Twisted

Hello? Anyone home? Hello?

The back door is wide open. The whole neighborhood reeks with the rotten-egg smell of Mercaptan and the fresh flesh of sheered trees.

Hello?

We step inside and look around. The curtains lay like lank hair with a part in it. This was a carefully tended apartment at one point, you can tell. Photos are framed. There are throw pillows on the couch. There’s a vacuum cleaner.

Maybe just after a marriage broke up, or a child got sick, or the working hours got longer, household chores had been curtailed, but the intentions remained. Anyway, there's no telling. This is just speculation, even though it's not our business to speculate. Our business is to search and rescue people.

Hello? Is there anyone here? ...

But you cannot help but to speculate. Who lived here? Where are they now? What was life like in this third-story apartment up until eight hours ago, before the tornadoes hit. The bathroom hadn't been cleaned in a while, but that’s none of our business. Laundry lay in a heap on the floor, impounding toys in the doorway to a child's room, and that’s none of our business either.

We can assume that eight hours ago the fridge wasn't upended, and that packages of thawing beef weren’t scattered.

We step with care, sensitive that this is someone's sacred space — or was — and sensitive that the ceiling could cave in, or the roof. But with little light and all this gear on — the bulky, multi-layered turn-out gear of the firefighter — you cannot help but to trip into things, like the packages of meat, sending them sliding like hockey pucks across the linoleum.

Hello? Anyone home?

Six hours earlier, we were in our own homes — homes with photos in frames. Maybe if it were the other way around and emergency crews were walking among our wreckage, they’d draw their own baked and half-baked conclusions by the disarray of scuffed dress shoes intermixed with the scuffed work boots, or by the pink, heart-shaped sticky-notes that contain mundane reminders.

Hello? Anyone home?

But the historic storm of Wednesday, June 1, misses us here in Monterey as it heads east toward Springfield and gathers into funnel clouds whose claw marks would extend nearly 40 miles. Three people are killed, including a 39-year-old mother who saved the life of her 15-year-old daughter by shielding her with her body in the bathtub.

Thousands more are displaced, including whoever lived in this apartment.

+ + +

It’s Wednesday, June 1. As 7 p.m. approaches, we members of the Monterey Fire Department gather for our weekly drill night. In the station someone speaks of how Springfield just got walloped by a storm.

Yeah?

Yeah.

We turn up the radio and listen. Disjointed directives are given amidst the clipped chatter of crisis. A state of emergency has been called. Here in Berkshire County, emergency crews are being mobilized under the protocol of the statewide Fire Mobilization Plan. Within minutes, Fire Chief Shawn Tryon gets the call for an engine company to join what becomes “Berkshire Task Force II.”

With a crew left behind to cover any emergencies in Monterey, six of us climb aboard Engine 1 — Asst. Chief Maynard Forbes, Capt. Mark Makuc and Firefighters Rick Andrus, Scotty Sheridan, Julio Rodriguiz, and myself. (Incidently, Capt. Makuc and Capt. Del Martin played “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to determine which of them would go.They don’t teach that at the Fire Academy.)

Soon, the six of us are rumbling along Interstate 90 heading east, joining an impressive, forward-charging fleet of emergency vehicles from throughout South County.

We stare out the window. We hydrate. We feel our pockets for rope, webbing and bolt cutters. We try to imagine what we’re heading into. We’re ushered into the parking lot of the Basketball Hall of Fame, where emergency operations are being mobilized. Freshly budded oak leaves are scattered on the ground like confetti, our signal so far that something unusual happened here.

By 1 a.m. we’re joined with fire companies from around the state, and we head into the destruction. Roofs have been ripped off. Facades dangle. Bricks from old row houses are embedded in the vinyl siding of distant dwellings.

We knock upon closed doors. We break and enter. The one with the open door is the eeriest. Maybe at one time that door would open in a welcome embrace. Now it’s an open wound. All along the streets, buildings lean into each other like mumbling drunkards in a 2 a.m. tavern. No doubt they will soon be declared condemned.

Hello? Anyone here?

No one's home, no one anywhere. We won’t find out the details until we read about it at home the following day — of how shelters are set up and teeming with the shell-shocked.

Until then, we only know what we see: ruin.

In the early morning hours, we finally come upon residents as we pull into an outer ring of the city where tidy neighborhoods have been turned upside down. Families are weeping on front lawns. Neighbors are consoling each other. Scores of huge oak trees lie in state upon roofs and cars. These neighborhoods won’t see shade for a generation. We're told to knock on the doors of any damaged homes. If no one answers, break through and search. No one we encounter is injured. It seems miraculous.

And the volunteers are pouring in from all over the region, bringing in food, medicine and clothing. The Salvation Army pulls up in a lunch wagon and serves us pasta, chili, stew, cold drinks, crackers, and hot coffee.

"Thank you," we say.

"No — thank you," they say.

By 10 a.m., our work is done. We’re given orders to pull out as the National Guard pulls in. Residents line the streets taking video and photos of us as we pass. They wave and even blow kisses. Some firefighters in the caravan lean out the windows taking video and photos of them. For a moment, mobilized humanity and immobilized humanity cannot keep their eyes off each other.

For us, a night’s sleep is lost to a dark evening in downtown Springfield, including in an empty apartment with an open door.

Hello? Is anyone home?

No one is home there. And they probably won’t be ever again. But it seems hard to believe, so we set the refrigerator back into place, just in case. And when we leave, we shut the door.