Disaster in Paradise. Amanda Bath

to the beat of helicopter blades as rescue crews and media were ferried up the lake. CBC News reported that Vancouver’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) task force was on the ground with heavy lifting equipment, assisting the rescue effort. But the weather was not cooperating. Violent thunderstorms in the early hours of Saturday had knocked out power lines and brought down trees on the Argenta–Johnson’s Landing road.

      I looked out on the grey, drizzly day; it matched my mood. I was cold and my chest felt constricted. My summer sandals were sodden and beginning to peel apart. I envied Christopher his suitcase of clothes and three pairs of shoes. And his passport! All my identity documents were lost, including my British and Canadian passports. I’d booked another flight to visit my mother, departing for London in mid-August. How would I manage that trip now?

      Uli and Seán helped us prepare toast and eggs for breakfast, and Uli distracted me and made me laugh with stories of his chickens, ducks and geese at their homestead. After breakfast Uli and Seán left for appointments in Trail, two hours’ drive away. Christopher sat down to call friends in the Landing. Most of the phone lines seemed to be working. As an experiment I dialed our number. It rang and rang, somewhere out there in the void. Obviously the line had been ripped out, but callers were going to wonder why the answer machine didn’t pick up. I imagined our big telephone/fax machine encased in mud, swept rudely off the beautiful curved and varnished wooden shelf Christopher had recently built for it beside the chimney.

      I left Christopher to his phone calls and went out bareheaded, scuffling along in my broken sandals, to see if the thrift store, beside the Mohawk gas station, might enlarge my wardrobe. Honora Cooper, president of the hospital auxiliary society that runs the thrift store, greeted me warmly in their tiny brick building. She’d already instructed her volunteers to let the “Johnson’s Landing refugees” take anything we needed, free of charge. I gratefully grabbed a bright blue rain jacket, pants, a black wool sweater and a white shirt. But footwear would be more difficult. Second-hand shoes usually felt wrong, and anyway, the store had nothing remotely suitable that day.

      In the street outside the thrift store, three local women stood in a huddle, deep in conversation, raincoats dripping, umbrellas up. They recognized me, put down their umbrellas in order to hug me, and asked how I was doing and what Christopher and I needed. I gazed at the kindly faces and didn’t know what to say. What did we need? Well… just about everything. Every time I tried to grapple with this subject I was overwhelmed and went blank. I could barely string words together. But some needs were mundane and immediate and I was able to reel off a few of them: toiletries, a hairbrush and comb, tweezers and a magnifying mirror, moisturizing face cream. And shoes.

      The Red Cross had set up its headquarters a couple of blocks from our house, in the Kaslo Seniors’ Hall on Fourth Street. I crossed the road from the thrift store in my new rain jacket and poked my head round the door. Jillian and John were waiting to be interviewed. I went in and embraced them. John’s face was ashen. I badly wanted to ask him about his escape, but he looked fragile and I didn’t like to raise the subject just then.

      Jillian looked exhausted but resolute. Like me she was in the same clothes she’d been wearing three days ago. Her grim expression told me they were going to do their damnedest to get through this nightmare. They’d stayed two nights with our friends Gail Spitler and Lynne Cannon in the Landing, and were off to stay in a Nelson hotel after lunch, while they used their emergency vouchers for clothes and provisions. Ann MacNab had got word to them from her palliative care bed in the hospital, to offer temporary accommodation in her house in Howser, north of Kootenay Lake. She and Jillian were old friends.

      “How generous of her,” I said. “Have you found Tumbles?”

      Jillian shook her head. “They won’t let us look for him. Too dangerous.”

      “What a worry for you,” I said, thinking of my dream, and Ozzie’s ominous and sorrowful countenance, feeling sorry I’d brought up the subject of cats.

      Al, the Red Cross team leader, was upbeat and welcoming, introduced me to their team of four, and offered coffee and cookies. He told me to come back with Christopher for an interview. Meanwhile I should write down our immediate needs on the flip chart next to his desk. I wrote: “size nine women’s trainers, orthopaedic pillow, small backpack, MacBook computer to borrow,” followed by our names, phone number and address.

      I noticed that our Landing neighbours Colleen O’Brien and Patrick Steiner had listed diapers and other baby needs. This information told me they’d evacuated from Kootenay Joe Farm with their three-week-old baby son, Maël. Colleen’s parents, Patrick and Carol, must be here too: they’d arrived in the Landing on Tuesday, elated to meet their first grandchild. I wondered where they were staying, and what Patrick and Colleen were doing about the farm animals left behind in the Landing. Too exhausted to enquire, I drifted out of the seniors’ hall, enveloped in a mental fog. Osa would know where they were.

      I wandered back to the house, damp, shivery and decidedly unwell. I’d had a slight cough ever since I got back from England but thought nothing of it. Since the boat trip it was much worse; my chest felt gripped as though by a tight band of metal. I couldn’t remember anything quite like it. I felt almost frightened as I walked along, gasping for air between coughing fits.

      As I reached our yard two cars drew up. I opened the front door and shouted up the stairs to alert Christopher, then greeted Linda Portman and Maggie Crowe, who introduced themselves as local volunteers working on behalf of the provincial Emergency Social Services (ESS) program. They would be providing us with vouchers for basic supplies. I didn’t know Linda, but Maggie was a former, long-time resident of Johnson’s Landing. She gave me one of her powerful bear hugs. Maggie’s a lady of substance, tall and broad, and I felt reassured by her solid embrace.

      Michelle Mungall, our provincial Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), and her partner, Zak, got out of the second car. Young, attractive and dynamic, Michelle introduced herself, commiserated with us and requested permission to join our meeting to help her assess how BC’s emergency response service functioned in practice. I welcomed everybody, and the four visitors and I hurried indoors out of the rain, depositing a sodden pile of boots, shoes and dripping jackets in the entranceway. We searched out extra chairs so everyone could sit around the dining room table. I sat between Michelle and Zak. The doorbell rang. Colleen O’Brien’s father, Patrick, had seen the entourage arrive and asked if he might join us, on behalf of his daughter and son-in-law, as he had a few questions.

      Christopher and I were hungry for news. Linda told us briefly about Thursday. She’d been stationed at the community hall on the south side of the Landing in the afternoon, assisting residents who wanted to evacuate. There was no power, and the hall had no phone; it was hot and uncomfortable, and it took several hours to come up with an evacuation plan. She’d driven back on Friday with Maggie, this time using Gail Spitler and Lynne Cannon’s home north of the landslide area, as it was a much more comfortable place to base their reception centre.

      Linda, clearly exhausted, had dark lines under her eyes. She explained she’d been called on to lead the ESS response because the chief emergency coordinator was away. What irony! After years preparing for an emergency, when a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions hits the West Kootenay, the lead person misses it. The rest of the team looked as if they’d been thrown in the deep end.

      Linda and Maggie took their time filling out the ESS forms (in triplicate), worrying whether they’d completed them correctly. We made sympathetic noises; the ladies seemed a little overwhelmed by their task and in need of encouragement. Maggie slid the paperwork over to me. I tried to concentrate on the intimidating sheaf of forms and instructions, then gave up and let the conversation wash over me, hoping Christopher was taking in the information. I wished there were a simpler way: perhaps a credit card topped up with a designated amount of cash we could use where and when we needed.

      I looked blankly at the vouchers. We’d picked Walmart—it had the most complete stock of clothing in Nelson—($150 each); a second Walmart voucher ($50 each) for incidentals like toiletries, medications and pet food (how I wished we still had pet food requirements). A third voucher ($315) would get us groceries from the largest Kaslo grocery store; and the last