Survivors (8 page)
Authors: Rich Goldhaber
“While I’m gathering the tools we’ll need to
change the wiring, why don’t you drive back to the
apartments and find the main electrical utility box.
I saw it near the complex’s main entrance. Get inside and turn off the main circuit breakers. Then
go to all of the apartment buildings in the complex
and turn off the power. When you’re done, you can
come back here and make sure I don’t get electrocuted.”
I drove back to the apartment complex and
found the large utility box near the entrance. Rebecca showed me where the tool shed was located,
and I destroyed the lock on the utility box with a
couple of well-directed blows from a heavy hammer. I’m not very technically inclined, but I found
the circuit breakers and pulled them out of their
receptacles.
It took me almost an hour to find and disengage the circuit breakers from the electrical service boxes on the sides of each apartment building.
By the time I returned to the energy plant, George
had found everything he needed to reroute the wiring. First he checked with a voltmeter to make sure
the power from the solar field was disengaged.
He had found several fifty foot sections of
heavy duty wire. They must have been at least one
inch in diameter, and George had stripped the insulation from both ends of the wires. He then removed the power input wires from Florida Power
and Light going to the North Lake Village distribution panel and attached one end of each of the
heavy wires to the input terminal on the distribution panel.
It took both of us to string the heavy wires
over some pieces of equipment. George wanted to
make sure the wires weren’t lying on the concrete
floor where they could get wet. George began working on the solar field power control panel. He removed the inputs from Florida Power and Light
and then removed the output wires leading to the
engineering campus. They would no longer receive
electrical power.
Finally he hooked up the other ends of our
fifty foot wires to the output terminals of the control panel. “Now,” he said, “power from the solar
field will go directly to our complex during the day.
While you were gone, I checked on the system performance specs. We’ll be using just fifteen percent
of the solar field’s maximum output; it can supply
almost a quarter million watts if we need it. That
should be more than enough to meet our shortterm needs. I’ve got some ideas on how we can get
some power during the nights, but I’ll discuss that
with the others tonight.”
“So are we ready to throw the switches?”
“We are; do you want to do the honors?”
yours.”
George stood at the control panel and threw
several large circuit breakers. He then walked over
to the North Lake Village distribution panel and
checked the voltage. “We’re good to go; we’ve got
power.”
He threw the circuit breakers on the outputs of the distribution panel, and once again confirmed the voltage. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s go over to
the apartments and turn things on.”
George checked for voltage at the apartment complex utility box, and after confirming the
presence of electrical power, he activated more circuit breakers. George smiled and said, “Let’s have
everyone gather outside building H for a little ceremony.”
Ten minutes later, everyone in the area had
gathered outside the building. Mary held little Carla while Jack and Bobby played in a nearby pile of
sand. George smiled and said, “Let there be light.”
He threw the main circuit breakers and
several lights came on inside the building. More
importantly, the air-conditioning unit on the side
of the building started up. Everyone clapped and
why not, we would now have the comforts of cool
apartments during the day. George bowed graciously and everyone gave him hugs and high-fives.
While the others fine-tuned the electrical
power to the apartments, I decided to head over to
the water filtration plant over on Alico Road.
The team at the water filtration plant was
busy assembling the solar array on the plant’s flat
roof. Jessie, who was working on the electrical system, stopped what she was doing and updated me
on the group’s progress. “We found a 6000 watt
solar kit in Opti-Solar’s warehouse. The kit has
everything we need to power the well pump and
some other key equipment. We also took some
Hawker gel batteries. At 24 volts they can each
generate 1100 amp-hours of power.”
need batteries?”
“We’ll use the extra electricity from the solar array to charge the batteries during the day. At
night, there’s enough power stored in the batteries
to keep the pump running, so we should have water pressure 24/7.”
Bill was supervising the assembly of the array on the roof, and Jessie was working on mounting the inverter to generate AC voltage just inside
the entrance to the building. I climbed the ladder
to talk to Bill. To my untrained eyes, it looked like
they were making good progress. They had completed the assembly of mounting rails on the roof
and were now carefully attaching the solar panels
to the rails. About half of the panels had been attached. I asked Bill the status of the project.
“We should finish the arrays by lunch tomorrow. Jessie’s just about done with the mounting of the inverter, and by the end of the day today,
we should be finished with all the electrical work.
We should be able to fire things up by the end of
the day tomorrow unless we run into problems.”
I yelled to the group. “Hey everybody,
George finished getting power to the apartments,
and I’m pleased to report we now have lights and
air-conditioning, at least during the daylight
hours.”
After the shouts of approval died down, I
climbed down the ladder and found Jessie waiting
at the bottom. “Let me give you some of these gel
batteries. I’ll bet George can use a couple dozen to
help provide power at night. Explain what we’re
doing here. I think he’ll want to do the same thing
at the apartments. A couple dozen batteries should
be more than enough.”
As I drove back to the apartments, I
thought about what extraordinary things people
could accomplish in the midst of a catastrophe.
Necessity is absolutely the mother of invention.
Back at North Lake Village, people were
hard at work preparing the apartments for their
new residents. Beth had the two boys helping prepare the evening meal. She was going back and
forth between the kitchens in two adjacent apartments. Beth sort of looked like everybody’s grandmother. She was a little overweight but seemed to
handle the extra baggage well as she supervised
the young kitchen help.
Mary, who was in her early sixties, looked
like she could climb Mount Everest with no training. She was having problems assembling Carla’s
new crib in one of the bedrooms. “You’re just the
man I want to see.”
