Speaking at a press conference about the shooting, President Barack Obama became emotional and vowed to make gun control a central issue of his administration.11 Immediately, the debate over universal background checks and banning assault weapons heated up. Limiting magazines to ten rounds was a major concern, since Adam Lanza had been able to fire 154 times in the space of only five minutes, killing twenty-six people with his XM 15 Bushmaster.12 The NRA went into hiding immediately after Sandy Hook, and its president, Wayne La Pierre, was not to be seen until December 21, when he held a news conference and proposed armed guards for all schools. He said the shooting could have been avoided if Sandy Hook had not been a gun-free zone. He was surrounded by armed men as he spoke.13
The Sandy Hook School was razed in 2013, and Adam Lanza's home was demolished two years after that. A new school was constructed with the help of a fifty-million-dollar state grant. The shooting was so horrific to the community of Newtown that obliteration was preferable to any possible association of the tragedy with a building. Nine families who lost children sued the manufacturers of the Bushmaster AR-15.14 The families also sued the estate of Nancy Lanza for not properly securing her firearms since she knew that her son had mental health problems. They were eventually awarded 1.5 million.15
Legislation to enact the assault weapons ban of 2013 and an amendment to expand background checks on guns were defeated in the US Senate on April 17, 2013. Not one law was passed to prevent a shooting like that which occurred at Sandy Hook from happening again. Families of the children who were murdered have been harassed by proponents of the Second Amendment ever since. They have received death threats, and one person was sent to jail for making such threats. A documentary on Sandy Hook aired in 2016 and included interviews with the parents of children who died, as well as police, teachers, doctors, and paramedics who had been at the scene. Most people cried on camera when talking about that day four years earlier. Some people couldn't talk at all.16
The most horrific scene of the documentary described the fire station. The parents waited in a fire station house for news of their children. They had been separated into two groups. While one group of parents was reunited with their children, the other group met with the governor, who told them that their children had been killed. People screamed. Some fell on the floor. People talking about the firehouse in the documentary said it was the worst moment of their lives.17
Many of the parents of the children who died were well-educated professionals. A number of them would later go to Washington to try to bring about change and outlaw AR-15s.18
Nothing happened.
We have never been part of a large migration of people. We have never been in a flood, a hurricane, fire, war, famine, or any of the events necessary to get people fleeing from one area to another. We will find out later that the American Red Cross is there, providing food and water for the evacuating people. We do not see them. All we see are buses behind and in front and we don't care who else is there. We are leaving.
The buses start out of the airport following one another. People are standing in front of us and hanging onto the overhead railings. It is hard to see out the windows. We are leaving the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood Airport twelve hours after we arrived. People look at each other like prisoners who have made it outside of the compound walls. No one says anything. We are simply leaving the airport behind, along with all the danger and carnage that exists there.
I look out the windows several times at the flashing strobes of police lights. It takes me a few minutes to realize that the buses are all being escorted by police cars. I lean over farther for a better view and see an endless line of swirling blue lights running along both sides of the bus, ahead of us and behind us. We are a great migration of ten thousand people, headed for an unknown destination. Our caravan of buses must be considered vulnerable to terrorists because why else would they escort all these buses? But the police are all around us and I realize that they are responsible for getting these people out of the airport and safely to another destination. We have just begun to think about what we will do and where we will stay. Getting out had consumed us and now that we are going somewhere we have to think about lodging and food and everything else associated with normal life. Normal life has been on hold while we struggle for survival. We had left the world for a while and now we are returning. Someone says that we are heading back to the cruise ships, and that would mean Port Everglades.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Florida was in need of a deep water port, and in 1911 the Florida Board of Trade passed a resolution calling for just that.1 The port was to be used for shipping produce north and west. Lake Mabel was a part of the Florida East Coast Canal System, and developers saw it as a good place to locate the new port. The problem with Lake Mabel was that it was too shallow and had to be dredged to make it possible for the big ships to enter. A cut was to be blasted out, connecting the lake to the Atlantic Ocean when President Calvin Coolidge pressed a button on February 28, 1928. The initial button push did nothing, but the engineers were able to try again and blast away the sand between Lake Mabel and the Atlantic, to the enthusiasm of the watching crowd. Two years later the name Bay Mabel Harbor was changed to Port Everglades.2
The port can handle fifteen cruise ships in a day, with thousands of passengers passing through in a single day.3 This is the port we left this morning and are now returning to. I can already see one of the big cruise ships in the distance. We have heard that the ships have had to delay their departures because so many cruise passengers have been stranded at the airport. It is hard to believe that we had been on one of these monster ships not twelve hours ago. Time has collapsed in on itself and we have no sense of time passing; our vacation belongs to a different life, one that existed before Esteban Santiago opened fire.
