by Lou Cadle
Unless they had body bags already? He stripped off his disposable apron and stuffed in into the waste bag and turned to go find out.
McKenna was staring at the blood body with a pale face, her eyes wide and filled with horror.
He felt like kicking himself. What had he been doing to these poor little girls? He could become professionally detached in the face of blood and death and screaming, but they certainly couldn’t. What had he been thinking?
Chapter 8: Gale
Gale stared into the eastern sky, watching the stars fade away as the thinnest of gray light stole into the sky. Good. He wanted daylight.
And he dreaded it and what it would show.
There was too much to do today, and what they did or failed to do would determine how the community made it through the next week or two. At worst, he could make a decision that could kill people. At best, what he did would today speed recovery over the next months. He knew, having been through disasters, how long it would be until life was normal again for everyone, but he thought the people around him would be in for some unpleasant education on that topic.
After he had returned from seeing Bash, he had checked in with the fire and police chiefs via radio and set a face-to-face meeting for 6. a.m. He had made a list of everything for his staff to do on a yellow legal pad. It ran to four and a half single-spaced pages, and he was afraid he’d forgotten a lot.
Then he spread those sheets out and organized the tasks into twelve logical groups. He’d appoint a supervisor from his staff for each area, delegate to them, and they would delegate further, recruiting family or random citizens or other city employees who might be out there, parks workers or others who didn’t have offices in City Hall. He himself would liaise with police and fire, coordinate, troubleshoot, and cope with unanticipated crises, of which he knew there’d be many.
He didn’t know most of his staff, or what their strengths or weaknesses were, or very much about the office politics, so he woke Angela with an apology and worked with her until they had tentative assignments that used people’s strengths. Some might have to be shifted, depending on who did not come back today, or who might fall to stress in the coming hours. She suggested since he wanted them on 12-hour shifts, switching at noon, he should have co-leaders, and from 11:30 to 12:30, twice a day, they’d overlap and be able to communicate what was in process, what the next priorities were, what problems had to be solved. She was right. It’d create a smoother transition between shifts.
She offered to make more copies of the plan, said that 30 copies would be what they needed, but he said five would serve, one for her, one for him, one for police, one for fire, and one to keep at the EOC to refer to. The co-chairs would copy out their own responsibilities. “When we have time,” he had told her, we’ll make a one-page summary to pass out to the public, starting with radio operators and then to any citizens who request it. And we’ll put in cell phone numbers on those, in case we get service again” She said she’d take photos of every page when the light was good, and if the cells came back on, she could simply mail them to people. But for now, it was hand copying, tedious and slow work.
He was lucky to have someone as clear-headed as Angela by his side. He told her so, and she waved the praise off and set to making handwritten copies.
More stars faded from the sky and he stretched, turning to look at the ruin of City Hall. That was a top priority, too, and he was going to advocate for its search at first light. If there were any chance at all that the missing staff — seven of them, counting Evelyn — and the mayor were still alive, he had to make sure they were found before it was too late to get them medical help. His worst moment last night was telling a group of returning workers not to crawl over the debris in the dark to look for coworkers, telling them they had to wait for the people with equipment and for full light. He was blunt. “One of you is sure to get injured, maybe die, in the attempt. Don’t do that to your families. And the people of this town can’t spare any of you.” If he didn’t get help on the rescue — recovery, he feared — from the fire chief, and soon, he was going to have to fight that fight again and he suspected he’d lose this time. Some of his staff had good friends still in there.
It was time to get to that meeting. He told Angela he’d be back in less than an hour, and he walked down to the firehouse, where the fire chief, Dan Bickham, and police chief, A.J. Flint, stood on the broad drive in front of the firehouse.
The three of them, the city’s Triumvirate, he thought, were joined by an executive from the power department. They began with a radio report from the water treatment facility, an engineer talking about broken lines, breached levees, sulfurous water seeping up from the bowels of the earth. The water facility had divers ready to check their filtration tank just minutes from now. The old water tower had water, but that was the city’s only certain safe supply. The bottom line was this: the water in hot water tanks in the homes and whatever bottled water there was in stores? That was all there was to drink. They needed backhoes and workers to repair mains or lay new pipes, but even then, there was no guarantee they could get safe water flowing again any time soon.
Flint said, “What if we get a single line working, from the tower, north through south through town? Put in public faucets along the way, or just one, to control it. People can walk down to it and fill bottles and carry them home, stand in line if they need to. And we can put a Guardsman on each tap to prevent hoarding or waste.”
The radio crackled. “They aren’t going to like that much. They’ll want to turn on the tap at home.”
“They’ll like it fine when they start to get thirsty,” said Flint.
Gale liked his no-nonsense attitude. “I concur,” he said.
“Do it,” said Dan. “We have maybe two days to get that done, maybe two days of bottled drinking water for people in apartment buildings and the nursing home. And the second priority is getting a water line direct to the hospital. They’re swamped with patients.”
