Oh, my God
Then her rearview mirror flashed with wig-wagging emergency lights as she heard the siren of an ambulance, no, three ambulances, coming fast behind her in the emergency lane, followed by an SUV painted with the colorful logo of a radio news station.
Kates traffic line was inching along. She had to get to the scene.
She bit her bottom lip and made a decision.
When the radio news truck passed, she wheeled her car into the emergency lane and followed it. She traveled for about a quarter mile before reaching a roadblock at a U-turn. Several marked police cars were parked there. Officers were turning traffic around to the lanes moving northbound.
Sheriffs deputies waived the ambulances and news truck through southbound, but a big trooper in a raincoat stepped in front of Kates car, pointed at her, commanding her to stop. Then he leaned into her window.
You cant go any farther, miss. This lane is for emergency vehicles only. We need you to go through the U-turn and head back.
I know, but Im with the press and you just let that radio news guy through.
As the trooper hesitated Kate noticed officers at the patrol cars nearby contending with six or seven anguished people. They were demanding to be allowed through the roadblock. My father and mother are therebut we cant reach them on their phoneplease let us by-
Kates trooper glanced at the group, then, as he returned his gaze to her, she said, I have a job to do, too.
Who are you with? Do you have some ID?
Newslead. Kate fumbled for her plastic photo ID and chain, showing it to him. Our stories go across the country and around the world.
He studied her ID long enough for her to notice he had blue eyes and rainwater webbing down his jawline.
All right. He nodded. Ill let you through, but when you get to the next point, park to the side. We need the lanes clear for emergency crews.
Thank you.
Dont thank me, he said.
Excuse me?
Ive seen a lot in my time, but nothing like what happened down there. Brace yourself.
5
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Tense from the troopers warning, Kate drove beyond the roadblock.
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as she navigated around the chunks of plastic, metal and garbage scattered over the two empty southbound lanes. About a hundred yards in, the freeway dipped with a gentle slope, giving her a sweeping view of what used to be the Old Southern Glory Flea Market.
Oh my God!
For as far as she could see, the landscape was a graveyard of crushed cars and trucks, punctuated with the ghostly pronglike remnants of trees jutting from a sea of debris.
Small fires flickered amid the destruction.
It looks like a gate to hell.
Ahead, Kate saw the long line of ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and emergency crew vehicles, their lights flashing. She parked between a fire truck and a TV news van. The rain had stopped. She was dressed in fitted jeans and a belted top, but her flat leather shoes wouldnt do. Metal, wood and glass covered the ground. She got a pair of old hiking boots and woolen socks she kept in the trunk, put them on quickly and tied the laces tight. She pulled on her rain jacket, grabbed her phone and tried to call Chuck. Nothing happened. She tried texting. It didnt work. No service. The cell towers must be down. Damn. She tested her phones camera. It worked. She tested the keyboard, created a file called Storm-1. Okay, she could still write and take pictures.
She gathered her spare phone battery, notebook and pens, slipped the chain with her press ID over her neck and recalled Chucks orders.
Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.
Her pulse quickened as she rushed into the chaos. Rounding a heap of splintered lumber and smashed Sheetrock, she stopped in her tracks at the scene before her.
With a funereal air, two firefighters were placing a yellow tarp over the bodies of four dead people: two adult men and two adult women, side by side on the ground, in a neat row. Nearly stripped of their clothes, their battered bodies were blood soaked. One of the women was missing a foot. One of the men had a shard of glass sticking out of his stomach. Not far off, she saw another yellow tarp on the ground with three more pairs of feet extending from it. Two of the pairs belonged to children.
Kate steadied herself on a picnic table until she found her composure.
She offered a silent prayer for the dead, then thought of her daughter in Ohio, wishing she could be with her now. After blinking back her tears, Kate opened her notebook, made notes and moved on.
I have to do this.
Everywhere, people staggered in wide-eyed shock, shouting names of loved ones at the debris.
Kate came upon an overturned car with a metal signpost rammed through the windshield. The car had a large white X sprayed on it. Two women sat on the ground next to it draped in a tattered blanket. They were on the road but much of the asphalt near them had been peeled away.
She lowered herself and sat with them.
Hi, Im Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. May I talk to you?
The women were in their twenties, their faces were scraped and their eyes were tearful. One of them gave a little nod.
Can you tell me where you were when the storm hit and what happened? Kate asked.
