing many of the fans attending the basketball tournament.
They kept walking. Past people who lay on benches or under the canopies of bus stops. Past the fires and the demolished buildings and the broken-down vehicles. They joined a herd of refugees walking slowly forward, shuffling their feet without a word spoken between them.
After an hour, they merged onto Union Avenue, which crossed by the hospitals. During that time, explosions rocked the downtown area. Most likely, they would’ve been badly injured if they’d waited any longer.
Another hour passed, and they kept walking, although the large group they’d become a part of began to stop or peel off to join in the looting of fast-food restaurants or drugstores. They reached I-69, which ran north-south through the east side of the city. The overpasses had collapsed, but pedestrian traffic was moving steadily toward the north. When they arrived at the interstate, Tate questioned several of the refugees. He was told FEMA and the National Guard had set up a relief station at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church a quarter mile away on Jefferson Avenue.
Tate shared the information with his mom, but he didn’t want to get the kids’ hopes up. He simply led them along the highway until the large Christian church came into view.
Known as The BLVD, the church’s campus spanned several city blocks in all directions. Once they came upon the church grounds, Jill immediately recognized it from the interstate. She knew the finance chair of the church, Holly Sanders. They’d worked on a fundraiser to help victims who’d lost their homes as a result of asteroid IM-86 colliding with the planet years ago.
They followed dozens of other people as they climbed up the grassy embankment next to the collapsed Jefferson Avenue overpass. In the parking lot adjacent to the interstate, tall generator-powered lights revealed the National Guard and FEMA staging a recovery effort. Humvees, troop carriers, and school buses were scattered across the church campus.
Several white tents had been set up at the entrance parking lot. Barriers were positioned to lead refugees and victims through a cattle-style corridor so they could be processed. Jill took over from there.
She explained to the FEMA personnel the situation. Within seconds, they’d sent word into the church, and two of The BLVD’s elders emerged to help. After FEMA obtained the personal information on each of them, they were led inside the church, where dozens of parishioners immediately stepped up to provide love and comfort to the kids.
FEMA explained that they would keep the children there as long as necessary to find any of their family members. Jill asked for the list of children’s names and addresses. She promised to help by going to their homes that were near her own.
That was when the Atwoods got the best news of all. At sunrise, the school buses would begin transporting refugees to the east. Some would be dropped off at exits off I-40 along the way, while others would be taken to Jackson, almost a hundred miles to their northeast.
They said their goodbyes to the kids and thanked the parishioners who devoted their time to looking after them. Then they got in line to catch a bus.
By eight o’clock that Saturday morning, a caravan of three buses was moving slowly along Sam Cooper Boulevard through the residential neighborhoods of East Memphis. With each street crossing, the houses appeared to be less damaged than the ones before them. The family became convinced the earthquake hadn’t impacted their home in Cordova.
The buses slowed to a stop as they reached the giant cloverleaf where I-40 and I-240 merged. Ordinarily, Sam Cooper Boulevard ran underneath the massive overpasses of the two heavily travelled interstate highways. During the quake, the tallest two of those overpasses, with the vehicles on top of them, had collapsed to the ground below.
Massive Army bulldozers had been working for hours to move the concrete, steel, and destroyed vehicles to the side in order to create a lane wide enough for the buses to fit through. It was a reminder to the family that the destruction caused by the quake spread far and wide.
Once they cleared the cloverleaf, the buses were able to gain speed, as now two eastbound lanes had been cleared. The westbound lanes of I-40 only contained the occasional emergency or military vehicle.
Exhausted, Jill leaned against the window on the right side of the bus and closed her eyes. Emily, who was sandwiched between her mom and brother, leaned over onto Jill’s shoulder. Tate tilted his head back and dozed off.
Suddenly, a murmur began to build within the bus as the other passengers began to talk in hushed whispers. Several of them left their seats and leaned over the passengers on the left side of the bus to look out the window. Their voices began to rise, stirring Tate awake.
“My god,” said more than one.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Those poor people.”
Tate was fully awake now and curious. He stood in the aisle of the school bus, pushing his head into the adjacent seat so he could get a look. His eyes grew wide and he gasped. He slowly backed up and plopped into the bench seat, awakening his mom and sister.
Jill was still half-asleep when she noticed the commotion on the bus. “Huh. Um, what’s going on?”
