A/N: Sorry this story got done a bit late, but I got caught up in the catastrophe that recently occured in Japan. I saw first-hand what it is like to be in a major disaster and managed to get through it alive. The latest update is that the situation with the nuclear plants is getting worse and my base at Yokosuka now has slightly elevated levels of radiation, which won't affect normal activities, as long as me and my fellow sailors play it safe. My thoughts and prayers got out to the others who, like me got caught up in this major disaster.
WARNING: Using a turnoquet is very risky and they should only be used as a last resort to stop bleeding from a gushing limb wound. DO NOT REMOVE A TURNOQUET YOURSELF! The blood cells in the affected area will likely be dead and if they get to the heart, the victim could go into cardiac arrest! Once used, a turnoquet should only be removed by a medical professional who can deal with the effects.
Disclaimer: I don't own crap
Hay Lin's house
Jacksonville Beach, Florida
Monday, September 7, 2015
Irma, her fiancee Robert, Will and her husband Angelo, Cornelia and her husband Caleb and Taranee were visiting Hay Lin and her husband Eric, who had recently moved to Florida in the previous year.
It was hurricane season, and recent news reports stated that a tropical disturbance was gathering strength 150 miles off the coast.
They were watching TV and relaxing. "And to think, my grandmother lived not too far from here." Robert said.
"Where did she live?" Hay Lin asked.
"Just outside of Tampa." Robert replied.
"I have to admit, the weather's very nice out here this time of year." Angelo said. "Yeah, except when a hurricane hits." Will replied.
"Oh, good point, dear." Angelo said. "Yeah, and with tropical storm Ana getting stronger, I'm getting concerned." Cornelia added.
"Don't worry, if we are in danger, just follow Eric and I, we know what to do." Hay Lin replied. They talked for the next hour and watched a movie.
Over the next 48 hours, Tropical storm Ana intensified rapidly and became a full-fledged category 2 hurricane.
It continued to get stronger as it got closer to the Florida coast. The group's concerns grew when the National Weather Service issued a hurricane watch for the area.
Over the next 24 hours, the storm grew even more intense and became a devastating category 4 hurricane. It continued to close in on the Florida area.
September 10, 2015
10:03 AM
The group was watching TV as rain poured down outside. Every eye in the room widened as the show was cut off by an Emergency Alert System broadcast issuing a hurricane warning.
The warning stated that Hurricane Ana would make landfall in an hour. "Crap, sounds like Ana is closer than they thought." Irma said.
"Yeah, let's get out of here." Robert replied. They got up and started getting ready to evacuate.
"OK, let's get some backpacks and start gathering supplies." Hay Lin instructed.
The others gathered several backpacks and started gathering supplies that would help them over the duration of the hurricane.
"Find some rope, you never know when it could come in handy." Hay Lin instructed.
Cornelia found some rope and packed it into her backpack.
Irma found and packed some food while Robert packed up some water bottles. They managed to gather all the gear they may need and got ready.
Once they were ready, they went outside and got into Hay Lin's Ford Expedition SUV. Eric was in the driver's seat while Hay Lin sat next to him.
It was pouring down rain and the wind was picking up.
Eric started the engine and engaged the four-wheel drive. He backed out of the driveway and started driving away from the coast.
"How far do we have to go?" Taranee asked. "We need to go at least twenty-five miles to avoid the storm surge." Hay Lin replied.
"The highway is our best bet to getting to higher ground quickly." Eric added. Hay Lin noticed that Eric was driving a bit too fast.
"Whoa, bring your speed down a bit, or we'll start hydroplaning." she said. Eric reduced speed slightly and prevented a hydroplane situation.
45 minutes to landfall
Eric barely managed to avoid a falling tree as he continued driving towards the highway. As he went through an intersection, he nearly hit another car going on the other road.
As he approached the on-ramp, he was forced to stop by a traffic jam. "Dammit! That's no longer an option." Hay Lin said.
Further observation revealed that the traffic jam was caused by an accident down the road. Thinking quickly, Eric backed out and turned around as he tried to find an alternate way out.
As they drove on, Hay Lin turned on the radio to get an update on the approach of the hurricane.
-Hurricane Ana is rapidly approaching from the southeast and could make landfall in twenty-five minutes. The broadcast said.
"Left here." Hay Lin instructed as she pointed out a side street.
At this point, they've traveled 20 miles, and need to go at least five more, but all of the major routes were blocked.
"OK, all the major routes we could have taken are blocked, so we're gonna have to go off-road." Hay Lin said.
Eric turned off the road and onto a nearby field heading away from the coast.
