by Lou Cadle
He jumped out, slammed the car door and glanced south, towards the Columbia River, though of course he could see nothing, not even the river itself. Chad ran back inside, the wail of the siren through the streets sounding more menacing now. The normal traffic and customers wandering through the parking lot worried him. He wanted to tell them all to stop what they were doing and listen, to leave the area. But first things first.
He ran into the storeroom and yelled at Yancey. “We have to close the store and get out of here.”
“What?” Yancey said, but Chad ran through the doors and up to the customer service desk.
He skidded to a halt. “Where’s Mr. Fonville?”
Megan, the frizzy-haired woman on duty, said, “I don’t know. Did you check his office?”
Chad sped down the short hallway to bang on the manager’s closed office door, but there was no answer. No light gleamed around the edges of the door. He went back to customer service. “Page him,” he said.
“Don’t order me around.”
“Page him!” Chad said. “It’s an emergency.”
“What kind—”
“For pity’s sake, just page him!”
Megan’s mouth snapped shut and she clicked on the P.A. “Would Mr. Fonville please come to the customer service desk? Fonville to customer service.”
“Say emergency.”
“As soon as possible,” she said into the P.A., glaring at Chad before clicking it off. The repetitive sale announcement tape cut back in. “I can’t say ‘emergency’ on the P.A. It might scare people. What in heaven’s name is going on? Why are you acting so rude? That isn’t like you, Chad.”
Chad shook his head and paced in a circle until he saw Mr. Fonville coming towards him. He ran over to him and poured out the news.
“Son, what are you talking about?”
“Just—” Chad shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, turn on the radio to 1670, AM dial. Then call the police and ask them what to do. Will you please just do that? It’s really important.”
“I’m certain you misunderstood, but I will turn on the radio.”
“Do it now,” said Chad, and turned to Megan. “Call the police and ask what’s wrong. Just do it,” he repeated to her, and then he ran back through a closed checkout and turned into the freezer aisle.
“Don’t run in the store!” came Mr. Fonville’s voice.
Chad ignored him. He banged through to the storeroom. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he said to Yancey. “Get up to the office and talk to Fonville now.”
Yancey put down his UPC scanner. “What’s going on, Chad?”
“An emergency. He’ll explain. Take it seriously, even if no one else does. I know I can trust you to do the right thing.” Chad slammed out the back door and ran to his car. He had to do the right thing, too. He was still auxiliary fire, at least until he handed in a resignation, and he was going to do whatever he could to help.
^ ^ ^
Driving past, he could see the firehouse was crazy busy. The bay doors were both open and he could see a half-dozen guys loading up the engines and ambulances with supplies. He drove beyond the firehouse to Dallas Street, went up the hill, and found a place to park where his car would be up and out of the likely evacuation zone. It was a beater, but it was his beater and he couldn’t afford to replace it. He remembered to take off his store vest and nametag before he left the car. Digging under the passenger seat, he found an old muddy pair of hightop sneakers, kicked off his black dress shoes and tugged on the others. He sprinted the five blocks downhill to the firehouse.
As he arrived, he could see Francie in her car driving past him, pulling into the parking lot and out of his sight. He walked into the firehouse and edged around the busy crew, stopping to ask A.J. who was in charge. It was Rick Mausch, and Chad found him in the communications center, on the landline.
“I hear you, chief,” Mausch said into the receiver. “I will,” and he slammed down the phone.
“What can I do?” Chad said.
Mausch glanced around. “Uhh, not sure. I’ll think on it.” He said to the man at the communications desk, “Do they know if it’s full county coordination or east county only?” As he waited for an answer, he turned back to Chad. “Hey, could you make sure the coffee’s topped up? I know it’s not very exciting.”
“I’ll do anything,” Chad said. He hurried to the kitchen and spent five minutes pouring out dregs of coffee, swirling water through the carafes, and setting up new to drip. He made an executive decision to bypass the decaf. He watched as the coffee dripped. Weird, the sight was so slow and calm and normal, but inside, he was thrumming like a race engine, his adrenaline all pumped up with nowhere to go.