Clay has already groused that people won't ask him about his vacation when he returns to work but about the shooting. My daughters will experience the same at their schools. We have all stumbled into a dim shadow of fame from landing near the media trucks, and in a sense the entire cruise has been erased. I remember a fight Kitty and I had gotten into the night before and now I can't remember what it was about; it just doesn't seem to matter now. We exist in the here and now moment and we still have to be concerned with survival. Right now that means a hotel.
We enter the port area, a football-field-sized expanse with the cruise ships humming and puffing smoke from their diesel-electric motors. The orange lighting of the ships cuts shapes out of the darkness, giving a bizarre scene an even more surreal quality. Are we rewinding time back to this morning when this whole experience began? Can we just ignore the last twelve hours and continue on with our lives?
“Quality Inn,” Kitty says, getting off her phone as we pull into the giant open space of the port.
I nod. We have a destination. The buses are unloading and heading back to the airport to pick up more people. The crowd in front of the port and under the giant ships makes me think of people released from a stadium. Everyone is flowing toward the ships. We grab our suitcases as the bus groans to a halt and we disembark into the warm sea air. The ocean is beyond the ships, and lights dot the sea with buoys blinking their red eyes. We have forgotten for a time about the ocean, the beaches, the world. Life has gone on while we, along with ten thousand others, took a detour.
People move toward the ships. I don't know if they are all going on cruises or if people are just going toward the edge of the port. But then I realize that people are swarming toward the cars and taxis that are pulling in. There is a fleet of Uber cars, and I realize then that if we don't grab one now we will never get out. “I'm going ahead to get a car,” I shout at Kitty, leaving her the suitcase.
She stares at me.
“How can you do that? We didn't call one!”
I look around at the sea of people under the orange klieg-light glare of the port and realize that while we have escaped the airport we have not escaped Florida. Essentially we
are still in limbo, with no real way to get home. All flights have been canceled and the rumor is that they will not even start scheduling flights until Monday. It is still every man for himself.
“If we don't get a car now we will never get one with all these people,” I shout back.
Kitty has already been trying to get an Uber but I know there was no way. Thousands of people are trying to do the same thing. I know I have to act quickly if we want to leave the port and get to a hotel. The port, while set up to handle lots of people, has never before had an entire airport evacuated to it at once. I run ahead of the crowd and see a single dark Lexus. The man is looking into the crowd and I know someone had called him.
“HEY!” I wave at him. The Indian driver looks through his window.
“Mr. Patton?”
I nod and wave my arms.
“Yes…Yes…I am Mr. Patton.”
He puts his car in park and gets out. He is well-dressed in business casual and has a small mustache. He moves efficiently, popping open his trunk, smiling widely.
“It is good to see you Mr. Patton. I am your Uber driver.”
“My family is coming,” I tell him, breathlessly.
“Oh very good. I will keep the trunk open, Mr. Patton.”
“Good. We have lots of luggage.”
He smiles. “No problem.”
