Hurricane

"Not if it puts your pretty butt in danger," he replied protectively.

"My pretty butt is covered up with foul weather gear," I said. "You can't tell whether it's pretty or has warts all over it."

"It's pretty," he said flatly. "I peeked before you covered it up with all that rain gear."

We both laughed. I was also pleased. Some of that chemistry was still around.

We did half hour updates. By five-thirty we opted to do the updates from inside the van although the noise level from the wind was becoming excessive. Wind speed was up to eighty miles an hour.

For the six o'clock newscast, we went into an interior room of the resort and did wireless video and audio feeds to the van. We set up two spotlights powered from the van. Doug had fed some views of the ocean to the station about fifteen minutes before we went on. The waves were up right at the edge of the dunes, on sea swells and a storm surge of almost twenty feet. The water was boiling. The air was thick with salt spray and debris. He caught a few frames of a roof rolling past the resort from one of the upscale homes nearby.

The feed was spectacular. I watched it later. It was a team effort. Jim was splicing Doug's storm feeds from windows of the resort into my live broadcast. Somewhere along the line I figured that a large portion of the area was without electricity and so missed it. Oh well.

Doug lowered the antenna of the van about the time we figured the wind speed was hitting a hundred. Although it was protected, he was worried about it ripping off the truck.

The eye came ashore at seven o'clock. We were right under it. It was eerie to suddenly feel the wind almost cease. We both went outside and stood. The security guard appeared from somewhere in the bowels of the building too. We stood and looked at the wall of clouds and water; yet above us a few puffy clouds and blue sky.

While the eye was with us, Doug set up the camera and we did a quick five-minute clip back to the station. Jim said there was concern at the station that they'd lose their satellite dishes soon. He'd still be there trying to figure out how to get us on the air.

After we finished I noted that we could look almost vertically up the eye wall, perhaps for 30,000 feet. It was hard to tell. On our side of things the sky was blue and almost serene; the eye wall was a seething dark and malevolent monster waiting to strike.

Doug quickly moved the van to reposition it for the change in wind direction we expected when the eye finished passing. At seven-twenty the eye passed and the storm started again with a vengeance. We ran back in the resort just in time hoping that we could maintain contact with the station through the van's radio link. Even in the interior room we could not only hear the wind screaming at almost a level beyond imagination, but also feel the building shake and twist.

Several windows blew out, and we felt the hot humid storm air penetrate the hotel.

I went and sat close to Doug in a corner of the room. I was scared. "Hold me," I told him.

He smiled at me, "Why that'd be an honor, Pretty Lady." He put his arm around me. It was not the most romantic of circumstances -- I was still in my foul weather gear from head to foot and for that matter so was he. Our lights were off, but we had some light from the hallway doors that we'd left open.

Almost every minute we heard another major crash or something akin to an explosion somewhere around the resort complex as one thing or another blew away or things crashed together.

Then there was a horrible tearing sound above us. Doug said, "There goes the roof on this building. It's peeling off in the wind." He no sooner finished the sentence then we heard a tremendous crash -- almost an explosion of debris right outside the building. We assumed it was the roof hitting the ground.

Almost immediately we felt the wall behind start to give way. A large crack appeared behind me, and we both scrambled towards the adjacent wall. Then the ceiling started to cave in on that side of the building, several light fixtures fell to the floor along with most of the ceiling tiles, and a gale force wind ripped through the room, throwing tables, chairs, and anything that wasn't nailed down, all over the place.

I vaguely recall something hitting my head, and then I lost consciousness. I started to come to and there was Doug kneeling over me with a bloody rag in his hand. I felt really woozy.

"Come on girl," Doug said. "That's it. Welcome back to the real world. You took a really bad hit. Knocked you right out. Here. Can you sit up? You're still bleeding from the gash on your temple, but I think you'll be all right."

"Storm? Broadcast?" I mumbled.

"Van is gone. Went bye-bye in the wind. Got pushed into the other building -- about five feet into the other building. The satellite antenna is gone. When the wind dies down I'll see what I can salvage."

I sat up, a little more alert. "How long was I out?"

