He
liked to go to Baker’s. Jack Raymond, the salesman/manager grew up on a farm
and knew most of the farmers for a hundred miles around. He dressed in jeans
and well-worn chambray shirts. He looked and acted like the farmers that came
in - some for parts and some just for friendly conversation. Jack always had a
pot of coffee, a box of donuts, and a half dozen wooden chairs set up. There
were different men every time Karl went in there. They were all equally
friendly and ready to offer advice on everything from politics to futures
prices on soy beans to how to clean dirt out of a fuel injector. It was Jack
who set the tone. Other places were all business. Jack believed that good
friends make lasting customers.
Karl
wasn’t an Arkansan. That was obvious as soon as he uttered his first sentence.
He did have black grease under his finger nails and dirt on his work shoes.
Those were his badges of admission to the fraternity of men who work from sun
up to sun down ‘toiling the ground, with thorns and thistles tearing their
flesh and sweat covering their faces in order to eat their daily bread.’ (with
apologies to Genesis 3) They warmly accepted him and his visits there always
gave his spirit a lift.
After
a donut and a cup of coffee, Karl walked over to the Parts Department and
started going down his list. He would buy all the parts on his list that Baker
had in stock. For the ones that Baker didn’t stock, he would try Greenway
Equipment and the Ford garage. Any parts they didn’t have, he would come back
to Baker to order.
He
started carrying the parts out to his truck. The ground started shaking, then
heaving. He ran around the truck putting it between him and the building. The
other men including Jack Raymond, Shorty the Parts man, “Snuffy” Smith, Harry
Davenport, and “Slim” Sam Walters came running out of the building and took
shelter behind equipment parked on the lot. They saw a car go skittering off of
the Interstate. The town sounded like it was being bombed. There were crashing
sounds, heavy thuds, sounds of explosions. The sky soon filled with dust,
smoke, and flames. Meanwhile, the ground continued to rumble like an unhappy
stomach. Occasionally, it would heave up like it was vomiting.
Karl
thought of his family. Dana was alone at their trailer. Would someone look out
for her? Would the earthquake be this bad there? What about Mary? She was going
to the beauty salon in Luxora. Did she make it to there? How bad was the
earthquake in Luxora? Would she be able to get back to Victoria? He was worried
for them, more than he was scared for himself.
So
far his truck had not been damaged, but would the roads be closed? He was glad
that he had filled up the gas tank in his truck. Undoubtedly gasoline would be
in short supply. The pumps at the gasoline stations run by electricity and the
electricity would be off after this quake. In the bed of his truck was a large
tank of diesel fuel which he used to refuel the farm equipment out in the
field. After what seemed to be an eternity, but probably was ten or fifteen
minutes, the shaking and rumbling subsided,
the
men stood up, looked around, and tried to assess the situation. Down the street
about a block or so they could see the street was blocked by the debris of a
collapsed building. The stretch of interstate highway which they could see had
a huge crack and the road way had shifted several feet on one side of the
crack.
While
they were standing there staring, they heard a shout.
“Hey,
you men, I need to talk to you.”
A
man in the uniform of Arkansas State Police walked toward them.
“I
need the help of all of you, if you are willing. Our first priority is to clear
a roadway from the hospital to the airport. I don’t know how much damage was
done to the hospital. Even if it has not been damaged at all, it will not be
able to handle the large number of casualties that we will have. We have to be
able to get casualties to the airport so that we can fly them to cities
unaffected by the earthquake. Our second priority is to find someplace suitable
for a shelter for those who, like yourselves, are not injured but have no home
to return to or cannot return. Will you volunteer?”
Karl
and the rest of the men quickly agreed to help.
“All right. You know
where the hospital is located and you know where the airport is located. Fire
up some of this equipment and make a road. If anyone questions what you are
doing, tell them that you are working under the authority of the Governor’s
state of emergency proclamation. My name is Corporal Hennessy. This is my
card.”
The men huddled. Karl
and another man were chosen to operate the bulldozer and backhoe. Another man
would drive the dump truck. The others would work on foot with picks and
shovels. They soon found out that the task was much more complex than just
plowing through rubble and clearing a path for ambulances. They came upon
several cars in the middle of the road, engines running, and the drivers in shock,
staring straight ahead. There were cars covered in rubble. The men with picks
and shovels had to determine if anyone was in the vehicle before Karl shoved it
out of the way with the bulldozer.
They worked feverishly,
knowing that the hospital needed some way for casualties to be flown to other
hospitals and also for casualties to be brought to them. Even if they were
being carried on stretchers, there had to be a clear road to the hospital. By
three o’clock they had opened the road from Baker’s to the hospital. At the
hospital they asked for some food and water. Together with the hospital
personnel they planned the route they would open to the airport.
This time they took a
nurse and an aide with them to treat casualties that they found or encountered
while they were clearing the road. The nurse carried a walkie talkie and
several times called for an ambulance to come for persons found by them.
They reached the
airport at seven o’clock. They agreed that it would not be safe to work in the
dark. In addition to the dump truck, they had brought Karl’s truck because it
had a tank of diesel. That was how they refueled the bulldozer and backhoe when
necessary. Karl took his truck to the hospital and brought back food for them
all. After eating, they all went to sleep in the chairs in the airport lounge.
The next morning they
were awakened by planes coming into the airport. The planes brought in
emergency supplies that had been packed onto pallets a year or more ago.
