Blown Away

by K'Anne Meinel

  “Maybe paying a penance for something that wasn’t your fault all those years ago?” she asked astutely. She got up to throw out the paper plates they had used even though there was a full set of dishes in the cupboards. She put the forks in the sink to rinse them off. She sat on the side of the table with Ellen, her arm around her. “And maybe, you are a good person at heart and you want to help those that can’t help themselves here,” she said softly, leaning in to kiss Ellen.

  Ellen smiled into the kiss. Rae so got her on so many levels. “You are such a comfort,” she told her as she hugged her close.

  “Do you want to watch some television?” Rae asked as she looked around at the luxurious accommodations.

  “That sounds good but I’ve not figured it out yet,” she told her.

  Between the two of them they figured out the remote control that accessed the monitor that was hooked up to some sophisticated satellite thing on roof of the RV. They finally found a station that was showing the devastation from above during the day. It was horrible.

  “You know, they should come down here for maximum effect,” Ellen commented as the camera’s panned from a helicopter to show the path of the tornadoes. Deep grooves were cut in the Earth through cornfields and the towns. Not only Oakley but several other towns were just wiped off the map.

  “Are you going to help them too?”

  “Anyone I can help from here I will help,” she asserted.

  It wasn’t too much longer that they were both yawning from their efforts of the day. It had been a long one and the following ones promised to be just as long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  EDUCATING

  “Well Lasbity Texas or some such town had six tornadoes in one day. It was like some record or something,” one of the boys was saying.

  “How many tornadoes makes it a record?” one of the girls sitting around the group asked. Several of the locals had joined Ellen and her team, sitting around a fire pit, roasting marshmallows, drinking beer, and chatting before heading in for the night. It looked like rain again from the forecast on the radios and televisions. They were enjoying themselves before another storm hit.

  “In 1974 there were 148 tornadoes over a two day span,” someone put in.

  “In April of one year there were like 312 tornadoes during a one week span. 226 of them were in one day,” one of the boys said importantly. The others stared at him in surprise.

  “That’s nothing,” someone put in dismissively waving aside the data he was spouting. “There were like 454 people killed in Mississippi and Georgia in like 1936.”

  “What about the tornado in 1925 that killed like 750 people in seven states?” someone asked.

  “How the hell do you all remember that?” Ellen asked as she sipped a beer. It had been another full day and despite pissing off the Major the previous night they had coordinated their efforts. She was providing better housing than his tent city to the people of Oakley. He and his men had left some of the tent-city to those who were too stubborn to take Ellen’s charity but the majority of their efforts were still with search and rescue, they were still finding bodies and a few recoveries from basements around the area as they and many of the people of this town searched for survivors.

  “We were getting our statistics together for our final exams,” one of the interns told Ellen with a grin. “We wanted to impress you too,” he blushed as he quickly sipped the beer Ellen had provided.

  “Well, your work in the labs has been stellar and I think you’ve impressed some of my people,” Ellen told him, giving the students that worked at Gigitech a compliment. She’d appreciated them volunteering for this clean up to help the people of Oakley.

  “You know, seeing the devastation of the tornado first hand, I think I want to try something different,” one of the girls on their team put in.

  “What, we aren’t going to make the sensors?” someone asked, she was a team-leader and if she wanted to change something it would affect them all.

  “It’s been done and while our sensors will give us a helluva lot more data than past attempts, I think we should look at trying to stop a tornado,” she put out there.

  “Are you crazy? How the hell do you stop a tornado?” several voices asked.

  “How about we fire something into the spout itself, causing a chemical reaction?” she put out there starting them all thinking.

  Ellen was enjoying the conversation. Rae sat on the seat in front of her and she had her own but was sitting on the picnic table where she had enjoyed a dinner with her team, sharing in on the hot dogs and hamburgers and any other food people wanted. It was a nice way to relax after their hard days of helping people. No one was turned away and several people had come to meet and thank Ellen for her generosity. It was just like a think tank listening to the students though. Not much different than the round table discussions they had at the company.

  “How does a tornado actually form?” one of the locals asked and was immediately inundated with answers before one voice rose above the others.

  “Hang on, hang on, let’s start at the beginning,” Bob Talmus piped up. He held up his hands to quiet his fellow students who were enthusiastically bombarding the innocent girl who had asked the question. “Okay, it’s like this. The Unites States has the most tornadoes of any country in the world,” he began.

  “Why?” was heard from several voices.

  He nodded as though he had expected that question. “For one, it’s one of the largest countries with many temperate zones and its unique geography causes the right conditions for tornadoes to occur.”

  “But don’t other countries get tornadoes?” someone called out.

  Ellen leaned forward slightly to hear this answer herself, she was fascinated. Rae felt her surge slightly and leaned back imperceptibly to touch Ellen closer to her back. Ellen absentmindedly caressed along her bare arm.

  “Yeah, they get them all over the world. The US though, it gets the strongest, the most violent and probably more than any other place on earth.”