He engaged the low range mode for the transmission. Thank God I took off-road driving lessons! Eric thought as he navigated his way through the nearby forest.
He continued on for a few minutes.
18 minutes to landfall
Suddenly, a tree fell right in front of the SUV, forcing Eric to hit the brakes. After several seconds, the vehicle came to a stop.
Hay Lin got out and assessed the damage. Both front tires were flat, and Hay Lin knew that the rest of the escape would have to be on foot.
"We have two flat tires, this car's out of commission. We're gonna have to go the rest of the way on foot." Hay Lin told the rest of the group nearly yelling over the sound of the howling winds.
By now, the storm surge has hit and is now ravaging the coastline, smashing homes and obliterating entire neighborhoods with an 12-foot wall of water.
Everyone in the group knew that they could get hit at anytime, and needed to escape fast. They started running west as fast as they could.
15 minutes to landfall
The only thing between them and higher ground was a local river. "Now what?" Cornelia asked.
"Well, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the only way is to cross this river." Hay Lin replied. "What, and risk drowning?" Cornelia asked.
"I have an idea, in situations like this, the Navy SEALS used what's called a zip line. Basically, we tie a rope to something on the riverbank on our side, then we have our best swimmer take the other end and get it across and tie it there. Normally, they go from a higher elevation to a lower one, but in this case, we're gonna make it horizantal, going from upstream to downstream. We'll then use the current to get us across." Robert explained.
Will then took and end of the rope that the group packed with them. "Looks like it's up to me." she said.
As Will went in, Irma and Robert held on to their end. Thirty seconds later, Will made it across and was a little downstream.
She then tied the rope around a nearby tree. Robert and Irma started pulling on the rope to get all of the slack out.
They then looped the rope around a nearby tree and secured it using a trucker's hitch knot. The group then pulled off their belts, which they would use to keep themselves on the rope as they went across.
5 minutes to landfall
Irma went first, putting the belt over the rope and wrapping the ends around her wrists. She went in and let the current take her across.
Will pulled her ashore as Cornelia went next. The others went across one by one.
Eventually, Eric was the last one to go across. As he reached the center of the river, he lost his grip and fell in.
Will started going towards the water, but Hay Lin stopped her. "Don't go in after him, it'll just be two people drowning instead of one!" she said.
Cornelia grabbed a long branch as Hay Lin kept an eye on Eric. Cornelia extended the branch towards him and Eric swam towards it.
He grabbed on and Irma and Robert helped Cornelia pull Eric ashore.
They started running west as they tried to find shelter. At this point, Hurricane Ana has definitely made landfall.
The wind was an intense 100 miles per hour, and the group was caught out in it.
Now their biggest danger was flying debris. The field in front of them was filled with flying debris. They took cover behind a tree as they assessed the situation in front of them.
"Now what?" Irma asked.
"We'll have to move from cover to cover, in this case, from tree to tree; this is just like a battlefield. The only difference is the lack of bullets, so we're gonna treat it like a battlefield." Hay Lin replied.
They waited for the right moment to move. "OK, let's go!" Eric ordered as they put their backpacks over their heads and started moving.
They struggled to stay upright in the high winds as they moved forward.
"OK, that house is gonna be our shelter, so we're gonna go for it." Hay Lin said as they reached the last tree in the field.
"Unfortunately, we've run out of cover, so we're gonna do a low-crawl, which is just what it sounds like, on elbows and knees, and crawl as low as we can! We're gonna go single file, so follow me and stay down!" Hay Lin instructed.
Hay Lin led the way as they started crawling low to the ground towards the house.
Suddenly, as Caleb navigated over a tree stump, a piece of sheet metal struck his left wrist!
Caleb yelled in pain as he clutched his bleeding wrist and went down. "CALEB!" Cornelia yelled from right behind him.
"Keep going!" Hay Lin ordered. "Caleb, keep your hand on that to slow down the bleeding!" Cornelia instructed.
Caleb gripped his wrist with his hand and squeezed to slow the bleeding down. He winced slightly from the pain as Eric and Angelo grabbed his shoulders and carried him.
They reached the house and began to check it out. They had to hurry because Caleb was losing a lot of blood and can quickly bleed out and die.
The house's windows were fitted with security bars and the door had a security screen. This meant that the house was likely abandoned.
"OK, we need to find something with which to breach this door! Something sharp, something we can use as a hammer or pry." Hay Lin shouted over the howl of the wind.
Irma found an axe head nearby while Will found a thin metal bar. "OK, we're gonna do a mechanical breach on this door." Hay Lin said.
Robert slipped the bar into the gap between the door and the doorframe just above the lock. He then started tapping it in with the axe head.