The water exec said, “You know, we aren’t even thinking about sewage lines at this point. Getting the water restored has to be our priority. But assume there are breaks in sewage. Get reports back to us if people smell sewage or see any seeping out of the ground. We’ll do what we can, when we can, with that.”
“Without water,” Gale said, “at least no one is going to be flushing.”
“Exactly so,” said the water exec. He signed off.
Dan said, “What’s next?” Then he answered himself, “We need to get a tent over the hospital.”
Gale said, “Do they have a radio?”
“Yeah, now they do,” Dan said.
Flint said, “We’re asking every person we see if they’re a medical worker or ever were one, trying to get them in, at least for a day or two.”
Dan said, “We’re going to have more injuries today as people climb around in debris. Or injuries from aftershocks.”
Gale said, “What about food? Are there any stores that didn’t take a bad hit?”
“Walmart,” said Flint. “And a Schnucks up on Oak is pretty solid.”
“Are they secure?” asked Gale.
“Both are closed, if that’s what you mean,” said Flint.
“What I mean is, do we have enough control of them to keep looters out, and control how the food in those stores gets distributed.”
“You’re talking martial law?” asked Dan, frowning.
“I’m talking survival. We need to manage what food there is and get it parceled out fairly. Think about the damage to rails and rivers and roads. Who knows when we’ll get more?”
The three of them sat in silence, thinking about what they should do. Or, Gale thought, what they had to do. And how their decision would look in a week, or a year.
Dan sighed. “Okay, I get it. How do you two think we should manage this?”
Gale said, “We’ll deal with the political fallout later.”
Flint said, “That’ll come.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Okay,
I think we can get police wives — sorry, spouses — and military spouses in on this. They’re public-minded folks and as trustworthy as anyone. We’ll take some National Guard guys, in uniform, with weapons, and station them at the stores. The ladies — spouses — can bag up food. Every household gets a bag.”
Gale said, “Starting with what can spoil. Only then move to bags and boxes and cans.”
Dan said, “We have other stores. Convenience stores. The dollar stores.”
Flint said, “I’ll check, if I have the manpower.” He grimaced. “But if anyone loots, we’ll arrest their asses. We don’t have the manpower to protect more than the two bigger stores fulltime.”
“We need a list. City directory, map, something, to keep track of who shows up for a bag, check them off.”
“Maybe start with our map on the wall,” said Dan. “I’ll show it to you in a minute.”
“That list can also serve as way to record survivors,” said Gale. “If we can post it, or get it out on the short-wave radio so it can get posted on the internet, that’ll be a kindness to a lot of anxious people out there outside the quake zone. We’ll need the numbers of survivors for FEMA anyway, as we request food and drinking water later on.”
The other two men nodded.
Gale went on, “And until we know when we’re likely to see more supplies from the outside, you might want to tell people to go easy on the food, like 1500 calories a day for adults, 2000 for children, something like that.”
The fire chief said, “I’m glad it’s not me convincing the Walmart manager to give away food for no money.”
The police chief tightened his lips and said, “He’ll do it.”
They moved on to review search and rescue operations, and after the fire chief’s report on what they had done overnight, Gale put in his request for City Hall to be searched next. “If there’s any chance the major and manager are still alive,” he said, “we have to find them, and now.”
Flint said, “They’d fire our sorry butts for not getting them out sooner.”
“We can hope they’re alive to do it,” said Gale.
Dan said, “I’ll order the search. But realize, there are apartment buildings with more people trapped and missing that I’m delaying because of it.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But just half a day — “
“Three hours, one small crew,” said Dan. “That’s all I can give you.”
Gale knew he was lucky to get that much.
Dan said, “If we don’t find survivors — I mean anywhere, not just at City Hall — before sunset tonight, we’re probably not going to find them as survivors. I’m told my crews to grab two hours’ nap last night, but every man and woman is on today. And at sunset, every man and woman is off or in bunks, to get sleep and to see to their own families and deal with their own houses, however they can in the dark. We’ll recommence recovery operations tomorrow morning at dawn, but I’m not going to lie to you. It’ll be recovery, not rescue, unless there’s the rare miracle.”
“How about all the dead?” asked Gale.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are we to do with them?”
The three of them talked about body bags, which were running out, and graves, how to coordinate with clergy and morticians, how to get the bodies into the ground quickly, without upsetting people over religious traditions. Gale resented having to tiptoe around such things while risking disease and contamination from rotting bodies, but this was the bible belt, and people had to have things just so. What he’d give for a city of Muslims who wanted the bodies in the ground within 24 hours. That’d be healthier, though how to accomplish that big of a task?
“I hope we don’t have to have mass graves or the like,” said Flint. “They’ll riot.”
Dan said, “We need volunteer grave diggers or more machinery. We need someone from the cemeteries to deal with that.”
“I had that on my list,” said Gale, and explained the list that Angela was copying as they spoke. He gave them a quick rundown of his twelve areas. Sewage and latrines. Tent cities in the parks for people whose homes were gone. Neighborhood leaders. Graves and funerals. Communications within the city structure. Trash. Logistics and supplies. And so on. “Let me know if I’m steeping on your toes any way. I don’t mean to.”
