Hurricane seasons remind me why I mostly write here on a blog about politics and various other topics less given to blood and death.
Now during my first couple of years freelancing I happened to make a fair amount of money writing about the evacuations and aftermath of hurricanes for a large U.S. metro newspaper. I wrote a little about the Katrina evacuation but fortunately I didn’t get too involved in the sad carnage of that storm. Mostly I wrote about damage and about people starting over in the wake of hurricanes Rita and Ike.
Back to the season itself and its influence on my writing I think back to almost 33 years ago when I worked as a firefighter. I was working on a Saturday evening during a time that bumper-to-bumper traffic filled our local roadways, some 140 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, as coastal folks tried to outrun the storm.
My assignment at that station on that particular day was to ride the first-in pumper as well as driving the monster Gerstenslager panel rescue truck. It took some doing and a patient co-worker to teach me, but I finally learned how to drive the truck which like most of the other trucks we used operated with a 10-speed, high-low transmission. And to say the rescue truck was top heavy would be a great understatement.
Sometime that evening, oh say around 8 p.m. or so, we received a call from the police department hotline that we had a wreck out on the West Loop with fire and people trapped. My station officer, Tommy, and I jumped in our bunker clothes like it was our second skin and lit out in the old rescue truck. A fire engine was always on the scene of a rescue due to the likelihood, as was the case this evening, of a fire. The engine from 3 Station would be on the scene in probably two minutes after receiving the alarm.
This may have been the first time I drove a fire apparatus “hot” or “10-33,” meaning we were running in an emergency mode with lights and sirens activated. I remembered my emergency driving class from both rookie school and in my EMT course. The overriding theme was: “Look at the big picture.” I still try to do that while driving. The state trooper who taught both courses, this was a small town after all, said he never used emergency lights or siren because “no one ever paid attention.” But our policy was to use lights and sirens, even our big, door-mounted spotlight. Our training officer in fire academy taught us that spotlight was a good way to get driver’s attention. I flashed it from one side of the road to another as I was driving. I would later find the spotlight was a good mechanism for those cars with drivers who failed to notice a big red truck with lights blazing and sirens roaring. You flash that big light in their rear-view mirror and the car in front of you would pretty much always see you. Now whether the driver would pull over to the right as required by law, or they would pull to the left, or even stop right in front of you, was the big question. I had all of that happen to me at some time driving an emergency vehicle.
The 3 Engine had the fire out by the time we arrived on the scene. We had to battle thick hurricane evacuation traffic to get there, but we finally pulled up to where a Ford Pinto was cremated from the front seat back. As had been known to happen, and I knew well about this even though my first car five years before was a Pinto, a car rear-ended the Pinto causing the exposed gas tank under the car to rupture and erupt into flames.
Most noticeable when I surveyed the scene was a solid-black figure sitting upright in the back seat. Police on the scene told us the Pinto had been rear-ended in the stop-and-go traffic and when the car caught fire the two front-seat occupants were able to dive out the door windows. The young man who was the lone back seat occupant, about 18 or 19 years old, wasn’t so fortunate. He left our rescue task as, what they call today, a recovery.
There was plenty to busy me still while trying to wrap my mind around the fact a burned-up, dead body was in the car. I helped Tommy set up the Jaws of Life that our firefighter’s union had recently purchased. Tommy then let me pop open the driver’s side door so we could recover the body. There was, up close and personal, the body.
This had probably been the first human body I had ever seen that had died from something other than natural death. I can testify that the sight of a corpse charred is like no other one can imagine. They say you never forget the smell. I guess because I smoked cigarettes back then that smell was one of my least senses. Emergency workers are known for their black humor to help fight off the horror of what one sees and has to process in their minds. The victims are “crispy critters” or “barbecues” or “extra well done.” The families of victims would probably sue or try to have someone fired if they ever heard this, and they would be right to do so because this is something among those like us. It is called trying to cope.
I donned gloves and helped load the victim in a body bag and placed it in a hearse that soon showed up. I know larger cities have coroners who take care of such matters, but in smaller towns the funeral home comes out. The funeral director shows up in his dark, three-piece suit no matter what time of day. I used to think: “Jeez, what a well-dressed guy for such a glum occcasion.”
When we got back to the station, the guys knew or figured at least, that this was my first barbecue. The jokes then began. Tommy said: “Yeah, I got up there in the middle of it all and had my picture made with him,” talking about the body. Tom, the assistant chief, showed up. I don’t know the kind of horrors he had seen before becoming a firefighter. He was a Marine in the Pacific Islands in World War II and he had seen a lot. He gave me a meek, almost embarrassed smile and said: “Son, you got to laugh about these things.”
That body, all crisp with no real human resemblance — not to be cruel but it reminded me of a possum a bunch of us kids tried to cook one night on a camping trip and it just turned into burned animal — stayed with me in my sleep at night for several nights. Then it went away.
It would not be the first burned body I would see. I would view and help load into those black body bags a few more burned corpses during my five years as a firefighter. When I worked as a reporter I saw several more barbecues, not to mention shooting victims. In fact, I finally told my editor that I needed a change of scenery in the way of news beats. The last gruesome scene I came across as police reporter was just a bit too graphic.
A couple of Mexican nationals had gone to buy some beer and when they left the store, the driver took off a little too fast. The car he drove flew up on top of a pipe fence at a Central Texas ranch and the vehicle rode the top rail for a good 50 or so feet. When the car reached a weld in the pipe, the fence collapsed as did the car. The passenger was thrown clear of the wreck and survived. The driver was left another nightmare for me even though I never recalled dreaming about it.
The justice of the peace — our version of coroners in Texas but this one had quite the experience as he was one of the JPs at the scene of the Branch Davidian blaze — and I surveyed the body in the car. The judge figured out that when the pipe broke, it came through the car and skewered the driver, pushing the corpse back into the gas tank where the car burst into flames.
A co-worker back at the office later asked me about how the victim looked. I said: “He didn’t look very good.”
What travels through my mind at night while I am asleep, I really don’t know. Most of my dreams are trivial. Every once in awhile I will dream something bizarre, even somewhat scary even though I am not really afraid. It’s like this morning I dreamed of a creature that looked as a cross between a gila monster and a wolverine. It was very unfriendly, but only to the dog that was around us. It finally melted once I tossed water on it, like the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”
No harm, no foul. No chickens, no fowl. I know that sounds like malarkey, and it is. Sometimes it just best to let sleeping corpses lie.