And then the policewoman comes from nowhere. She is large, scowling, wearing the bright orange vest of traffic cops. Her face is red and shiny and, like everyone else, she is overwhelmed at the scope of the operation.
“You can't stop here,” she shouts.
I look around. I am not sure where here is, but the policewoman is red-faced and pissed.
She points away from the ships and yells at the Uber driver. “You have got to move this car…NOW!”
“My family is coming,” I shout back, not seeing my family.
I turn to the Uber driver. “Wait here.”
“Very good, Mr. Patton,” he says, looking nervously at the policewoman.
And then I take off back toward the buses, looking for Kitty and Clay and my daughters. I see more and more people running toward me as the endless line of buses and police cars keep pulling up. This is it. We either get this car or we will be stuck in Port Everglades for a very long time. I see Kitty and wave my arms frantically.
“Come on!…I have a car…LET'S GO!”
I grab two suitcases and we all begin to run. I can see the policewoman screaming at the Uber driver again, who is looking for Mr. Patton. Mr. Patton is running up with his wife and kids. The driver smiles and waves.
“Here Mr. Patton! Here!”
Kitty looks at me. “Mr. Patton?”
I wave her off as we put most of our luggage in the trunk and the rest in the backseat, and then we all cram into the Lexus. The Uber driver starts navigating our way out and I see cars lined up all the way out of the port, hopelessly snarled in a traffic jam. The soft hum of the air-conditioning and the light jazz inside the car seems absurd.
“So you going to the Holiday Inn, Mr. Patton?”
I turn.
“Ah. No…actually the Quality Inn,” I explain.
The Uber driver frowns, “That is strange. It says Holiday Inn.”
I am sitting up front with him and figure it is now or never.
“Look we were in that shooting in the airport. We need to get to a hotel and get some food and water and take a shower. Mr. Patton couldn't make it but I will pay you cash to take me to the Quality Inn.”
The Uber driver stares at me.
“Are you saying, then, you are not Mr. Patton?”
I shake my head.
“No. I am not Mr. Patton. I am Mr. Hazelgrove, who will pay cash.”
The Indian driver takes a deep breath as his phone buzzes. He looks at it and shakes his head.
“It is Mr. Patton,” he says with great sorrow.
“Don't worry about Mr. Patton. I will pay you twice what the fare is.”
He breathes heavily.
“Mr. Patton will not be very happy about this,” he says.
I lean back into the leather seat. “Mr. Patton will find another ride,” I murmur, as we leave the port and enter the world again.
The Quality Inn is by a Burger King about three miles from the airport, in an industrial area. The lobby is full of other refugees from FLL, and we are lucky to have gotten a room. Kitty had called from the airport and secured one of the last rooms. She also called United, who gave us the bad news that they will not be able to get us out until Monday morning. That has pushed us to call a series of rental car agencies, all of which tell us they have no cars left. Everyone is trying to find a way home and we resign ourselves to the fact we won't be leaving until Monday morning at the earliest.
Right now we just want to get to our room and get something to eat. The pool area is strangely bucolic under the moonlight, which casts shadows across the umbrellas and gleams in the water. The Quality Inn is an oasis in a sea of transportation companies that cluster around airports. The orange-lit landscape outside the gates of the hotel is the American otherworld of industry and squalor. But the Quality Inn is set up a like a series of bungalows surrounding the pool area and has a bar with chairs and umbrellas set up near the breakfast room just off the lobby. People are already sitting at tables in the shadowy darkness, their luggage piled up around them. Everyone is discussing their options, which center on how to get out of Florida. The focus has gone from trying to escape the airport to trying to escape Florida. The girls are eyeing the pool that seems so out of line with the hell we have left at the airport and the mob scene at Port Everglades.
We pass through the pool area and walk down a long portico facing the parking lot. Our room is at the end and has two double beds with a television between them. We will be cramped but we are happy to be in our own space again. After being in an airport for almost twelve hours and running from a shooter and then living with the knowledge a shooter might come back, this is paradise. The girls immediately turn on the television.