Flint shook his head at that. “We’ll have enough to do with managing public safety. It’ll get worse.”
Dan said, “And we — someone — needs to reestablish some sort of schooling by Monday, or kids will start getting into trouble and getting hurt farting around in the ruins.”
“And classes would be good for normalcy, good for mental health,” said Gale. “Get them back into a routine. We need the head of the school board or the high school principal or someone to coordinate that for us.”
Dan shook his head. “The high school principle is dead, and a dozen of the teachers there. The high school took a terrible hit. Kids practicing b-ball, kids there for meetings, trying out for a school play. More than 50 dead. The middle school fared better, and one of the elementaries. The other elementary school was brick — flattened, but at least all the kids were out.”
Gale wondered what it’d be like to be a parent who survived such a loss, who woke up this morning to realize they’d never see a beloved son or daughter again. He felt the pressure of tears behind his eyes and forced them back. He couldn’t be the weepy faggot, here, or he’d lose standing with these men. He was tired, he knew, and emotions were nearer the surface for it.
“Have either of you had any sleep?” he asked.
The fire chief rolled his eyes.
The police chief said, “Two fifteen-minute power naps, that what you Californians call them, right?”
Gale said, “We have to sleep, too. All of us need a second in command, and all of us need to start sleeping six hours, at least, starting tonight. Eight hours would be better. We need something in reserve when the next bad thing happens.”
“You have a name for that bad thing?” said Flint, squinting at him.
He shrugged. “Could be anything. Giant explosion of a propane tank. Toxic chemicals flowing down river. With the levee breaches, that’d be bad — could be effectively something like a gas attack, depending on the chemicals. Riots. I know that you know, Chief, that after a couple golden days, everything you had to deal with before is going to come right back, and worse in some cases. Drunks, family violence, whatever.”
“I know it,” he said. “I hope every liquor bottle in town fell off a shelf and got broken.”
Dan, “Then we’ll need a DT ward in the hospital, the way some people around here drink.”
Gale went on, “And my vote for the most likely bad thing? Aftershock. A big, big aftershock.”
As if he’d conjured it, the earth beneath them rumbled for a few seconds.
He shook his head as it faded. “Not that. I mean a real one. One nearly as big as the first. Or one worse than the first. In 1811, there was one as big a few hours later, and another a month later, and another after that.”
“Four like the big quake?” Dan said, his face horrified.
“There’s no way to know what will happen,” said Gale. “But we know what did happen, and that makes a repeat possible. Yesterday’s aftershock, however big that was — “
Flint said, “6.2, according to one of the ham radio guys.”
Gale nodded. “We’ll probably see dozens of those in the next six months. Dozens. And some of them are going to be the final straw for damaged buildings. They’ll come down. People have to stay out of damaged structures. We have to convince them, somehow.”
The fire chief said, “We need someone who can determine what structures are sound and which aren’t. Structural engineers, like that.”
Gale had forgotten that one. “Yes. Please have your people ask around for professionals like that while they’re hunting for medical personnel. We have to find everyone in town who can help in any way. In fact, I’ll writ
e up a list of skills that might come in handy. Carpenters, backhoe operators, and so on. I’ll do that first thing and get the list right back to you. And everyone without a specific skill who is willing to work, they’re going to have to dig latrines or graves or volunteer somehow. We need to convince every functioning person to pitch in.”
“Most will,” said Dan, checking his watch. “We have to wrap this up. We all have work to do that can’t wait.” The sun had crested the horizon, there was light enough to read by. Behind them, the firehouse cast a long shadow over them. It was going to be another clear day.
The power department executive, who had sat quietly until now, gave his report. No one had power. They had flooding at the plant because of a levee breach. They were working on that. They’d string lines today, too, but expect no power at all until tomorrow. “If then,” he said.
“Gas for generators,” Gale said, remembering. “We need to find a way to get gas out of the storage tanks and out to people with generators. And I’d love a generator for the EOC.”
Dan said, “We’ll deal with recovering the gas and diesel. We probably need to set up something like with the groceries, giving out a limited amount to people who line up, get them used to conserving it, give five gallons per day per household, something like that. I don’t know how to pump it — not yet — but my guys can figure it out.”
Flint said, “It’d be great if we could find a tax list or city directory, to check all this off against. Survivors, the lines for groceries and gas, burials, everything. A few copies of it, too.”
Gale said, “When we get back internet service, that’d be a snap.” A generation earlier, there’d be hard copies of that sort of thing all over town. Today? Without internet access, they might not ever get that or to other crucial information.
The fire chief said, “I’ll see what’s in hard copy here, back in the office. Which reminds me.” He pointed to Gale. “I need two minutes at the end from you. Are we done?”
Not nearly, Gale thought, but they’d dealt with enough for now, and they all had more important things to do than talk. “We’ll stay in touch via radio,” he said. “Maybe meet again this afternoon, maybe about sunset.”