“We’ve got a health and safety issue. We
found two dead bodies when we opened up the
apartments. The insects were having a feast. I’m
sure there’re dozens of bodies all around the campus. We need to get them buried as soon as possible and disinfect the apartments with concentrated
bleach or we’re going to risk spreading some pretty
terrible diseases, and we’ve all had our fill of terrible diseases.”
“I know there’s a nursing school on campus. I’ll check things out. I’m betting they have
hazmat suits. Maybe one of the guys can find a
tractor with a backhoe, and we can bury them all
in a common grave.”
“George and I found one body in the energy
plant, and there were a couple of rats taking their
time with the banquet. Let’s talk about it at dinner
tonight. We’ll divert some resources tomorrow to
make it happen.”
I spent the next hour helping Mary finish
assembling Carla’s crib. The assembly instructions
appeared to be written for a previous version of the
crib and never updated, and it took several attempts before we got it right. We moved Carla from
the carpeted floor to her new home, and she expressed her approval by depositing a smelly load in
her diaper.”
I found Beth and asked her what was for
dinner. She smiled, “We’ve got soup and Chef Boyardee Ravioli, and I made a few apple pies for dessert.”
“The girls found everything I needed when
they robbed Wynn’s yesterday, and now that
George gave us power, I used the electric ovens to
bake the pies.”
I gave Beth a hug. “From now on, you are
officially our Head Chef, as long as you’re willing to
accept the honor.”
Sporting a Cheshire cat grin she answered,
“I would consider it a rare privilege and indeed an
honor to become this community’s Head Chef.”
“Nope, it’s on a first come first pick basis,
and if I were you I’d pick something on the ground
floor facing the beach. It’s got a nice view and you
can relax in an easy chair on the beach anytime
you want.”
I chose a three bedroom apartment facing
the beach, just as Beth had advised. The previous
tenants had been two gals and a lucky guy. I guess
I was born too soon and missed out on these new
co-ed living arrangements. I decided to use the
largest bedroom and moved all of the girl’s clothes
in the closet into the second bedroom.
The sound of an airplane circling overhead
caught my attention. By the time I arrived outside
the building everyone was looking up into the sky
and pointing to the small bright-yellow Piper Cub
circling overhead. Jack and Bobby were jumping
up and down.
The airplane finally lined up with the
straight section of the road Blaine had mentioned
and then disappeared behind a grouping of trees. A
minute later the small plane taxied into our
apartment’s parking lot. Blaine headed for a far
corner and killed the engine.
He had a white silk scarf wrapped around
his neck, and he looked like one of those World
War I fighter pilots. The boys raced over to the
plane. Blaine lifted them both into the cockpit, and
they waved to the rest of us.
The crowd gathered around him, wanting to
hear all about his exploits. Like the perfect showman, he kept us all in suspense for a few moments
as he slowly removed his scarf, rolled it up, and
put it in the pocket of his brown leather jacket.
“I flew down to Marco Island. There’s a
group of sixteen down there. They said they’ve
checked things out and that appears to be everyone who survived. I told them about our group and
explained we were setting up shop at the university. They want to join our little club, and they said
they would drive up tomorrow. They seemed like
nice people. One woman looked like she was still in
shock over the death of her husband.
“On the way back, I flew over Fiddler’s
Creek, and there were another dozen people waving
as I circled overhead. There was no place to land,
so I dropped a parachute message down to them.”
“It said we were all gathering here at the
university. Then I flew over East Naples and found
two small groups, and I threw down messages to
those people too.”
think you saw?”
Blaine answered, “Maybe three dozen in total, but maybe they told others.”
“We’re going to have to open up another two
apartment buildings for sure, maybe three or four,”
I said.
I looked around our apartment complex.
There were over twenty buildings similar to ours.
Each building had eighteen apartments, and they
could each hold at least three people. With some
quick math, it came to accommodations for a little
over 1000 people. If we began to pull people from
the Tampa or Miami areas, we could easily reach
well over 1000 residents. We were definitely going
to need more infrastructure.
The boys jumped out of the airplane cockpit
and ran up to Blaine. “We want a ride; when can
we have a ride?”
weeks I’ll take you both for a ride.”
A convoy of trucks and cars from the water
filtration plant arrived, and Bill was still projecting
tomorrow afternoon for starting up the water. Beth
emerged from her kitchen and explained dinner
was going to be served on the beach, just outside
the two apartments she was using as her community kitchen.
Beth had set things up as a buffet line. She
stood behind the kitchen counter and ladled out
bowls of soup and dishes of ravioli. Slices of pie
were already plated and waiting for us to take to
the picnic tables just outside the building. A variety of bottles and cans of soda and juice completed
our menu. Everyone thanked Beth, and she was
clearly enjoying her new role.
George, Bill, Jessie, Stan, Mary, Blaine and
I sat down at one of the picnic tables and discussed tomorrow’s workload. I explained the need
to find and bury the dead bodies around the university campus. Mary stated in no uncertain terms
the importance of the task. “So how will we do it?” I
asked.
Mary said, “I took Carla for a walk in the
stroller we found at the kid’s store. We walked over
to the nursing school. I found a couple of hazmat
suits. Not only that, but they had a completely outfitted operating room. If someone needs to be
stitched up, we can take them there.
“Here’s my recommendation. We’ll need a
backhoe to dig a burial trench, someplace far away
from the apartments. Someone should drive over to
a Bed Bath and Beyond store and get us all of the
plastic mattress pads they can find. We’ll wrap up
the dead bodies and then transport them to the
gravesite.”
Stan said, “They must have one of those
backhoes somewhere on the campus. They might
also have a front loader. We’ll need both to dig the
trench and bury them. I’ll look for one tomorrow,
and if I don’t find any here, then I know where I
can get them.”