After the bar was tapped in enough, Robert and Angelo prepared to pry the door open. Robert and Angelo prepared to pull while Hay Lin got in position to push.
"On 3, 1...2...3!" Hay Lin commanded as she pushed and the guys pulled. In less than a second, to security door was open and now they had to get the main door open.
"OK, now were gonna do a pry and kick." Hay Lin instructed. Robert positioned the axe head in the gap between the door and the doorframe and started tapping it in with the metal bar.
Robert then positioned himself for a "donkey kick". Using the back of his foot, he kicked the door with all his might and it burst open.
The group rushed inside quickly and Eric closed the door behind them. "OK, now we're gonna take what we used to breach this door and use it to seal it." Hay Lin instructed.
Robert took the axe head and wedged it under the door. He then kicked it in with his foot. Hay Lin checked the door and was satisfied to find that it was now solidly shut.
Cornelia led Caleb onto a couch in the living room. Robert and Angelo moved the couch away from the windows to protect them in the event that they blow out.
Cornelia elevated Caleb's arm to keep the wound elevated and gripped his wrist to keep pressure on it.
Taranee got out some T-shirts and towels from her backpack and handed them to Hay Lin. Eric began cutting a towel into strips as Cornelia pressed a T-shirt onto the wound.
Hay Lin wrapped a strip over the shirt, did a 180-degree twist on the other side of Caleb's wrist, wrapped it around the shirt again and tied it tightly, creating constant direct pressure directly on the wound to try and stop the bleeding.
"Is it slowing down at all?" Hay Lin asked. "It's soaking through." Cornelia replied.
"OK, there's a major artery in his arm, upstream from the wound under his bicep, it's called the bracheal artery. Find it with two fingers, and once you feel a pulse, kink down on it and hold it, that will put direct pressure on the artery that's feeding this wound." Hay Lin instructed.
Cornelia found the artery and pressed down on it with her middle and index fingers. Cornelia's heart sank when she saw that it was not working.
"It's still bleeding." she said.
"Now what?" Will asked. "What can we do?" Taranee asked.
"There's only one solution we can use now: a turnoquet." Robert replied.
"A what?" Angelo asked. "A turnoquet, it controls bleeding by completely stopping the flow of blood to a wound. In the Navy, they taught me how to use one in the event that the need to do so arose. They also taught me that they should only be used as a last resort because if one is left on for too long, it can cause tissue damage which will result in the loss of a limb. However, in a situation like this the potential for loss of limb is far outweighed by the potential for loss of life, so we're gonna have to use one on him." Robert explained.
Robert them grabbed an elastic strap and wrapped it around Caleb's wrist upstream from the wound.
He then started a right-over left square knot and placed a pen in the gap perpendicular to the strap and completed the square knot, making sure it was tight.
I never thought that I would actually have to do this! Robert thought as he worked. He then twisted the pen twice to make it tighter and tucked the pen under the strap.
"OK, here's the thing with turnoquets: once these go on, they NEVER come off. They do not come off every five minutes, they do not come off ever until medical personnel can deal with it." Robert warned. "Why not?" Taranee asked. "If the turnoquet is loosened incorrectly, the blood cells in that area will already be dead, and if those dead cells reach his heart, he can go into cardiac arrest, and he could die." Robert replied.
Cornelia gulped at the thought.
Robert then took out a marker and put a large "T" on Caleb's forehead. He then looked at his watch and marked the time under the "T", followed by a "LEFT WRIST" under that.
"What are you doing now?" Irma asked. "This will let medical professionals know that he has a turnoquet as well as where it is and what time it was put on." Robert explained.
"Hey guys!" Taranee called out. "What is it?" Hay Lin asked. "Look!" Taranee replied as she pointed out the window.
The weather was mild and the sun was out. Hay Lin looked and saw a wall shaped cloud over the horizon.
"It's not over yet, only one side of the storm has passed and now we're in the eye of it." Hay Lin explained.
"Yep, it's only a brief break in the action before all hell starts breaking loose again." Robert added.
"At this point we only have a half-hour until the eyewall hits and things get ugly again." Hay Lin said.
"Then we'd better prepare ourselves while we have the chance." Will replied. "I agree, let's go!" Hay Lin replied. They went outside and shut off the gas and the electrical circuit breaker.
Angelo found a matress and placed it over the biggest window.
15 minutes until eyewall hits
The others got back inside as Cornelia looked after Caleb.
"OK, we need to find a spot where we'll ride out the rest of this storm, it's gonna come back and it's gonna be brutal!" Hay Lin said.
Hay Lin found a small hallway in the center of the house that had no windows and was surrounded by rooms and was next to the living room.