  “But why?” a voice called out.

  “It has no major east to west mountain range to block the air flows. Because of the Rocky Mountains that block moisture and screw up the atmospheric flow which in turns makes drier air forced into the troposphere. Then you add the moisture level of the Gulf of Mexico sweeping up our country and you have perfect conditions when the two flows meet. It causes what they call a dry-line and that’s why we have Tornado Alley through our country,” he explained.

  “I thought I heard that Tornado Alley extends up into Canada?”

  “Yeah, it does but they don’t get as many as we do here in the States. They are after all part of the same continent and have the same atmospheric conditions that create a tornado,” he explained.

  “So how many tornadoes do we get?”

  “One year I read we averaged nearly thirteen hundred,” he told them with devastating effect.

  “No way, that would be on the news,” someone objected.

  Another of the students piped up, “It is on the news but you don’t hear about each and every one of them unless you had every channel in the country piped into your TV.”

  “I never hear of Europe getting tornadoes.”

  “They do, believe me,” Bob continued getting back into the conversation. Ellen could see why he made such a good leader for her interns. He had been the one to present her with their initial plans for the storm chasing they wanted to do. “Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South America get them. It doesn’t matter where it is, if the conditions are right, they’ll get them.”

  “Does Asia?”

  He nodded. “It’s so big, I would think it would be on the news more, but it’s land mass and the mountains that go every which way keep the numbers down on how many tornadoes they get. Plus, a majority of those countries that constitute Asia don’t report things like we do,” he said sadly thinking about how much data was lost in third world countr
ies that could help them predict things even better to save more people.

  “Hey, didn’t I hear they measure tornadoes or something with a Fuji something?” someone threw out there.

  One of the girls from Bob’s group answered this time. Ellen thought her name was Laurie. “It’s called the ‘Enhanced Fujita Scale,’” she said using quotation marks with her fingers. “They measure it by wind speed and how much damage it creates in his path. You can have an EF0 to an EF5.”

  “How big were the two that hit Oakley?” a voice asked.

  The kids shrugged. No one knew yet as they were all too busy trying to recover and save people right now but it would be their mission to find out now.

  How fast does a tornado have to be to register an F0?”

  “Upwards to 250 mph,” was the answer.

  “Anyone know why we get them all summer long?”

  “It’s the right temperatures that cause them,” Bob answered. “You can get them year round with the right conditions.”

  “Yeah, but they seem to happen later in the day,” someone argued.

  “Yeah, but that’s when the hot day is cooling off for evening. You can still have them at night though and not just in the day.”

  “I’ve never heard of a tornado happening in the morning.”

  “There was a tornado in 1936 that happened at like 8 or 8:30 in the morning once,” Laurie put in.

  “I bet we get the most tornadoes anywhere,” someone put in with pride, meaning Oklahoma.

  “Nope, you’d be wrong,” Laurie told him. “Florida actually has more. Statistically speaking. But they also get waterspouts and I’m sure they count those as well.”

  “I’m moving to a state that doesn’t have ‘em,” someone said bitterly.

  “Every state can get them. Every state has had one,” one of Bob’s friends corrected the misinformation.

  “I used to think they only happened out in the country,” someone said miserably. They were wrapped in a thin blanket despite the heat.

  “Naw, they can hit anywhere. Few years back there was one that hit New York City,” the conversation went on.

  Ellen answered a few questions about the help she would be willing to give. The RV’s were still being driven in and had been all day long as well as the supplies. Her people had been busy handing out things and making sure no one was being greedy or hoarding. Already the scavengers had begun to come through Oakley to see if they could profit from other’s misfortunes.

  Mr. Mann had been found, amazing unhurt but shaken up, he had been blown blocks away from where his office had stood, and he and his Mrs. were in an RV not too far from Ellen and Rae’s.

  Ellen had let the Major ‘take charge’ on some things to help her people from accidentally stepping on too many governmental toes. Some of the calls she had made had bulldozers, tractors, and other heavy machinery coming in behind the governmental ones to help clear Main Street and begin to assess damage. They wouldn’t start anything until enough time had gone by to find missing persons.

  “We can waive certain building permits but these places have to be sound,” Ellen had argued. “We can start building next week,” she insisted. People wanted immediate action and she knew they wouldn’t be patient. She wasn’t coordinating everything herself but she was making it possible for people to help. Her farm and the crops that were on the land were being turned under as the many people in the RVs began to live out of them. Water was being trucked in, and the electric company was putting in emergency lines to power and recharge the many RVs parked there. Waste was going to be a problem but Rae found RV parks that used big sanitation vehicles and contracted with the companies to empty out the dump tanks.

  They were there for two weeks, living in the RV, helping many people around town but Ellen had to get back. Her teams she paid to stay for another two weeks before they were expected to be back in Silicon Valley and back at work. It was on a purely voluntarily basis those that stayed. Only one employee flew back on the private plane and that was because her mother was ill back in California. Everyone was changed by the experience.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NEXT

  “I saw a side of you I have never seen before,” Rae told Ellen amazed as they settled into the private plane.