"About half an hour," Doug replied, dabbing at my wound. I noticed the rag was what had been his shirt. Without his shirt I could see he had strong ab muscles, a good tan, and a masculine chest. I wanted to touch it - that chemistry again.

"This building?" I asked.

"Demolished," he replied. "The security guard is dead. A concrete wall fell on him. Could have happened to us too if we hadn't moved when we did -- right before you got hit in the head. Nothing I could do but cover him over."

I noted that the wind was still howling outside, but it seemed less intense than just before I passed out.

"Wind speed seems to be dropping," I observed.

"Yeah, it's dropping slowly. The storm is probably going to lose some punch now that the eye is ashore. Plus I think it's shifted north again, that'll help drop the winds a little faster for us. When the speed drops down to about sixty, I'll go out to the van and see whether we have any type of communication with the outside world."

I surveyed the room we were in. Even the wildest party could not have created the kind of devastation that I saw. On the far side of the room, light was visible where the wall had collapsed and then dropped the two upper floors of the condo -- concrete, furniture, and remnants of the roof, into a pile. Rain pelted in the opening, but we were far enough inside against the other side of the condo to stay dry.

Doug had created a small space where he could lay me out and minister to my wound. He'd propped up some of the debris to create a small fortress, but I doubted it was sturdy enough to withstand a further collapse of the upper floors.

"Shouldn't we move?" I pointed upwards.

"As soon as you can stand we should climb out of here. I think if we try to go down that hallway it might be safer. There were no upper floors there." He pointed to a door that was now blocked by debris.

"Give me a minute and I'll be ready," I said as I carefully got up on my knees. I gathered up my raincoat; Doug had used it as a pillow under my head. It had a lot of blood on it.

"Am I still bleeding?" I asked.

"Yes, but not as much as you were initially. Head wounds do that. I should tell you that I was a backup EMT -- Emergency Medical Tech -- in the Navy. I didn't just go around and take pretty pictures."

I finished standing, holding onto Doug. The woozy feeling passed slowly away and I was good at moving slowly as long as I could hold onto something like Doug.

Doug moved towards the door, heaving tables and chairs from my path. At the door, he tried to both pull and push until he could get the door open about a foot. He peered through then said to me, "It's wet and windy but I think it's safer than staying in this wing of the resort."

We both squeezed through the door. What had been a glassed in hallway to the main reception area was now obliterated. The concrete pad of the walkway was in tact, but the glass sides and roof were gone. Some twisted remains of the HVAC ducts lay a few yards away.

"Let's try the reception and lounge area," Doug said.

He helped me along the path, supporting most of my weight as we threaded our way amid the wreckage. Three hundred feet later, we were soaked but safe in the resort's reception area. Windows were gone, but the roof had remained in tact. Further, most of the lounge furniture had survived.

"Sit here," Doug said leading me to a wet sofa. Let me see what shape things are in around here. He went behind the reception desk and was gone for several minutes.

When he came back he announced, "No nothing. Phone service is out completely. The cell tower is out. There's no electricity. But, I have some good news." He smiled and produced two containers of orange juice from his pocket and a dozen peanut butter and cheese crackers.

I laughed and reached for the nosh; "Why, Doug. You take your girlfriends to the nicest places and spare no expense. I am truly impressed."

Doug bowed and sat beside me. We ate and waited for things to quiet down amid the howl of the wind. I nestled into his shoulder and closed my eyes.

I awoke about an hour later. Doug's yellow rain parka was soaked with my blood, but he said I was in good shape. He noted that another section of the building we'd been in had collapsed so it was a good thing we moved. He also noted that the wind speed was now down considerably, and he wanted to go and check out the van.

He made me promise to wait where I was, and he went out through one of the nonexistent windows and headed towards the other building. I stood and went to the opening to watch his progress.

The front of the van was about five feet into a windowed wall of the other section of the resort's condo units. As Doug reached the truck, he clamored in the back door of the unit and slammed it shut behind him.

Five minutes later he reappeared and went around to the cab of the truck and barely got in. With some difficulty, he got the truck started and was able to back the unit out of the hole it had created in the structure. He drove the truck across the well-manicured lawn, leaving deep tire tracks, until he was next to the reception area.