"OK, this will do, let's move him in here." Hay Lin instructed. Cornelia and Irma moved Caleb into the hallway while Robert and Angelo found a small table and moved it towards the hallway.
They tipped it on one end and moved it into the open doorway leading to the hallway from the living room, creating a sheild.
5 minutes until the eyewall hits
"OK, this is it, this is where we'll ride out the rest of this storm!" Hay Lin said as she and the others sat down.
Sure enough, five minutes later, the sky darkened again and the winds sped up rapidly. Massive rainfall also began coming down on them as the eyewall hit hard. Several minutes into the action, water from a swelling river began pouring into the house.
"SHIT!" Irma exclaimed. "Damn, it's flooding!" Robert added.
"There's likely a dam, levee or river that's overflowing and flooding the area." Hay Lin explained. "We gotta get to higher ground or we're all gonna drown!" Will added.
"OK, see if you can find a ladder!" Hay Lin instructed. Eric went and found a ladder nearby.
"OK, set that up, we're going for the attic." Hay Lin instructed. Irma went up the ladder and opened the attic access panel.
She was relieved to find that the wind had not ripped the roof off and climbed up and in. The others climbed up behind her and got into the attic.
Several minutes later, Irma got out her battery-powered radio and turned it on. The report indicated that the hurricane has left the area but the water is continuing to rise.
Sure enough, a minute later, They felt water coming up from below.
"Damn, the water's still rising!" Irma exclaimed. "OK, we're gonna have to bust through this roof." Hay Lin instructed. Robert and Angelo felt for weak spots and eventually found one.
Eric found a bed frame and handed it to Robert. Angelo helped Robert as he struck the roof panel with the bed frame.
Once the panel was loose, Robert put down the bed frame and sat down on his back. He then kicked repeatedly until the panel almost came off. They then pushed the panel off and climbed out. The winds have died down, but there was still some light rain.
They saw a woman sitting on the roof of the house next to them.
As they looked on, the woman spotted a small boat floating several yards away and got up. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Irma asked loudly.
"DON'T GO INTO THE WATER!" Hay Lin commanded as the woman jumped into the water. The woman ignored their shouts and continued swimming towards the boat.
As she got close, an alligator snuck up on her and gripped its jaws onto her leg.
"GRAB ITS ARM AND TWIST IT! TWIST ITS ARM!" Hay Lin instructed.
The woman grabbed the alligator's arm and twisted it as hard as she could. The alligator released its grip and swam away.
"OK, now swim hard! Come towards us!" Hay Lin shouted. The woman swam towards the house and Hay Lin and Irma pulled her out.
"Are you alright? Are you OK?" Cornelia asked.
"My leg, it hurts!" the woman, who appeared to be in her late twenties said. They looked and saw blood coming from the wounds on her right leg.
Cornelia grabbed a towel and gently wrapped it around the wound. She was careful not to dress the wound too tightly, accounting for the risk of infection associated with alligator bite wounds.
"OK, we're gonna have to make a raft so we can get off this rooftop." Hay Lin said.
"Or...maybe not!" Irma said as she pointed to a small boat that was drifting towards the roof. "I don't know, it looks too small to hold all of us." Taranee said.
"Hang on, tie off that boat, I have an idea!" Hay Lin instructed. Cornelia grabbed a rope and tied one ond to the boat once it drifted within reach.
She held on to the other end and tied it to the gutter. The group carefully climbed in and once the boat was full, there were still four people left.
"OK, we're gonna have to make a raft to hold the last four people and tow it with the boat. It takes one gallon of bouyancy to float 8 pounds of weight. Four people would be about six hundred pounds, so we need at least seventy-five gallons of bouyancy to carry the weight." Hay Lin explained.
The others helped gather the supplies for the raft. They found three storage bins in the attic that had 25 gallons of bouyancy apiece.
Robert sealed the bins off with duct tape and Angelo tied them together with electrical cords from the attic.
The others tied a section of the rooftop and a door onto the bins with duct tape and more cords.
They then placed the raft into the water and tied it to the back of the boat. They grabbed several two-by-fours to use as oars.
Taranee, the woman from the other house, Hay Lin and Eric got onto the raft while the others got into the boat.
They then started rowing out towards a relief center, staying over the roads.
Thirty minutes later, they reached the edge of the water and walked towards a Red Cross disaster relief center three blocks away.
The woman introduced herself as Jessica and the others introduced themselves to her.
They reached the center and got Caleb and Jessica to the medical section. Robert told the nurse about the markings on Caleb's forehead and pointed out the turnoquet.
Thanks to Hay Lin's knowledge and quick thinking, the group managed to work together to ride out the hurricane and survive.