“Mom, you gotta see this.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Saturday, December 22
St. Louis, Missouri
The waters of the Mississippi River had rolled into St. Louis with the sunrise. Jack and Tony had to climb over dead bodies and mounds of debris to escape the lobby of the Met. What they discovered outside the building shocked them. Everything was destroyed. Buildings. Vehicles. People’s lives. Nothing remained untouched. And now flooding threatened to crush what hope the survivors had left.
They moaned in pain and cried in despair. Virtually every survivor was bloodied, battered,
or broken. Desperate for help, their outstretched arms and pleading eyes forced Jack and Tony to draw together in an unconscious effort to comfort one another. Humanity didn’t deserve what the New Madrid earthquake had inflicted upon it. The two men needed to give each other strength to survive and escape the crumbling city.
There were signs that help was on the way. The roar of two Army National Guard helicopters could be heard in the distance. The constant thumping sound of their rotors echoed through the remains of the downtown skyline. Sirens of emergency vehicles wailed throughout the streets. Several massive bulldozers were already on the scene, pushing debris and destroyed vehicles out of the way.
Volunteers worked together to search for survivors among the rubble. Jack and Tony felt compelled to assist the strangers. They spent half an hour in the rubble about a mile from the Met, assisting emergency workers searching for bodies in the crumbled remains of the nearly two-hundred-year-old Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, the first built west of the Mississippi in 1845.
A wedding with three hundred in attendance had been caught completely off guard by the rapidly moving earthquake. In their panic to exit, they’d crushed the oldest and infirm among them, causing a pileup at the entrance. The entire cathedral had collapsed upon them, leaving only the granite entrance with the inscription above it—deo uni et trino. God one and triune, referring to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
As the waters rose and the rescue efforts were abandoned, Jack stormed away from the cathedral and shook his head in disgust. God certainly had his hands full on this day.
As Jack reflected upon the tragedy, One Metropolitan Square came crashing down. The battering of the adjacent buildings combined with the massive earthquake that had rollicked its foundation was eventually too much for the skyscraper to withstand. With a massive groan followed by a rush of debris-filled displaced air, the Met was reduced to rubble, taking another adjacent building with it.
The guys began to run away, not because they were in imminent danger of the building collapsing on them, as it was just over a mile away. It was an instinctive reaction, a fight-or-flight response, in which their minds were in simultaneous agreement. This fight was bigger than they were, and they simply wanted to put the entire ordeal in their rearview mirror.
He and Tony elected to focus on getting home to their families. They’d had discussions with some of the emergency personnel, who advised them the lines of communications up and down the Mississippi had been severed. Their attempts to access a cell tower were without success. Jack silently prayed to God for the safety of Jill and the kids, after apologizing for asking for help on such a busy day, of course.
The men began walking south, veering away from the river as the water slowly encroached into the downtown. Off to their left, the collapsed remains of Busch Stadium resembled the Colosseum in Rome. Most of the structure had fallen away, leaving the stands of steel beams behind. Surrounding buildings appeared to have been stomped on by a giant steel boot. Every window in their field of vision had been broken, leaving glass covering the floor of the concrete jungle.
Those who were capable began moving west away from the river. A few tried to drive around or over the debris but soon learned walking was much faster. To the east, those who waited too long to escape or who relied upon rescuers would likely drown.
Jack and Tony began to pick up the pace themselves, careful to avoid the large fissures that opened up in the ground. These cracks in the earth would soon be hidden by the slightest amount of water. An unsuspecting refugee could easily step from solid ground in what appeared to be a foot of water into a water-filled crevasse hundreds of feet deep.
The guys found their way to Interstate 44, which was slightly elevated over the rest of its surroundings. The lanes were still passable, but few cars were moving, as the entrance ramps to the highway had been blocked by debris or stalled vehicles. I-44 westbound had become a pedestrian walkway of the displaced. Sullen, exhausted, downtrodden people of all walks of life slowly moved toward the suburbs. Some lived there. Others hoped to find a Good Samaritan to lend a hand.
Jack and Tony exchanged very few words as they made their way out of the city. The collapse of the Met seemed to be a game-changer for them mentally. They each tried their cell phones occasionally but then accepted the fact they weren’t going to work. They decided to conserve their batteries in case their wives called them or if it became necessary to use their flashlight apps again.
It was approaching noon when the men reached the twin spans of highway bridge crossing the Meramec River just north of Fenton. The two four-lane bridges had been destroyed except for a narrow stretch on the eastbound lane just wide enough for pedestrians to cross. Many were afraid to risk their lives along the steel girder coupled with the two load-bearing flanges that remained.
