Sir? Do you have my pants?

Imagine this. A truck carrying barrels of acid crashes into a tanker truck filled with anhydrous ammonia, causing it to rupture and emit a plume of noxious vapor, which in turn causes a bus full of people to drive out of control and flip over and prompts an evacuation of the surrounding neighborhood.

All of this happened today. Ok, so the plume of gas wasn’t toxic, and the bus was flipped on its side before people climbed in it, and the evacuees were volunteers, but still! it was a crazy, crazy scene. The noise of the jaws of life cutting through the roof of the school bus was deafening, and the moulage dripping into my eye felt like real blood, and the lights and sirens of the fire trucks and ambulances were overwhelming. It especially felt real when one of the controllers came up to me and whispered, “so, if these barrels actually do start leaking around you, just get up and run. They really are filled with acid”. Oh you don’t say?

Firefighters dragged me out of the accident scene, cut me out of my clothes (surprise!), decontaminated me with a fire hose (pbleah!), and strapped me into a neck brace, stretcher, and head constraints. I was kind of stunned as they carried me away; my only thoughts were “but I liked those pants” and “where’s my shoe?”

 But after that flurry of activity, I think the controllers forgot about me. Apparently there was some breakdown in communication and the helicopters took off without me, and for two hours no one knew what to do with me. They finally decided to just take me away by ambulance…but I threw a minor fit about how I was supposed to go in a helicopter not some silly ambulance and for goodness sake would someone find my shoe?! Someone did find my shoe and, hallelujah, a call came on the radio that a helicopter was coming back for me!

Things got exciting again real quick. I was loaded into an ambulance, rushed to the landing zone, unloaded, wheeled up to the helicopter (blades thump-thump-thumping), loaded into the nose right next to the pilot (helicopter shake-shake-shaking), and then we were rising up and up into the air. It felt like riding an elevator on crack. One of the crew was nice and undid my headstraps so I could sit up and look around. It was awesome.

Soon we landed on the roof of the hospital and I was wheeled down the elevator and into the ER. Since I was literally the very last patient, they basically unstrapped me and said I was on my own because they were done pretending to take care of people. That was fine by me…except they left me wandering the hospital in a swimsuit and towel with fake blood coming down my face and no wallet and no phone. I had one of those funny and slightly hysterical moments where you think, “what happened in my life to get me to this point?” At least I had two shoes.

I finally found someone with a radio that let my coworker know I was left behind at the hospital (everyone else had already been bussed back). She came to pick me up soon after and was surprised to find me without any clothes. Apparently getting cut out of them was not supposed to be in the plan. This was concerning because now no one knew where my pants were…my pants that had my cell phone, wallet and car key, and were probably soaked and in the trash somewhere.

My coworker made an awesome broadcast on the radio “Attention all units, we have lost Rachel’s pants!” That got me a lot of jokes but not many leads as to the whereabouts of my pants. Luckily, after a few additional phone calls someone mentioned they thought Captain Bradley might have them.

Which is how I came to ask Fire Captain Bradley, “Excuse me, sir? Do you happen to have my pants?”

He did. I took my car key out of the pocket and I drove away, still mostly naked and rather bemused. Riding in a helicopter was just as cool as I hoped, but I little did I know what else I was getting myself into.

More photos here