Winding down...
Under storm watches and warnings last Friday, I waiting, listened, tracked storms, and fell asleep. The blare of the tornado sirens sent me leaping out of bed and diving for my shelter space even as four F-1s hit the neighborhood. The power flashed inside the house and out and everything went dark. The electric-based phone was dead; the land line still worked, and at 12:30 a.m. my publisher emerged from under his steel case desk in his home office and called me.I've got no power and there are trees down everywhere. I could hear the sirens balring.
I know, I replied. Since we were both wide awake, in the dark and journalists at heart, he was at my house in five minutes, time that I used to doff the PJs and jump into waterproof raingear and my Amazon rainproof hat.
For several hours we did night photography and interviews of the damage and the victims. The city's pavilion was shredded and the pieces relocated, one family survived in a mobile home that was rolled across the road and impaled on a tree. The Red Cross was without power, and having recently lost their emergency vehicle to an arsonist, was crawling around their office trying to find supplies and equipment to load into the vehicles of their many volunteers.
being powerless and without shame, we called a partner and drove to his home at 3:30 in the morning to use his computer to upload pictures and write the story. Wow!
Eventually, I crawled back into my own bed for three hours, then got up, called my boss on his cell, and we were off again to repeat the rounds by daylight, talking to distraught homeowners and survivors, and surveying the damage. Another friend went airborne for aerial shots of the wreckage left behind.
I wrote the stories, starting from the first point of impact, moving through one district at a time, sharing the distress, the hope and the outright miracles. Despite it lack of emergency equipment, the Red Cross had delivered over 100 meals to emergency response workers and victims by early Saturday morning and survivors were arriving to see what help they might be able to access.
I am also a certfied weather spotter, and a trained Red Cross volunteer (shelter ops and logistics), and have been since they arrive at my doorstep when our family home burned and displaced six of us (three generations). I watched them work, and remain perpetually amazed at what they do.
Saturday night my publisher and I worked on a gallery of photos (over 100), plus the aerial slideshow, and I wrote my story. And slept well.
My next effort is part of campaign to find funds to replace old charred remains of the Red Cross ERV. Insurance covered little because the vehicle was so old. But considering our agency covers three counties and Fort Campbell military base [in total a geographically huge area], it is a fundraising effort worth doing.
The need for that vehicle was never more evident that during these storms and the aftermath.
Sunday really was a day of rest, but as I look over the weekend I realized again that life is precarious.
I asked myself if I remembered to tell my grandchildren I loved them the last time I saw them (yes), and recalled adding that "I love you" to the last note I wrote my daughter.
And I looked in the mirror and thought: I survived my back injury struggled to walk again and heal; I survived being stranded in South America and the Amazon after 9-11; I escaped a house fire with some burns and my life; I survived a potentially fatal illness just a few months ago...
I'm guess I am not done yet. And no matter how tough things get, they always get better and usually in a way that ultimately allows me to help someone else who has tougher, harder, or more critical needs.
I am not done yet.
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