Doug got out of the truck and ran back to where I was.

"Darlin', the truck seems in good shape except for the lack of a satellite antenna and a cracked windshield. If I can find it I might be able to get it working again. In the meantime, we have a radio link. I can hear a lot of emergency traffic talking, but it's all from the downtown area; that's almost twenty miles from here. I don't know whether anyone can hear me. Didn't try all that hard for now."

"I do have one other present for you, though." Doug reached under his parka and produced a first aid kit. Five minutes later my head wound was treated and gauzed over, and my entire head was wrapped to hold the dressing in place.

"OK, I'm ready to do the weather now," I announced as he finished. I stood, primped, and acted as though I was wearing a new Dior suit; I said to him, "Do I look all right?" I realized I looked like shit -- a pile of shit that had been pummeled with blood, debris, water, wind, dust, and dirt.

We went in the van and sat for another hour listening to the Jacksonville emergency units struggling with one disaster after another. Doug tried several times to make contact as well as to call the station on the two-way, but there was no response.

Eventually, he announced he was going on an antenna hunt. I sat in the van, and Doug went out to wander the property. He came back in ten minutes and told me he'd found the antenna boom, but all he wanted was the antenna and the feed cable. He took a toolbox and headed back out.

I lay down on the floor of the van again, dozing until I heard noises that I took to be Doug returning from the hunt. I opened the door, and he was standing there with the satellite dish antenna and about thirty feet of antenna cable over his shoulder.

"OK, let's see what we can set up," he announced.

I decided I'd call him MacGyver, after the TV character that could create miracles with a paper clip and rubber band. Doug had fastened the antenna to a patio chair and rewired the unit. All this while standing in forty-knot winds and rain.

After a lot of in and out of the van to get the antenna aimed at the right satellite, Doug was reasonably happy that he was in the vicinity. He had a partial lock on one 'bird,' and we started to try to make contact again.

"WJAX, WJAX, WJAX. Mobile One here, how do you read?" He repeated the message over and over again.

Then suddenly, after we'd been tweaking things for fifteen minutes, a booming voice came in over the truck's speakers, "Mobile One, this is National Broadcasting Service. How do you read?"

"NBS, Mobile One here. We read you five by five. How do you hear us?"

"You're five by five as well. Where are you? Are all in your party safe?"

Doug responded, "This is Doug Saunders and I'm with Pam David, the WJAX weather person. We are at the Amelia Island Resort. We are OK although Pam has a head wound. There is a dead security guard here. The resort is in shambles and part of it has collapsed. How's the rest of the area?"

After a silence the speaker came on again, "This is NBS in Atlanta you're talking to -- Bill Walsh. WJAX and most of the Jacksonville and southeast George radio and all the TV stations are off the air. Antennas are down mostly. When they went out we started to monitor the satellites. You're about the only one out there other than emergency crews around the City. Is the head wound on the woman OK or do you need emergency assistance?" I shook my head "no."

"No emergency here in terms of personnel. How are roads?" Doug asked.

"The north bridge to your island is gone - destroyed. The southern one is probably gone too. I think you're going to be there for a while. There are a lot of washouts and flooded highways. I wouldn't try to move very far. The storm is well inland now; the storm center is up near where Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee come together; it's only a tropical storm now. Lots of rain and flooding going on."

"OK. Can we stay in touch?"

"Most definitely. Say, hold on for a minute, my producer wants to talk to Pam David."

There was a long silence then another male voice came on the radio. "Pam, this is Ron Wilson, executive producer of network news for NBS. Are you able to broadcast over this link? Video?"

"Hold on, we'll set up the camera and see," I said into the mike as I leaned over Doug's shoulder.

Doug played with the camera and the connection wires. Suddenly, the monitors in the van came to life with the picture of the inside of the van and me sitting in the chair.

"Great!" the voice over the speaker said, "We can see you? Are you really OK? The bloody bandage looks impressive. Are you still bleeding?"

"Yes, I'm fine thanks to Doug Saunders here. He was an EMT so I'll take his word that I'm OK. I feel OK, just sore -- all over."

"Can you do a clip for us in about ten minutes? Be good if you could be outside? You know, show some views of the debris and all."

