We were down there for about fifty hours, when all was said and done, and we could have stayed down there longer if not for … OK, let me walk you through it.
The shelter was designed almost exactly like the tunnels that run under the park. I can’t take you down there anymore, but you can find cell phone pictures online. Picture long, concrete walls and hard concrete floors with rooms full of supplies about every 150 feet. There were only two entrances and exits, at either end of the shelter, and we had managers posted at those spots 24/7. Inside the doors along the edge of the tunnels were bathrooms and supply stations with water and crackers and other rations, storage areas with sleeping bags and pillows, and one big room that ran on a generator and had all the contacts to the outside, like radios and satellite phones and radar. The managers called it the Command Center, but one of the employees thought it looked like one of the bunkers from the first season of The Walking Dead, so you might hear it referred to as the Zombie Center. I don’t know why it stuck but it did. It’s not very clever if you ask me. I kept referring to it as the Command Center, and a couple times I got blank looks until I called it the Zombie … my point is no one was lacking anything they needed. All the diabetics had their insulin, all the hungry had food, and we all had community. I’ll put it that way.
I remember, quite clearly, once everyone got to the shelter, there was a moment when we had to shut the doors. By then it was raining, and the wind had really picked up, so another park employee and I stood there and took a last look out to make sure everyone had gotten inside. The employee, I don’t remember his name but he worked in the Pirate’s Cove, asked me if there was anyone else out there, and I said, “If there is anyone out there, we’ll be able to see them.” Then I shut the door, and he made this weird growling noise and I asked him, “What was that?” and he said it was Chewbacca from Star Wars. Apparently there’s a moment in one of the movies when they shut a gate and … I don’t know, I didn’t remember the scene, but it’s weird what you remember in situations like that. There are probably a hundred other things that were more vivid that day, but his stupid noise is what sticks in my head.
We quickly established a couple ways of communicating with everyone since the RADs didn’t work and personal phones were prohibited in the park. At each 150-foot marker there was a whiteboard, and every hour I would have managers write a new piece of information on that whiteboard. For example, one hour might say GROUP DINING IN SECTION C, 11–1 if we wanted people to come eat together. We set a sleep schedule, which was important because there was no night or day down there. We put up information about the storm. We told people where they could find first aid. It was all very orderly that first day, and we really didn’t have anything that stood out by way of problems. We had one fight on the first day, and it turned out to be a long-standing thing, nothing about the evacuation. I tell you, it was downright comfortable. The bathrooms even worked. Everyone seemed to be getting along, but when you’re a manager, you can see the seeds of discord in the different ways people act.
Let me give you an example. What we saw was that once we were all down there, the employees separated into two camps. There were those who were really interested in what was happening outside—they crowded around the Command Center—and then there were those who hung back. Mostly they were preestablished groups of friends, from what I could tell, though there was certainly a loner or two in there. Mostly what I saw was a lot of nervous employees. Some of them got over that nervousness with information about the storm, and they were the ones who hung close to the Command Center. I had one guy tell me, “I’m used to tracking storms on my phone in real time. Now I can’t even look out a window,” so it was natural to be curious, I guess.
At first it was kind of cute. Whenever there was a development it would be passed down the line like a game of telephone. The problem with that was there were some things that we didn’t want getting out there for mass consumption, you know? Like the situation at the front of the park. It was deteriorating quickly. At first it was just a few puddles, but then they sort of … coalesced, if that’s the right word, and started getting bigger. Soon there was sort of a small lake at the front, and after about twelve hours it was clear there were not going to be any vehicles, rescue or otherwise, coming into the park for quite some time. I had never seen anything quite like it. I remember going to bed that night and thinking, “This is a pretty big problem,” and then waking up and wondering if the ticket booths had blown away in the night. Turns out they were mostly underwater.
After that first night, we shut the door to the Command Center and only allowed a few key people to watch the screens, which was an unpopular decision, but you could see why we would do it. The absolute last thing you need in an enclosed space is panic. But, again, there were two groups: those who were glued to every piece of information we put out there and others who couldn’t be bothered. So it was really only that one group that was upset, and after the first night, they started getting vocal about it. We started hearing whispers of, “We have a right to know,” and “fascist” and that kind of thing. I’m in management, so I’ve been called a lot worse. Good managers know how to shake that sort of thing off, and I’m a good manager.
