Featured article from Times Magazine's October 2008 issue 'Remembering Raccoon'
ESCAPING THE NIGHTMARE.
Ten years after the Raccoon City disaster, a silent plague is claiming survivors' lives.
Barbara Metzger
A PEACEFUL BREEZE BLOWS though the Hamilton family's three-season room. Across from us, Doctor George Hamilton turns to the screen-window and smiles. Outside, his two sons, Matthew and Dylan, throw a Frisbee back and forth while the family's six month-old Labrador gives chase. Cindy Hamilton, George's wife of nine years, enters the room and perches on his recliner's arm. She runs a hand though his hair and follows his gaze outside.
The scene in the Hamilton family's rural Pennsylvania home could be described as idyllic: an affirmation that the American Dream of comfortable wealth, of safety and happiness, is still obtainable. However if one were to scrutinize, they would notice that Cindy Hamilton wears long sleeves to cover the scarring on both arms, or that George has aged prematurely and is missing enough fingers to keep him out of the operating room. The disparity doesn't stop with the residents, for though much of the Hamilton home is colourful and child-friendly; the family office door is closed, forbidding. And rightly so; the room remains off-limits to the energetic boys.
"They're good kids." George Hamilton opens the door and leads us in. "They understand and respect the work that goes on in here."
Inside is an overcrowded archives. Three bookshelves, filled with three-ring binders and banker's boxes, take up the far wall. A partially-buried computer sits in one corner. A telephone with a neck-rest sits nearby. The room's most interesting feature is opposite wall, where a pair of oversized bulletin-boards stands in place of the usual boastful display of plaques and certificates. Tacked to the boards are over a dozen sheets of printed paper: long lists of names, addresses and phone numbers. Some of the contact information has been hand-edited, an address change here, a new area-code there, but the dismayingly curious detail is that many of the names have been stricken through. And while most have been printed with the strikethrough, several have been added in red ballpoint.
George notices our scrutiny and shrugs. "I need to reprint my list. This one is six months old, and it's getting pretty messy looking."
He explains that the bulletin board contains the most accurate list of the Raccoon City disaster's civilian survivors. In total, one-thousand one-hundred and twelve people make up the list. For accuracy's sake George's name, along with his wife's, is printed near the bottom of the second page. George, a cardiac surgeon at Raccoon City Hospital prior to the outbreak, along with Cindy and three others had escaped Racoon City in the early hours of October first, fortunate enough to avoid infection and catch one of the last helicopters to leave the doomed city before the United States Military began its now-infamous final containment contingency.
By the end of the week, one-hundred thousand nine-hundred and eighty-two people had died in Raccoon City. Less than one percent of the civilian population survived the viral outbreak.
It is for this reason that the Hamilton Family's home office is significant. Inauspicious as it may seem, the room is headquarters to the Raccoon City Survivor's Support Foundation. George and Cindy Hamilton, along with a handful of other survivors, make up the grassroots organization. They operate on a grant from FEMA, as well as through private donations, and are dedicated to providing guidance and support to their fellow survivors. "We work in shifts." George explains. "There's always someone who will pick up the phone if a survivor runs into trouble. We offer basic counselling, links to further counselling if needed. We help with disability payments. We've got a couple lawyers that help us with advocacy cases."
Another of the Foundation's tasks is organizing yearly survivor reunions. George explains that often times this is the foundation's most important work. "The Raccoon City Disaster was unlike anything humanity had experienced to that point. A lot of what we've been hearing from other survivors is that most conventional counsellors just aren't capable of appreciating the trauma, coupled with the sense of betrayal, and hopelessness."
Cindy steps forward and points to a framed photo of the Racoon City Memorial, built in nearby Latham from iron and stone recovered from the wreckage of the city. "I lost my mother, two sisters. So many of us who escaped had nothing left."
"In this case there really is a fraternal bond between the survivors."George stops to link hands with his wife. "There's no cliché in the term strength in numbers. It's the isolation that's really killing us."
George goes on to explain that any name stricken off his list signifies that the survivor has died. If the name has an asterisk in the left margin, it indicates that the survivor had taken their own life. Of the three-hundred thirty-nine crossed out names, ninety-three have asterisks. Compared with a national suicide rate of (one in one-hundred) the disproportionately high number speaks for itself.
Cindy points out a name from the list. "We escaped with her. Young girl, very bright, worked for Umbrella. We tried to keep in touch with her after, but she drifted away. Two years ago she swallowed a bottle of prescription antidepressants. She didn't leave a note." She points out another name: a Raccoon City police officer who had been hit by a taxi as he left a bar after a night of binge-drinking. The coroner's report listed the cause as death my misadventure, but as far as the Hamiltons are concerned, the officer's death can also be traced to Racoon City.
Although no official study has ever been conducted to uncover and eventually stem the spate of unnecessary death, the numbers speak for themselves. A Raccoon City Disaster survivor is at ten times the risk of premature death than the average population.
George goes on. "As of right now right now. The CDC starts ringing alarm bells as soon as a flu variation with a mortality rate of one percent shows up. The Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 had a mortality rate of just over two percent. In 2005, the president lobbied congress for another six billion dollars for a national strategy to safeguard against influenza. A Raccoon City survivor has an annual mortality rate of about three percent, and the government does little to nothing to stop it. It's an epidemic. I don't use that term lightly, and the oath I took as a doctor insists that I treat the disease."
What is unfortunate for Raccoon City's dwindling pool of survivors is that George Hamilton seems to be only doctor on the case.
AN: Hey Kids! Creepy Uncle CJJS is back, and he brought you a present.
Please be kind. this was written in about two hours, and I think it might show.