Francie came in and said, “Is there any—?” She saw the coffee and said, “Bless you. I just got woken up by the phone call.” She grabbed a carafe, and stuck a mug under the stream of coffee.
“I wish there was something I could do to help,” he said.
“You ask the battalion commander?”
“He said make coffee.”
She replaced the carafe and blew on her mug. “Gotta be something you can do. You’re efficient. Maybe you can field public questions on the phone, free someone else up. You’re good with people.”
“I am?”
She looked surprised. “Sure, you don’t know that?”
He shook his head. He’d been slamming himself in his thoughts so much the last couple days, he had no sense of what he was good at any more.
She sipped at her coffee, made a face. “Too hot,” she said. She opened the freezer and grabbed an ice cube and popped it in the mug. “I gotta go, Chad.” She walked into the dining area, her mug to her mouth, and Chad was left alone to watch the coffee continue to drip.
Kane pushed through the kitchen door. “What are you doing here?” His voice was strained and pitched high.
“My job,” Chad said, straightening his spine. “Helping.”
Kane shook his head, face sour. “Gotta get something for my stomach,” he muttered and pulled open a cabinet. He grabbed a handful of wheat crackers and left the box on the counter. He left without another word.
Chad put away the crackers. Then he considered what might happen in the next few hours. Depending on how serious the lahar was, how long it lasted, they’d all be busy, maybe all day. They could miss meals, would need something on the go. He went through the cabinets and found granola bars and wrapped peanut butter crackers, like those you’d get from a vending machine. He grabbed a box of Ding-Dongs, thought, no, too squishy, hunted for anything else wrapped, self-contained, and able to survive in a jacket pocket or damp environment. He pulled a bag of apples from the fridge and a bag of string cheese. He stacked all this portable food onto a big round tray and took it out to the dining room to put at the center of the table. A cup was sitting there, empty, and he took that back and washed it.
He wanted to do something. Reminding himself to stay out of the way, not bother anyone, not be a pest, he went down to the garage and backed into a corner to watch the loading. One engine pulled away, turning right, lights on but siren silent. Next, one of the ambulances pulled out, turning left. Probably deployed to different ends of the city.
Kane came from the men’s room hallway, saw Chad, and altered his path to come to him. “Why don’t you just go home? “
“Home is nearer the river than here.”
“Then follow the evacuation route like all the other civilians.” This instruction might have been said in a caring way, but Kane’s tone was not at all that. He was irked, and on his way to angry.
“I feel like this is where I’m suppose to be.”
“It’s not,” snapped Kane.
Chad dropped his gaze. The words echoed what he’d been thinking the last few days. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and he wasn’t supposed to be a firefighter. He felt embarrassed at first. Then he felt a wave of anger moving up from his gut through his chest. Who was this guy to tell him
where he should be? Not the battalion commander. That’s who got to tell him when to come and go. He had to clamp his teeth together from snapping a rude reply. Around him, the voices seemed louder and louder. Metal banged against metal. Doors slammed shut.
In the midst of all this noise a sudden light came to Chad, from a source he could not identify, and both his shame and anger were swept away by something else, curiosity. Logic. Calm. His brows drew together. “Why are you acting this way?” He didn’t ask nastily. In fact, he didn’t expect Kane to answer. It was more like he was asking himself. Why would Kane have taken against him, and when had it started, and what was in it for Kane? He wondered if Kane himself knew those answers.
Kane’s face grew red, and his mouth worked, but he said nothing.
It seemed as if Chad had handed over his flushed face and his consternation to the other man. The shift felt like a physical object had passed between them, a burden transferred from Chad to Kane. And good riddance to it.
Then the battalion commander’s voice called, “Keppler! Chad, get back in here.”