The first woman had short blond hair. She looked at the horizon as if the tragedy were replaying there and trembled as she spoke.
My sister and I were stuck in the traffic, trying to get out, when we saw it coming-the hail, everything going black. Things started hitting the car.
Lawn chairs, tables, steel poles, the second woman added.
I thought we were going to die, the blonde woman said. We heard this roaring, like ten freight trains. The ground shook and this pressure came, this huge pressure, like something trying to crush us. Our windows shattered. We could hear the metal of our car literally crumpling.
We just hugged each other and prayed, the second woman said.
The blonde woman said: Then the car rocked back and forth and the tornado picked it up. We spun and flew for about fifteen seconds then it dropped us and the air bags popped. We were upside down I screamed for my sister. But we were alive, thank God. People pulled us out. Our legs and shoulders hurt but were all rightbut other folks- The woman stared at the sky like she no longer trusted it. Others werent so lucky.
Kate steeled herself, offered words of empathy, moved on and talked to more survivors. All the while her deadline was ticking down. She needed to find the Saddle Up Center, get official comment from the scene, write up what she had and find a way to get her story to the bureau.
Everywhere people were calling for help.
Rescuers worked to pull people out of the rubble. They used their hands, pipes, pieces of wood, whatever they could as emergency radios blared. The air smelled of churned earth, fresh-cut lumber and desperation.
Helicopters thumped far off overhead, paramedics moved out the injured on gurneys, others used doors or sheets of plywood as makeshift stretchers while volunteers held IV bags.
Kate saw several firefighters huddled at a table, talking on radios, poring over rolled-out maps. She identified herself and asked for a status report from the most senior member of the group, Station 9 Captain Vern Hamby.
We dont have a lot to report right now.
Can you give me what you know, please, Captain?
His weary face creased with experience and concern when he yielded and gave Kate an on-the-record summary.
Weve got a significant number of casualties. The dead could be in the hundreds, or higher.
Kate wrote as he spoke.
Weve been told it was an EF5 tornado. Thats the strongest on the scale, with winds in the 260 to 300 miles per hour range. On a day like today, there might be upward of three thousand visitors to the market. The grounds offer little shelter.
Kate absorbed the information.
Our priority is to rescue people in the rubble, the captain said. Weve got spot fires from ruptured gas lines, blown transformers. Its treacherous. Weve got apparatus coming in from all over the region. Were setting up triage units, shelters, missing-persons centers and morgues, some on-site. See the flags? Others will be near schools and community halls. Weve got reports that a number of tornadoes touched down in the Metroplex, across Texas and in other states.
Hambys radio burst with cross talk. He had to go. Kate walked with him, posing her last questions.
The Xs on the vehicles? She nodded to a van with X3 sprayed on the side. It means you looked at them, right?
An X means no one inside, an X with a number, tells you how many confirmed dead inside and that you should move on to help those you can help.
Kate cast a sad glance at the van. A hand was protruding from a door frame.
Which way to the Saddle Up Center? she asked.
The Saddle Up? Hamby shook his head slowly. A lot of casualties there. He spoke into his radios shoulder microphone. After a static-filled response, the captain stopped and pointed Kates attention to a distant landmark. See that car that looks like its standing on its rear bumper against that pole down there, like a rocket ready to launch?
Kate nodded.
Its way down there.
Making her way to the center took time.
Kate stepped slowly through the remains of a destroyed building, taking care because pink insulation hid the jagged sections of the broken wooden walls. Midway, a hand seized her ankle.
Help me!
Kate had almost stepped on a woman entangled in the ruins. Dirt and glass fragments were embedded in the womans face. Kate got her free and into a sitting position. The woman was holding a cloth to the blood oozing from her leg.
Let me have a look. Kate lifted the blood-drenched rag.
The womans lower left calf had a twelve-inch gash to the bone. The woman was losing blood. Kates first aid was rusty, but she knew they had to clean that wound and get pressure on it to stem the bleeding. She pressed the womans hand back on the cloth.
Hold it down firm.
Kate looked around, called for paramedics, for firefighters, but none were near. Nothing that looked clean, no fabric, nothing was at hand. Kate removed her shirts belt, then cut the bottom of her shirt against a broken window and tore long strips from it. She used her shirt to treat the wound then wrapped the clean strips around it and used her belt for pressure.