“Dad, it's you!” Careen shouts.
I looks at the television and see a slightly bloated, middle-aged man wearing a Fort Lauderdale hat and a black Brooklyn T-shirt and sporting a backpack. He is sweating and speaks with a slight lisp and looks like his mouth is always full. I have been told I mumble and this man is mumbling. The words under him read, “Witness to Shooting.” He is talking about running from shots in Terminal 1 when the journalist stops him.
“But there were no shots in Terminal 1.”
The man wipes his brow. He is sweating like a stuck pig.
“Yes, there were. Right by the United Terminal. We were there. We ran from those shots. Everybody ran from those shots.”
Then the man is suddenly gone, and I'm not sure I would believe him either. Then there is Callie telling someone that she ran from the bullets. She is sitting on the ground by the cement pole and looks much better than I do. Television loves youth and I notice it doesn't make her look bloated and flushed and she is not shiny from perspiration.
“It's you, Callie,” Careen squeals.
Callie stares at herself on national television. You do not think you will become part of a news cycle until you do. And I marvel at how television makes everything magical. There is none of the squalor, the diesel fumes, the dirty clothes, the sweat, the stress, the grime, the feeling of impending doom. There is just a beautiful news anchor interviewing people talking logically about what happened to them. In this way television tells a lie. The police say there was one shooter and this is what is broadcast to the world. No one asks why Terminal 1 was evacuated with people running for their lives. That is not the hook. The hook is really…death.
Death is what people watch for; someone else's death, of course. Someone else has gone to the great beyond unexpectedly and we find this fascinating. What did they find? What were their thoughts at the last second? Did they have thoughts? Did they bleed to death? Did they struggle, cry ou
t, scream. The shooting is layered. The media doesn't tell about the man who cursed at Esteban Santiago while he murdered people. It doesn't tell about the man shot in the back with a laptop saving his life. It doesn't tell about Kitty hiding with an Asian woman who won't get off her phone until a man screams that she is going to get everyone killed. The woman with the baby pleading with the man to get in his car or the people hiding under seats while other people right by them get shot, or the people on the tarmac picked up by a pilot of a jetliner. It is all lost with some guy in a Brooklyn T-shirt giving his recitation of events. Some writer.
And it gets worse. Careen switches the channel, and I pop up two more times. The Fox News interview has gone national and everyone has picked it up. I would have killed for this kind of coverage for one of my books but I have become a messenger of death. I was there. I ran from shots. I could have been a statistic; that is behind every question. What was it like to be close to death, because those people can't tell us; they are gone so we are stuck with you and your family. So, tell us what was it like. I rattle on and on. And it's still not over. Not by a long shot.
We are now in a twilight between our old life and the life that began when Esteban Santiago pulled out his Walther 9mm. And it will not end until we walk in the door of our home and the roller coaster is put back on the track and we continue with our lives. Now we are in a Quality Inn for three days with nowhere to go and really nothing to do. We are with people who ran from bullets and with people who suffered unimaginable loss. We are with people whose lives will never be the same.
Watching the television coverage of the shooting, I realize all the people from the airport shooting have become part of history. We will be read about in books, searched online, referenced, and then, finally, forgotten. All shootings are eventually forgotten; they are too horrific and our brains quickly paper over the carnage. Victims of shootings are divided between the dead and the living; the dead don't care anymore, and the living can't get away from the experience fast enough. In this way mass shootings become our dirty secret. The permanently disabled become inconvenient truths from an event we would rather just not think about anymore. We don't realize how horrible the events were until we read about them again. We remember the big ones, Sandy Hook and Columbine, but the other ones start to blend until we see an old article or bump into someone who was there. The Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood Airport shooting will start to fade after the media cycle is finished. But I will never forget it, nor will my kids. And the people who were at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, will never forget that day either.
Shots Fired in Terminal 2 Page 17