He left Kane still gaping like a trout. He went into the rear and straightened his spine as he stopped in front of Mausch. “Yes sir?” he said.
“Figured out something you can do,” said Mausch, handing him a radio. He turned and rummaged in a tall metal cabinet. He found and handed over to Chad a pair of binoculars. Next he tugged a loop of three keys off a hook. “Here’s your job, and it’s important. Get up on the roof, face south, and radio down what you’re seeing. It’s the southwest staircase, hit the emergency door on this level and go on up. There’ll be a metal door at the top. One of these two keys will unlock it.”
“Yes sir.”
“You know how to work the radio?”
“I do,” said Chad and he turned to go.
“Wait,” said Mausch. He went to the garage and grabbed a yellow and black vest with “Fire” stenciled on the back, and handed it to Chad. “Things are likely to get crazy soon. Anyone in the public asks for more than you can do, say you’re auxiliary and find one of us if you need to. Don’t overstep, right?”
“Yes sir,” he said, slipping on the vest, proud to be wearing it.
“Good man,” said Mausch and clapped him on the shoulder. “Go.”
As he passed Francie carrying a plastic box under one arm, she flashed him a thumbs up, and he banged through the firehouse door and into the administrative building. Out the door, up the stairs. The roof door lock yielded easily to the first key he tried.
The black asphalt roof was studded with equipment—exhaust fans and satellite dishes and unidentifiable pipes and metal boxes. He got to the corner that faced due south. Cars were headed out of downtown, up the hill, but not nearly as many as there should be, not enough to hold everybody who was living or working downtown. People hadn’t heard or they had heard but weren’t evacuating. Beyond town, the Columbia River where it lapped up against the wharf looked normal—high this spring, but not flood stage. Lady Island, the rest of the river, and Troutdale: all normal for an Oregon spring day. Far to the southeast, beyond a blue swath of foothill, Mount Hood’s white top gleamed against a crystal blue sky. He lifted the binoculars to his face and scanned, starting at Troutdale. Nothing yet. He kept scanning upriver until he lost the track of its course. He moved the binoculars back to Troutdale, where he saw more signs of evacuation there. The interstate traffic looked normal. No one had set up a roadblock over the bridge, so they must know it was safe. Downtown in Camas, near the Liberty Theater, he picked out a cop car going slowly, maybe announcing evacuation orders through a bullhorn. He could see people, a few in the upper stories of apartment buildings leaning out their windows and looking around. So the news was getting out—good.
His radio came to life. A voice he didn’t recognize said. “Anything happening on the roof? Over.”
“Nothing,” Chad said. “Some evacuation activity. Nothing on the river. Over.”
He turned back to the Oregon side and, through the binoculars, pushed his field of vision again up the Sandy. The view hazed out and he backed up to a spot he could see clearly.
Then the lahar came into view, faster than he would have guessed possible, quick and wide, a churning mass of gray, specked with dark debris, rushing down the river course.
As he watched, it widened further, careening around the bends of the river, taking out banks and trees and slamming into buildings with each sweep. He held the binocs one-handed and thumbed the radio. “It’s coming,” he said. “It’s big.” He braced his elbow against his side to steady the binoculars. “Okay, I think that’s Gresham, now. It’s going through Gresham.” He watched as tiny dots of something four-legged—horses? cows?—were swept into the river. At a steep spot, a grassy bank tumbled down and fell into the flow, adding itself to the mess. All of this was happening silently, like some action-adventure movie at the Liberty where the sound when out. He half-expected an audience to start clapping and chanting for sound. “Okay,” he said into the radio. “Coming into Troutdale now. Over,” he said, realizing he hadn’t given anyone a chance to talk back to him.
“How long? How long do we have?” It was Mausch. “Will it hit Camas?”