  Ellen shrugged dismissively as she put away her cell-phone. She had just ordered 100 oak trees to be delivered and planted on Main Street in Oakley. They were pretty large trees and very expensive. It would take less time for these bigger trees to mature and give the community a sense of pride in them.

  “I thought you were going to cut off that Mayor’s nuts when he started making ‘suggestions’ in the form of ‘demands,’” she laughed.

  “Well, I did what I could and I hope the donations that came in from the publicity will help everyone,” she answered.

  Rae had been amazed at the amount of work Ellen herself had been willing to do, not just writing checks but physically helping out people. She and others organized a door to door clean-up of lots so that the builders that Ellen had contracted with could come in and begin building. Since the building inspectors were helping, again asked by Ellen specifically, a lot of the rules and regulations were being bent a bit. Instead of waiting on paperwork the people that had to do the inspecting were there, on site, to make sure it was being done right, and for several houses at a time. Many times they chipped in to help, seeing the mass of people helping out their neighbors. Truckloads of ready-made houses began to arrive after the first week. Walls, windows, and doors already to be put up on the basements and foundations that were being revealed. The community was coming together to build each other’s homes, one by one. It was a sight to see and Ellen and her people planned daily in order to coordinate what they could. The television stations were going wild with the publicity. Ellen had challenged each of the stations into bringing their own people in to help for ‘just’ a day, film it, and then see what the whole story was about. Several had responded and hundreds more of volunteers had arrived to ‘help’ not only in Oakley but the surrounding communities. Ellen had turned it into an ‘American’ patriotic thing instead of a Gigitech or Animated Studios thing. All the businesses who donated people and materials were featured prominently with the television stations, free publicity, but most of all…community.

  The town would take months to rebuild, years really. The camaraderie and sense of community that had sprung up in this, their worst hours, would last a lifetime. Ellen and her team and the hundreds of volunteers who had responded could be proud of what they had done, what they had started. The ‘Pay it Forward’ initiative was taking hold, a grass roots effort started in Oakley was spreading and people were responding. With the help of the students and the television stations it had become an internet phenomenon.

  “Are you sorry to be going home?” Rae asked her with a smile. They were both exhausted from the two weeks. Each day they had thrown themselves into helping out as much as they possibly could. Each evening they celebrated that they were alive and joined in the impromptu cookouts that seemed to pop up all over the RV village where they lived. Their nights were for each other, as they filled themselves with the love they were sharing. Rae didn’t know for certain if it was because of the sultry air here in Oklahoma or not. But there was no way she was going to look a gift horse in the mouth either. She was enjoying sharing this time with Ellen and the nights they spent making love.

  “We did what we could, it’s time for another chapter in our lives,” she said mystically.

  “Do you have plans?” Rae asked surprised.

  “I think I should start a non-profit,” she stated as she put on her seat belt.

  Rae saw her put on the belt and quickly did her own. The employee flying back with them did the same. “And what would that be for?” Rae asked, but she had an inkling after seeing what they had just accomplished in Oakley and the surrounding community.

  “This,” she gestured towards the ground they were taking off fro
m. “Just what we did here. Have people ready to fly in at a moment’s notice following a natural disaster. They would help the National Guard, FEMA, whomever and since they aren’t bound by the red tape those organizations are, they would not get bogged down and can offer help quicker.”

  “You’ve got to admit that you might have lost going up against the Governor and the National Guard,” Rae pointed out then gulped; the plane had done that little thing to her stomach as they left the ground.

  Ellen smiled, she’d experienced something of the same sensation but she’d been prepared for it. Her chair wasn’t backwards and she had been glancing out the window so she knew it was coming. “Yeah, I know we butted heads. But somehow this sort of thing has to be quicker,” she said smacking the arm of her chair. “It was so frustrating watching some of the crap they made people go through. Prove who they are when their identification has been lost in the disaster. Prove that they owned their home when all their important papers were lost too?” She shook her head at the bureaucracy of it all.

  “There is only so much you can do,” Rae reminded her.

  “We’ll see about that,” Ellen replied.

  They changed the subject as they flew west towards Silicon Valley. Ellen was eager to get back to work. She had plans and they included Rae but she wasn’t so certain she should bring them up until they were more concrete.

  * * * * *

  A small limo was waiting for them on the tarmac as they flew into the Mineta San Jose Airport. Their baggage was quickly loaded and the three of them ensconced in the back.

  “Let’s take her home first,” Ellen told the driver nodding to her employee Joy Macknamara who had flown with them.

  Joy leaned forward to give the driver her address and a few directions.

  The three of them didn’t talk much, but Joy hadn’t contributed too much to the couple’s conversation on the flight. She was too worried about her mother that she came home to take care of.