The VIC II
Highway 30 going South on Dec 31..a-headin for the VIC…… Most mornings it is easier to let your brain get slowly in gear so you notice the imagery of the countryside again as I headed in for a half day…YAY.. so a half a day off and some time relaxing. The day looked ominous from the very beginning, not raining yet, but the air so thick with grey water you could almost reach out and wring a glass full out of a passing fog bank. Awesome smells in this world, and driving a late December morning with the windows down always is an odorous way to get to work. I mostly remember being happy, reflecting on one of the best years of my life and letting the miles roll by and sipping some of CCs’ finest black coffee.
Blackwater security stopped me at the first of the security gates and examined my badge. The exchange was always the same: “Morning!! “
“Good Morning Sir” says the guard, reading my badge for an expiration date. It is not fair, they carefully read my badge and know my name “Have a good Day Mr Morse” but I have no clue who they are. Should I have asked?
“Gonna rain a gusher boys…. Better get those ponchos on for later!!” I threw out the window and head for the second checkpoint. I wonder how much inane banter like this these guys had to put up with every day of the world. The inner guard positions had a single man standing in the middle of the road.
“When will you be leaving the facility today Mr Morse?” asked the guard
“As Early as I possibly can “ I threw back “Maybe as early as ten o’clock!!”
“Good Luck then, we are going on skeleton staff after the morgue shuts down at noon today.” He said as I drifted forward towards my parking spot.
Holidays on these disasters are pretty bleak. Those that can head home early or cycle out are gone already. We are officially open but everyone is just trying to finish what is on their plate, there are serious plans for large groups to head for New Orleans as early as possible to bring in the new year in style in the crippled city. I knew I had to stay till the last one quit and then start the data backup on my server which had been being balky lately (stupid Microsoft backup software anyway).
I refreshed my coffee and made the rounds, trying to see who was going to be the dweeb that kept us all late today. The groups in IR and Dental were truly working as usual, the state people were nowhere to be seen and it appeared I was the lone representative of FEMA in the front office.
The building was built very oddly, covered in the same roofing material that the roof of DIA in Denver was made from, the whole thing looked like a blimp hanger, a 400 foot white blimp hanger. 250 yards to the North, a similar but shorter version of the same building housed the actual morgue. There were hundreds of trailers standing silent sentry inside a second fence around the back and sides of the morgue extending along the northern fence, neatly arranged and parked with military precision. The office building had the FEMA portion so completely separated from the rest of the facility that you have to leave the building to get to other parts. The DMORT/State section was next followed by warehouse, then overflow sleeping then the entertainment section with couches and tvs and washers and dryers and gym equipment and then the kitchen/dining area. Beyond the end of the building and on the west side of the compound were the dorms, co-ed with everyone having a room but with bathroom facilities for each gender and a kind of break room with a fridge and a microwave.
I stopped at trailer management and spoke to Don there, he looked hung over and not too cheerful. “What are you looking so pissed about?” I asked him.
“Oh No one can find Mudflap this morning and he was supposed to update the trailer rosters last night and now we have to go re-count a half a dozen units before we can get out of here” Don grumbled. I smiled on the inside, what the heck, you pop open a door, walk down an isle, read metal tags and write down half a dozen numbers, you are done, how bad can that be.
“Happy New Year Don!!” I said over my shoulder, determined not to let this guy get into my good mood. I heard the outer door slam behind me and went on back to my little hole of a place in IT.
ÛÛÛ¿ÛÛÛÞJ
By 10:30 the last of the partiers had departed for New Orleans, the last three of the working groups were shutting down and the VIC was reduced to 22 living humans. I was standing at the double glass door that overlooks the morgue as Julia came in from the morgue. “Just Blackwater left over there Steve” she said brightly. “Time to wrap it up” and brushed past me toward the IR offices she normally worked in. Julia was always bright and cheerful, with short brown hair, younger than me (who wasn’t these days) and from the Desert Southwest. I always noticed a big bright smile under a set of small wire rim glasses to start the day.
I continued to look toward the Morgue, as the rain began. The rain in the Gulf Coast South is a fearsome sight. When the fronts roll across it falls in sheets that make it hard to breathe on occasion if you are caught out in it. When those fronts stall, it can pour and blow for hours and when it does.. water backs up everywhere. I saw the Auxiliary generators shut down and the perimeter light trailers kick on throwing a blue cast through the cascading rain. The Booming thunder just KEPT rolling around in the sky and as it passed.. and the quiet returned….. something caught my ear. I stepped out on the sidewalk through the double doors and heard a background rumble that could not be a continuation of the thunder. Between bright flashes and booming thunder blasts, it remained constant, a resonant boom, what I now know to be the pounding in the trailers that attracted the attention of the Blackwater and trailer-management boys. The booming drumming that began the bloodbath at the VIC.