“Maybe five, six minutes,” Chad responded. “Yes, I think it will hit us, sir. It’s fast and it’s high and its got some real power behind it. I can’t see this much stuff getting absorbed by the Columbia. There are whole roofs and cows and hundreds of pines. It’s taking out streets in Troutdale like they were nothing.” He realized his voice was rising and he got himself under control. “Over.”
“Keep telling us. I’ll shut up. You keep talking.”
Chad pressed down the send button and talked into the radio, as professional and calm as he could manage. “The I-84 bridge is down. Cars in the river, 18-wheelers. Lahar coming onto Lady Island now.” A mass of blue herons, over a hundred, took to the air as the lahar hit the island and snapped off trees. “A big gray wedge of mud flowing into the river beyond the island. Trees piling up on Lady. The pulp mill buildings taking hits from debris. Coming over the landing.” Too much was happening to say, the mess spreading up river and down. He focused on Camas’s streets. “Encroachment into Camas. Cars being lifted and spun. First Ave. Second Ave. People down. Cop car just got it. Uh, you guys should get off the floor down there, right now. Get up onto the truck or go upstairs.” He watched as the thing came towards him. “Now!” he insisted, although they could probably see the river of approaching mud by now themselves, only a block off and rushing up the street.
He could hear it now, too, with shattering of glass and cracking of brick and lumber. Distant screams. A pounding on the roof door behind him. He ran over and flung it open. Office workers streamed up the stairway. “One of you keep this held open,” he said and ran back to the roof edge. The building was an island in a sea of gray muck. Splintered pine trees filled the city streets closest to the Columbia, but none of the big ones made it this far. Branches and lumber and a chunk of roof with shingles swirled in the street outside. A cow, spinning, dead or helpless to move. A man scrambling to his feet then slipping down again into the mud.
Bizarrely enough, the more he watched, the cooler and calmer he became. It was a little like watching a TV report of disaster on some distant continent, not like seeing his own town being inundated. He sure wouldn’t be working at the Liberty or Safeway any time soon, though, unless it was to shovel out mud there, but that thought passed without raising more than a flicker of concern. He had a job to do here and now. He thumbed the radio and said, “What next? Over.”
Francie’s voice came over the radio. “Chad. Is it still moving inland?”
“Not as fast as it was. Wait.” He moved around the building to the north corner and watched the influx of mud. Thumbing the radio, he told her how far it had gotten, naming streets and parks, verbally drawing her a map of the lahar’s limits. “The river is running backwards, almost, filling up with debris. I guess it might choke th
e flow and it’ll flood above that. The Greenway is gone, totally under. The police station might be the limit of it. I’ve seen houses damaged and a few smaller structures, like garages and sheds, torn entirely down. Over.”
“Some of us are coming up there. Over and out,” she said.
Around him, he realized that the roof had grown more crowded. Some people were crying and panicked. Half were punching at or yelling into cell phones. “Everything is okay,” he called. Not the truth. What was true? “You’re okay. The worst is over. The building is fine. You’re safe here.”
“My house,” one tearful woman said, pointing to the southwest. “My kids, are my kids okay? They’re with a fourteen-year-old babysitter.”
Chad called, “Anyone have something to write with?” A woman came up with a pencil and notebook out of a deep bag and told him to keep it. “Okay, anybody who has concerns about people in houses that you can see are in the flood, and you can’t get through on your cell, I’ll take down those addresses and pass them on to the rescuers on the ground. Not property damage worries, please. Let’s focus on living people for now, get them help if they need it.”
A half dozen people came up to him. He started with the crying woman, taking notes. He was on the fifth person when Mausch, Kane, Francie, and three other firefighters came through the door. He held out the binoculars for Francie and finished taking names and addresses before joining the others at the south corner of the building.
“These people just watched their homes get hit,” he said, handing the notebook to Mausch. “They want reassurance that loved ones are okay. I have name, age, sex, on the people they thought were there. Nobody disabled on the list, but some kids.”
Mausch took the note and handed it to Kane. “Get that down to communications and out to police when we’re done here.”