Doug nodded, and I said, "We'll be ready."

Fifteen minutes later we'd set up outside the van. Doug cued me to start talking.

"This is Pam David talking to you from Amelia Island, Florida, where five hours ago the eye of Hurricane Grace passed directly overhead. The hurricane destroyed the three-story building of condominiums that you see over my shoulder. My colleague Doug Saunders and I were in that building when it collapsed, that's why I have this bandage around my head -- I didn't fare too well and got knocked out. At the far end of that building is also the body of a security guard left here by the resort to ensure that the property was safe and secure; Hurricane Grace killed him."

Doug panned the camera around the property as I kept talking.

"Everywhere you look there is destruction. This is what winds of a hundred-sixty miles and hour will do. Down the road you see in the picture right now is the main highway off the island. The only trouble for us is that the bridges to the mainland are gone; blown away by Grace."

"We can hear the radios of the emergency crews on the mainland -- mostly from Jacksonville area. They have their hands full right now with every kind of emergency you can imagine. This is a time for neighbors to be helping neighbors. It is also a time to avoid downed power lines and the other hazards that this Hurricane has left us with."

The camera came back to me, "Pam David, NBS News." I stood still for a moment. Doug then motioned us back inside the van.

Ron Wilson came on the speaker; "Pam that was marvelous. You're a natural. That'll go on the national news tonight every half hour between five and seven. We'll keep this line open in the meantime."

Doug leaned into the mike, "We're going to take the van and drive a little and see whether we can find anything else of interest. Might not get too far, but we'll let you know if we find anything newsworthy."

"OK, we'll be on this channel. NBS on standby."

Doug disconnected the antenna and left it untouched. "We'll come back to broadcast plus there's food in the kitchen here. Moreover, if we can make it I had a house just down the road from here. I'm sort of worried about whether it's still there or not. Wasn't much, so it's probably gone."

We got in the front of the van, and Doug slowly threaded his way down what had been a picturesque roadway up to the resort. Trees were down everywhere, but only one of them blocked the road completely. Doug used a chain saw from the van and cleared it in less than five minutes. I was impressed with how well equipped the van was.

There was a small general aviation airport on the way to the bridge. We pulled the van into the airport. It was deserted. Doug filmed me doing a clip against a backdrop of a dozen planes, flipped and tossed every which way by the Hurricane.

When we got to the bridge, we were met with a staggering sight. The long suspension bridge to the mainland had disappeared into the muck and mire of the Amelia River. Only a few steel girders, twisted and distorted against the swollen river were visible. We did another video clip.

Doug turned the van around, and we drove through Amelia City -- the place was not only deserted; it was destroyed. There was no sign of life as we drove slowly through the street along route A1A. Doug had me run the camera out the window of the truck as we drove down the littered main street. Doug then headed for the other end of the island to see how that bridge had fared.

The bridge over the Nassau River was gone as well. Doug pointed at one of the flattened buildings as we drove by. It would have been a pretty location, but now trees were down, and the house lay in shambles.

"My place," Doug said. I saw the name 'Saunders' on the mailbox that still stood as an odd angle beside the road.

"Oh Doug, I'm so sorry," I said as I touched his arm sympathetically.

"Place needed rebuilding anyway. Glad I wasn't at home. I would have been of a mind to ride out the storm there." He paused and looked at me and grinned. "See, you saved my life."

Many of the other homes and businesses we past were destroyed too, some were repairable and some, like Doug's, were unrecoverable. We made a few more video clips then drove back to the resort.

Doug hooked us up to the satellite antenna again, and we uploaded our videos much to the joy of NBS news central. I also did several different news feeds standing with the destroyed condominium behind me. According to WNBS New Central we were the only game in town, at least within a hundred miles of here. They were rushing crews and equipment into the area. We had nowhere to go.

After our 'work' was done, Doug led us on a food foraging expedition into the kitchen area of the resort. Amazingly the kitchen had survived almost unscathed. We found a gas stove that worked, and soon we'd prepared a large meal of eggs, sausages, bacon, rolls, milk, juice, and a few other tidbits. Although it was late in the afternoon, we enjoyed our breakfast.