Blackwater security stopped me at the first of the security gates and examined my badge. The exchange was always the same: “Morning!! “
“Good Morning Sir” says the guard, reading my badge for an expiration date. It is not fair, they carefully read my badge and know my name “Have a good Day Mr Morse” but I have no clue who they are. Should I have asked?
“Gonna rain a gusher boys…. Better get those ponchos on for later!!” I threw out the window and head for the second checkpoint. I wonder how much inane banter like this these guys had to put up with every day of the world. The inner guard positions had a single man standing in the middle of the road.
“When will you be leaving the facility today Mr Morse?” asked the guard
“As Early as I possibly can “ I threw back “Maybe as early as ten o’clock!!”
“Good Luck then, we are going on skeleton staff after the morgue shuts down at noon today.” He said as I drifted forward towards my parking spot.
Holidays on these disasters are pretty bleak. Those that can head home early or cycle out are gone already. We are officially open but everyone is just trying to finish what is on their plate, there are serious plans for large groups to head for New Orleans as early as possible to bring in the new year in style in the crippled city. I knew I had to stay till the last one quit and then start the data backup on my server which had been being balky lately (stupid Microsoft backup software anyway).
I refreshed my coffee and made the rounds, trying to see who was going to be the dweeb that kept us all late today. The groups in IR and Dental were truly working as usual, the state people were nowhere to be seen and it appeared I was the lone representative of FEMA in the front office.
The building was built very oddly, covered in the same roofing material that the roof of DIA in Denver was made from, the whole thing looked like a blimp hanger, a 400 foot white blimp hanger. 250 yards to the North, a similar but shorter version of the same building housed the actual morgue. There were hundreds of trailers standing silent sentry inside a second fence around the back and sides of the morgue extending along the northern fence, neatly arranged and parked with military precision. The office building had the FEMA portion so completely separated from the rest of the facility that you have to leave the building to get to other parts. The DMORT/State section was next followed by warehouse, then overflow sleeping then the entertainment section with couches and tvs and washers and dryers and gym equipment and then the kitchen/dining area. Beyond the end of the building and on the west side of the compound were the dorms, co-ed with everyone having a room but with bathroom facilities for each gender and a kind of break room with a fridge and a microwave.
I stopped at trailer management and spoke to Don there, he looked hung over and not too cheerful. “What are you looking so pissed about?” I asked him.
“Oh No one can find Mudflap this morning and he was supposed to update the trailer rosters last night and now we have to go re-count a half a dozen units before we can get out of here” Don grumbled. I smiled on the inside, what the heck, you pop open a door, walk down an isle, read metal tags and write down half a dozen numbers, you are done, how bad can that be.
“Happy New Year Don!!” I said over my shoulder, determined not to let this guy get into my good mood. I heard the outer door slam behind me and went on back to my little hole of a place in IT.
ÛÛÛ¿ÛÛÛÞJ
By 10:30 the last of the partiers had departed for New Orleans, the last three of the working groups were shutting down and the VIC was reduced to 22 living humans. I was standing at the double glass door that overlooks the morgue as Julia came in from the morgue. “Just Blackwater left over there Steve” she said brightly. “Time to wrap it up” and brushed past me toward the IR offices she normally worked in. Julia was always bright and cheerful, with short brown hair, younger than me (who wasn’t these days) and from the Desert Southwest. I always noticed a big bright smile under a set of small wire rim glasses to start the day.
I continued to look toward the Morgue, as the rain began. The rain in the Gulf Coast South is a fearsome sight. When the fronts roll across it falls in sheets that make it hard to breathe on occasion if you are caught out in it. When those fronts stall, it can pour and blow for hours and when it does.. water backs up everywhere. I saw the Auxiliary generators shut down and the perimeter light trailers kick on throwing a blue cast through the cascading rain. The Booming thunder just KEPT rolling around in the sky and as it passed.. and the quiet returned….. something caught my ear. I stepped out on the sidewalk through the double doors and heard a background rumble that could not be a continuation of the thunder. Between bright flashes and booming thunder blasts, it remained constant, a resonant boom, what I now know to be the pounding in the trailers that attracted the attention of the Blackwater and trailer-management boys. The booming drumming that began the bloodbath at the VIC.
posted by Steve Morse- Adventures in Disasters at 5:41 PM
1 Comments:
Miss you steve.
Mysti
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