Jack explained to Tony the Meramec was known to flood, and it was likely all of the roads between where they stood and the Mississippi were under water. They decided to go for it.
Separated by about six feet, the two men walked the twenty-inch span alone while others watched on. Tony followed Jack’s lead.
“As you go across, watch me. I’ll be lowering my body’s center of gravity toward the steel span. Think of it this way. It’s harder to turn over a short stout vase than a tall slim one.”
“Makes sense. I’m right behind you,” said Tony confidently.
“Also, a quick reminder. Don’t look down.”
“Not a problem,” said Tony after hesitating. He’d already broken that rule and vowed not to do it again. The swift-moving waters were churning up mud, leaving the appearance of a chocolatey froth. Also, oddly, it seemed to be flowing upstream.
The guys made it across and continued walking along Interstate 44. They stopped to rest as afternoon set in. They were both thirsty and hungry. Exhaustion had forced them to hit a brick wall.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” asked Tony.
Jack chuckled. “Not a clue. High and dry. How’s that?”
“Yeah, there’s that,” he replied. He looked toward the sky and glanced at his watch. It was three o’clock. He pointed toward the sun. “That’s west.”
Jack laughed out loud and slapped Tony on the back. He mocked him as he spoke. “You were a sharp cookie in school. Or was it Boy Scouts?”
“Screw you, man. I was just gettin’ my bearings straight. I think we should start heading south, right?”
Jack smiled and nodded. “I was just bustin’ your balls. Yeah, we should be far enough away from the Mississippi at this point to avoid flooding. There aren’t many buildings out here, but the ones I’ve seen are damaged. This quake was massive.”
“Whadya think? Six or seven?”
“Bigger. St. Louis was leveled,” Jack responded and then sighed. “I mean even out here, maybe a dozen miles from downtown, the buildings are all damaged.”
Tony stood and stretched. “I’ve gotta keep goin’. If I stop now, I’ll just roll over there in the weeds and fall asleep.”
“I get it,” said Jack. “Let’s pull off at the next exit. Maybe somebody will let us sleep in a barn or something.”
They approached an exit sign marked Beaumont-Antire Road. It was labeled Exit 269.
“Over twenty miles,” mumbled Jack.
“What’s that?”
“The downtown exit was 290. I remember seeing the sign at Jefferson Avenue when we got started. It read Exit 289.”
“Damn,” began Tony. “I don’t think I’ve ever walked twenty miles in a day, or anywhere close to that.”
Jack picked up the pace and pointed in front of him. “There’s a pickup parked up ahead. He didn’t pass us, did he?”
Tony shrugged. “I don’t think so. A few others did without stopping, but I don’t remember this one. Maybe he’ll give us a ride?”
The two men jogged toward the truck and slowed as they approached so as not to startle the driver. Jack eased up to the window to tap on it, but it was partial
ly rolled down, allowing him a view inside. The driver wasn’t taking them anywhere. He was clearly dead.
“What’s the deal?” asked Tony.
“I’m guessing he died of a heart attack. His face is contorted like he had a stroke.” Jack pressed two fingers against the man’s neck to feel for a pulse. His grimace revealed the result.
“Well, shit,” Tony complained.
Jack walked forward a few paces and then returned to the driver’s side. He shook his head and mumbled, “Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”
Tony looked into the front seat of the truck from the passenger’s side. He and Jack made eye contact.
“I don’t like it, Jack. But it’s all we’ve got.”
Jack nodded and opened the driver’s door.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Saturday, December 22
USGS
Golden, Colorado
One of Dr. Lansing’s aides gave her a ride home just to pick up several changes of clothes. She wanted to explain to her husband in person what her role would be over the next forty-eight hours or more. She also wanted to let him know she wouldn’t likely return until Sunday afternoon sometime. She tried to brush aside his response.
He commented she didn’t get paid enough for what she did. For some, his statement might be shrugged off as a joke concerning the value of a person to the business or organization where they worked. Her husband actually meant it. In his mind, the near-six-figure salary was insufficient for the hours she put into a government job, as he called it.
He’d never understood her passion, and she resented his attitude. Dr. Lansing wasn’t in it for the money. She wanted to save lives.
She walked back into the operations center and studied the weary faces. Many of them had worked around the clock like she had. There were a few she had to force to go home and get some rest, especially since there were anxious, able-bodied replacements ready to jump in and be a part of this historic catastrophic event.