So, you’ve got the picture? A bunch of employees crowded around the Command Center and a bunch of other employees sort of doing their own thing. What kind of thing? Lots of card games. I know there were many decks of cards in the disaster packs, and a lot of folks tore into those right away. For a short time there was even a game of old-fashioned charades going, if you can believe that. One group of girls started a “selfie” contest, only they didn’t have phones, which was kind of weird. They were doing that thing where they all get together in a group and smile and say, “Heeeeey,” and then they’d laugh as one of them “took a picture” with a box of candy, then another group would pose, and it went on like that for a while. Other people chose to read. One or two people had snuck in weather radios—I don’t know where they got them—but they mostly didn’t work down in the shelters. You couldn’t pick up anything. Our radios in the Command Center were connected straight to antennas outside, so we had a great signal, but that only added to the feeling that we had the information and those outside didn’t. I remember there was this one girl, something Flynn, I don’t remember her first name, but everyone called her Flynn, she was the one who would speak up whenever I went out to give more information to the crowds. She was always up in the front and always made eye contact and always asked me the same question: “Why did you shut the door?” After the third time, I tried to take her aside to explain the situation, but she wouldn’t have it. She was adamant that if I talked to her, I had to talk to all those gathered around the door to the Command Center. I wasn’t about to concede that point, so I kept giving updates, and she kept asking why I shut the door. She would just stare at me, all self-important, like I was the one who put her in this situation. I know folks like that, who have no sense of the greater good, you know? Whose agenda is the only thing that matters. I don’t mind saying, it pisses me off. You see it on the Internet and on the news all the time, someone says something a little off-color and then you have a steady stream of professional victims and attention-grabbers demanding they apologize in the way they want you to apologize. It makes me sick. Look, I know I’m making the situation down there sound heated, but it was actually pretty civil. Until we lost power.
The power went out overnight. I’m not sure when. I’m sure whoever I had on the overnight shift at the Command Center could tell you, but all I remember was waking up to shrieks and not seeing anything at all except the frantic flicker of flashlights. No one was taking the flashlight and pointing it at what they wanted to see, like it laid out in the disaster manual. Everyone was waving their flashlights around, wasting power and acting like it would produce more light by waving it around. It was stupid and panicky, and I knew things were sort of bad at that point. If we’d lost lights, we’d lost everything in the Command
Center and basically all contact with the outside world. I don’t mind telling you, it took me a moment to get a hold of myself. I was dealing with over three hundred employees, most of them five years or so out of middle school, in a pitch-dark concrete bunker, and I was in charge. Tell me you wouldn’t have panicked a little. Once I left my little room where I was sleeping and walked into the main area, it was absolute bedlam. It was dark, and people were flailing around. People were desperate to see where they were, so anyone who had a flashlight was likely to have it snatched from them, and then they would try to try to snatch it back, and some people were still asleep and being stepped on. Hell, if you tried to get out of the way, how would you know where to go? Most of the injuries that happened in the tunnels, it happened right then when the lights went out and people didn’t stay put, like they should have. They panicked, and people got hurt. There was nothing huge, just a few split lips and the like, but again, the only thing worse than being alone in the dark is being in the middle of a big crowd of people in the dark. Yeah, we did have room in the shelter, but no one could find it.
After I calmed myself down, I figured I had two options. I could make my way to the Command Center and try to find the protocol on how to turn on the emergency generator, or I could throw open one of the doors to the storm shelter and at least get a little bit of light in there and maybe calm some folks down a little. I had no idea what time it was, but my body was telling me I’d gotten a little bit of sleep, probably five hours, so it was as likely as not that there would be some sun if I did open the door. But then you run the risk of people running into the storm and getting hurt. I decided that the door would be the better idea because even if the storm was still raging, a visible way out would calm everyone down, at least for a bit. Then I could work on the generator. That was the plan. Finding my way to the nearest exit was another matter entirely. I had a flashlight in my pocket, so my strategy was to keep it off for as long as I could. What I could see was whenever a light came on, people flooded around it and the light would bounce all around and then eventually go out amidst lots of yelling and screaming. It was really loud in there, as you can imagine.
I picked a direction, said a little prayer, and started pushing. I did not know where I was going, not even close, but I knew I had gone to sleep in Section B of the shelter, and there was one exit in Section A and one in Section D. I was praying my luck held out and that I was going the right way so I wouldn’t have to fight my way through two sections. Truth be told, when I started out I thought, “I’m never going to make it.” I was immediately hit in the lip and tasted blood, and my eye took a really good shot. I’m not accustomed to being beaten up, so I don’t know if this is true or not, but I think I actually felt the one side of my face swelling where I had been hit. I also took one in the ribs, but I didn’t drop and I didn’t stop. I pushed until I found the back wall, which was almost deserted. I figured most people were stuck to the sides of the shelter and not to the back. I was able to feel around for the door and push through without much interference into another section full of screaming, punching mobs. I figured at that point there was very little accountability, so I sort of barreled forward and went on the offensive a bit. I was either going to get to the end of the section and find the doors to the outside or I had another whole section to fight through. Either way, I sort of … what’s the expression … girded my loins and plowed forward. I honestly wish I could describe it for you better, but it was a totally dark mosh pit in there. The music was the yells of scared people, and I gave as good as I got, I can tell you that much.
I have no idea how long I was pushing or shoving, but once I found a wall I clung to that sucker like it was a lifeline and kept plowing forward. I ran into a lot of people who were hugging the wall, too, but they didn’t know where they were going. I did. I had a direction. So I pushed and came upon the end of the tunnel and hallelujah praise Jesus, I had gone the right way. I was in Section A, and I felt around, found the lock on the door, pulled out my keys and my flashlight, and before anyone could attack me I had the door open. Well, partially open. I had to push with everything I had, and then the wind caught this big metal door and damn near blew it off the hinges. The storm was still very much going on.