Disaster response specialists had calculated what supplies and what quantity
would be needed in case of a natural disaster in a town the size of
Blytheville.
They
all piled into Karl’s truck and went back to the hospital. There they met the
emergency services coordinator, Mr. Henry. He thanked them for their help. Jack
Raymond spoke up,
“Mr.
Henry, we need to know what you want us to do today. First we need some
breakfast and some coffee. Then, if you are setting up a shelter, we will need
some place to sleep tonight. None of us can get back to our farms. Last night
we slept sitting up in the plastic lounge chairs at the airport.”
“The
first thing that I need for you to do is to clear a road to the fire house,
where our disaster supplies and radios are stored. Then open the road to the high school gymnasium.
I understand that it was not damaged. When we can get to the gymnasium, we will
set up an emergency shelter there. Those planes will have cots, blankets, clean
clothes, water, and food for the emergency shelter. It will have supplies of
medicine and bandages for the hospital and emergency medical technicians and
paramedics. It will even have all terrain vehicles to use in search and
rescue.”
Karl
asked, “What about diesel fuel? The tank on the back of my truck will be empty
by noon.”
“There
will be heavy-duty generators on the planes. We will choose a gasoline station
near the hospital and fire station. We will put a generator there so that we
can pump gasoline and diesel for vehicles doing disaster work. When the fuel at
that station is gone, we will move on to another. Of course, the tanks or pumps
at some of the stations will be damaged.
“Before
you leave, I want you to give me your names and Social Security numbers. Sooner
or later the State of Arkansas will get around to paying you for your work.
More importantly, if you are hurt while doing this disaster work, your own
insurance may not cover it, but the State will.”
The
men worked all day clearing streets and making them passable. They cleared the
road to the fire station and the street to the high school. After that they
began to clear the main arteries one at a time. When they were clearing a road,
they would often pile the debris on someone’s yard. On more than one occasion,
someone would come running out of their apparently undamaged house and would
start screaming at them to stop piling rocks and cement chunks on their yard.
Time
was running out to find survivors and be able to save them. This was the second
day since the earthquake. In every block of every street they were coming
across survivors. Some were injured and needed care. Others had been cut off by
the blocked streets and were disoriented. They were without food and water.
Jack Raymond now had a walkie talkie. He would call for a rescue team to come
for the person or persons they found.
Their
task was to open as many of the main streets of Blytheville as possible.
Already there were search teams using all terrain vehicles. When they found a
person or a family, they also would call for a rescue team. They had never been
trained for this work, but the band of men from the Baker’s coffee klatch was
doing a terrific job.
That
night Karl found Mr. Henry.
“Mr.
Henry, how are we going to be able to find our families?”
“I
won’t lie to you. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. Right now we are in
the search and rescue phase. When authorities decide that there has been a
length of time that it isn’t reasonable to expect survivors, we will go into
the recovery stage. We will be looking for bodies and trying to identify them.
“At
some point the Red Cross will become involved. They will make a list of the
survivors here. They will make similar lists in other towns. They will make a
list of earthquake casualties in each hospital. From these lists eventually
family members find one another. It isn’t easy and it isn’t quick.”
Karl
found a place outside where he could be alone. He put his head in his hands and
wept.
“Mary,
Mary, Dana. Where are you? Will I ever see you again?”
Just
then he heard metal banging against metal. He ran to his truck. There was a man
grabbing fistsfuls of wrenches from his truck bed tool box. The man was someone
they had rescued from a caved in storm drain.
“What
are you doing?”
The
wrenches dropped to the ground with a clatter and the man ran off. Karl picked
them up, opened his truck door and put them behind the seat. Then he got the
rest of his tools and put them behind his seat. He remembered seeing on the
news during the aftermath of Katrina that crime was rife in the sports stadium
that was being used as an emergency shelter.
That
evening they passed out clean underwear and socks. They were assigned to groups
to take showers in portable showers set up outside. Karl put his wallet, keys
and watch in a bandana and carried it into the shower room and left it on a
bench where he could see it from the shower. That night he slept with this
bundle under his pillow. The next morning he was able to shave for the first
time in several days. Normalcy was returning with grudging slowness.
Mr.
Henry called a meeting of everyone staying in the shelter.
“We
will be asking each of you to give us your names, your age, your addresses, and
other family members who lived with you at that address. As the aircrafts begin
to have space for others besides the casualties, you are going to be moved to
shelters in cities not affected by the earthquake. The infrastructure in Blytheville is
destroyed. The roads, water, and sewer systems, the electricity, the
telephones, natural gas lines are all damaged or destroyed. They will all have
to be rebuilt before the town will be habitable once more. People who lived in
New Orleans had the same experience and now they have moved back.
“Give
the clerks your information and then when we have space available on a plane,
we will call your names and transport you to the airport. Women and children
will go first along with their husbands, if they are together here.”
That
last sentence by Mr. Henry caused a number of the women to start crying. Most
of the husbands had not been with their families when the earthquake occurred.
They had been at work. Whether they had survived or not was unknown. Most of
the people in the shelter had one or more family member about whom that they
did not know the fate or whereabouts.
Mr.
Henry came to Jack Raymond and the Baker’s Coffee Klatch crew.
“I’ll
be asking you men to plan on staying here. There are a lot more streets to
clear. As you clear streets it makes it easier for the search and rescue teams
to get in. In a couple days they will move into the recovery phase. We will
need heavy equipment for all of that.”
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