Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [45]
The first thing I noticed in Bridgeton was the amazing silence. There was an awe and drama about the place. Churches were missing their roofs. At the Ferguson Christian Church, they’d been watching Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ when the storm showed up. As the congregation watched Jesus being whipped, the roof was ripped off, frightening the bejesus out of them. They must have thought they’d been sent for. Meanwhile, the house next door and a big Buddhist temple further down the road were left untouched. I didn’t think for a moment that it meant anything significant, but it still amused me a lot.
The second thing that struck me was the cheeriness of everyone. The police, the fire service, the victims – they were all in a good mood. I visited a house in which only the concrete basement, where the family had hidden from the worst of the storm, was intact. A friend was helping them sort through the detritus, looking for valuables and anything of sentimental value. I introduced myself and asked a few questions about the house, or what was left of it.
The friend pointed at a pile of wood and rubbish. ‘This was the deck and the pool.’
‘This was the deck and the pool?’ It was a complete mess.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They were down in the basement.’
I looked. ‘This was their basement?’
‘Yes. Where the refrigerator is lying.’
‘They were down there? And they came up to see this?’ I pointed at the devastation.
‘Actually, I think he stuck his head out of that stairwell right there and just kind of looked around and said, “Our house has gone.”’
As we were chatting, Bridget, the daughter of the house, turned up. She was in great shape, just pleased that she and her family had survived unhurt.
‘Were you here when it happened?’ I said.
‘No. I had just recently moved out of the house, about three weeks ago.’
‘Good timing!’
‘Well, I left about half my stuff here. I hadn’t completely made it out of the house, so … good timing for me, but bad timing for my stuff!’
She was incredibly jolly. And yet, all around us, it was total chaos, as if vast garbage dumpsters had been turned upside down either on the houses or beside them.
‘I can’t imagine how it must have felt,’ I said. ‘What was the noise like?’
‘My dad said it sounded like a freight train was going right through the house. He said that the instant his ears popped, he knew it was coming. It was the pressure of the tornado.’
‘Is that when he was still up here?’ I pointed to where the deck had been.
‘As he was going down the steps. He made it down just before it hit.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘My dad was standing at the top of the steps, watching the news, looking out the window. My mum was already in the basement. My uncle called and said, “There’s a tornado that landed in Bridgeton. You guys need to be downstairs!” No sooner had he gotten down the steps than it hit.’
Her father sounded just like me – the type who ignores advice until the last possible moment. As soon as he locked the basement door behind him, it started to shake. Looking up the stairs, he could see debris flying everywhere.
Then Bridget told me that her father had recently been diagnosed with colon cancer, and he was recovering from surgery. On the day that the tornado hit, he was on a portable chemotherapy pump.
‘Oh my God!’ I said again.
‘It makes him feel pretty sick, but he’s been out here digging and doing his thing.’
Bridget explained that they had a couple of days to sift through the wreckage before everything would be bulldozed away and the clean-up operation would start.
‘So you’re just going through all this rubble, hoping to find precious things?’ I said.
‘Yes. We’ve found a couple of very, very valuable things, like my engagement ring. It was at my parents’ house, sitting on my night stand, and she found it in the rubble.’ Bridget