But I was right about the time. It was light out but it was mostly gray. That’s a damn sight better than black, I can tell you. Light flooded Section A, and soon B was coming up too and the word spread. This was when I put my plan into effect.
The idea was to open the doors, despite whatever was happening outside, and use the opportunity to bolt to the Command Center and figure out the generator before the situation got worse. My plan worked, and it worked extremely well. The Command Center is in Section C, and the light from the door spread all the way into B, so everyone immediately started crowding toward A. It wasn’t hard to get to the Command Center after that. I was able to turn on my flashlight without getting mauled, even though there was still a lot of pushing and shoving in the area. Like I said, it was a good plan.
I got to the Command Center door in short order, and it was locked, which I knew was bad. When we shut the door and started partitioning off information, we didn’t lock the door. It seemed like a bridge too far. I had keys, but it made me nervous to go inside for some reason, but I went. Let me clarify quickly, the Command Center was not where the generators were but where the information on how to run the generators was kept. These weren’t the sort of generators you buy at Home Depot. These were state of the art, large-scale generators meant to run for a long time, and they had start-up sequences and checklists. You couldn’t just go press a button and turn them on, so I was looking for the instruction manuals. Once I got inside, it was deeply spooky to see all the screens blank. I don’t know how to describe it other than I got a knot in my stomach. It was a tangible thing, you know? Our situation was so bad we couldn’t turn on the computers. That’s when I felt something hit the back of my head. It was dark, so that sort of white light flash that you get when you’re hit really hard? That was really pronounced. I also remember hearing a distinct clacking noise, like a bunch of plastic hitting the ground. I dropped my flashlight and was able to turn around before the next hit came.
I had no idea who was hitting me at the time. No clue. I … I don’t want to sound like I’m justifying what happened, but I was scared, I was working to save people, I was ostensibly in charge, and I had just been on the receiving end of a cheap shot. It was fight or flight and fight kicked in, and I can tell you, if you’ve ever been in a fight in near pitch blackness, I don’t recommend it. You have just as good a chance of punching the wall really hard as you do of hitting anyone, but I got lucky. OK, so I got hit, I turned around and got hit again, but the second hit was more of a glancing blow, it sort of bounced off my shoulder and neck. I was aware I was being hit with something, it wasn’t just someone punching me. This was a full-fledged attack, so I … I didn’t hold back, let’s put it that way. I was able to get my hands around something that felt like a head, and I threw it as hard as I could into where I thought the wall was, and then I just kept coming. I grabbed the head and hit it three or four more times, then I might have shouted a question, but you have to understand, it was still really loud outside. Really chaotic. I wasn’t getting hit anymore, so I refocused and started trying to find my flashlight. It took a really long time, but I eventually found it, under the desk, of all places. I was pretty beat up between fighting my way through the dark to getting into that fight, so I wasn’t surprised when I turned on the flashlight and saw a lot of blood. It wasn’t until later that I realized it wasn’t mine.
I feel kind of callous telling you this, but the first thing I did was find the manual. That was the whole reason I was there and it’s where my head was at. I was about to leave before I decided to shine my flashlight at the ground where the fight had been. I can’t explain it; I just felt like that was one more obstacle and I was over it. When I did shine some light down there, I wasn’t terribly surpri
sed that I didn’t find anyone. They had run off while I was looking around. What I was surprised at was the amount of blood on the floor and that the weapon was still on the floor. It was a keyboard. What a stupid thing to attack someone with, right? He could have grabbed a chair or a flashlight or something with some heft to it, but a keyboard? It just supports the theory that it wasn’t a planned thing but a random thing, I guess. Someone got it in their head to perpetrate some violence, and that was it. I gave them a good thrashing, and they realized they were bleeding, and they ran away. I don’t really care that we never found out who it was. It’s pretty clear that there was nothing to it other than some kid being afraid of the dark.
I got the manual and gave it a quick once-over. The lucky thing was the generators were in a utility closet just a hundred feet from where I was, so it wasn’t like before where I had to fight my way to the next point. All I had to do was slide along the wall until I found a door handle, use my keys to open it, and there I was. The sequence took me about fifteen minutes, and no one bothered me except for the noise on the other side of the door. It was a lot of arguing, lots of one person yelling and then someone yelling for them to shut up and then people taking sides. Some people were crying, others were being ironic about it and yelling stuff out like “sandwich” and singing kiddie songs from the park. It was pretty nuts, but the work was pretty straightforward, just time-consuming and detailed. But once those lights came on, that felt really good. I felt like once the lights came up, everyone immediately calmed down. The loud ruckus outside stopped, and I took off like a shot down to Section A and to where I had opened the door. At least, that’s what I had meant to do. Instead, there were at least three people on the floor. I know now that at least two of them were dead. One of them was that Flynn girl, Maria, her name was. I recognized her because she was face up, but I didn’t stop to help. I knew I was needed up at the front where the door was open.
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