Overcome by another coughing fit, I wondered how on earth we’d cope with all these tasks. A mix of confusion and gratitude washed over me as I tried to take everything in. I was behaving like a zombie, but certainly had no wish to seem unappreciative. It was wonderful that the government offered this kind of immediate assistance. Disaster victims in so many other countries could only dream of receiving help like this.
Patrick O’Brien asked about the prospects of extracting their truck and camper, which were stuck in the Landing on the south side of the slide. All the belongings they’d brought from their home in Mission, BC, were in the camper. They wanted it in Kaslo, so they could stay close to Colleen, Patrick and baby Maël. Was there any plan for getting vehicles out? Linda and Maggie didn’t know.
The meeting broke up. After Linda and Maggie left I asked Patrick where the family was staying. “We’re just five doors away from you, in a rental house for one week. The Red Cross managed to find us a place, but it’s difficult at the height of tourist season. Kaslo’s full, and now there’s all the media needing accommodations too.” He went on, “The baby’s not feeding well; he’s still losing weight and Colleen’s worried. No one’s getting enough sleep.”
I said I’d come by sometime soon. Colleen and her husband, Patrick, our newest neighbours in the Landing, were young farmers just beginning to establish their farm on the stony mountainside, and their heritage seed business, Stellar Seeds. Now they also grappled with parenthood and all the worries of a first baby, still so tiny. I knew they were a resilient pair, endowed with the boundless energy and optimism of youth, but even so, what a blow it must have been to be wrenched from their home.
Zak and Michelle were the last to leave. Zak took me aside and asked about my cough. I told him the truth. “It’s been getting worse, and I’m finding it hard to breathe when I can’t stop coughing.” Zak told me he was a nurse practitioner and asked if he might thump my back. I readily agreed and he conducted a brief examination beside the dining room table. His diagnosis was that I possibly had pneumonia, adding “If you like, I’ll write you a prescription for antibiotics that you can pick up from the Kaslo pharmacy.” I’d never had pneumonia in my life. And I was amazed by the kind assistance, right in my home, tailor-made, when I needed it. I nodded, thanked Zak profusely and bent over a chair, wracked by another coughing fit.
After Zak and Michelle left, Christopher and I decided it was time we had our talk with the Red Cross and wandered over to the seniors’ hall. Al called out a greeting and introduced us to one of his volunteers, Nicholas Albright, who led us to a quiet room next door in the government building for our interview. Nicholas was like his name: bright, cheerful and positive. He spoke slowly and clearly, perhaps aware that traumatized people have short-term memory problems, and struggle to absorb information. He was originally from Birmingham; I was comforted by his English accent.
We must have looked dazed, sitting there in the empty office. I was usually the talkative one, but neither of us knew what to say. Nicholas understood, smiled warmly and, after learning Christopher’s line of work, suggested he might need a new pair of workboots. He was right. Of course! Christopher’s were gone. He has large, wide, difficult feet; new boots were always hard to fit, and they’d be expensive. In the state we were in I doubt we’d have thought of such a thing ourselves. Our unfolding list of needs was so extensive we couldn’t begin to identify individual items.
Nicholas asked if we needed new eyeglasses—another brilliant idea. He quickly phoned the shoe shop and the optician in Nelson and provided us with Red Cross payment vouchers. I folded the vouchers and tucked them away in my purse with the ESS vouchers. Nicholas also offered to keep Christopher’s file open for longer-term assistance to replace essential tools. We shook hands, grateful, tearful and exhausted. I’d never imagined being on the receiving end of Red Cross aid. I blinked back tears. “I thought the Red Cross only operated in other countries, responding to war, famine, national emergencies and disasters.” Nicholas smiled and replied, “Oh we have work here too. Mostly house fires in this part of the world. And natural disasters can happen anywhere, as you’ve just discovered.”
Christopher and I thanked him again as we left. We urgently needed to go home for a nap. The rain had stopped and the sun burst through the clouds. The streets steamed, and we peeled off layers of clothing and tied them round our waists as we walked the three blocks back home. How bright everything suddenly looked, freshly washed by the storms.
Our yellow and green house was cheery in the sunshine. The screen door stood slightly ajar. Between the screen door and the front door someone had propped a foam orthopaedic pillow. A black backpack hung on the doorknob, and a pair of size nine women’s trainers, wrapped in a grocery bag, sat beside the step. There were no notes to say who’d left them. Inside, I sat on the stairs bemused, thinking of the Biblical adage: “Ask and you shall receive.” The trainers fit perfectly. A message on the answering machine informed me that Randy Morse, a neighbour nearby, had an Apple laptop ready for me to borrow.
This was great news. Christopher headed for the bedroom and passed out within a few seconds. I longed to join him, but I urgently wanted that computer. I put off my nap and hurried up the street to Randy and Janet’s house, five minutes’ walk away. Randy brought out a silver case, badly scuffed and worn, with an impressive ding crumpling its lid. He laughed as he explained, “This old laptop has history. I accidentally dropped it over a cliff in the Himalayas, but it still works, at least for basic stuff like email.”
Accepting Randy’s loaner laptop with gratitude, I wondered what my own white MacBook, “Macaroon” as I called it, looked like now. I felt a twinge of horror at the thought of it, every orifice impacted by mud. It was ridiculous to feel a kinship with such things, but Macaroon had been my trusty servant in all matters technological, the holder of my addresses, memoirs, manuscripts, favourite websites; it remembered all my usernames and passwords. I had no idea how I’d piece together my world without it.
Back home, with the stuttering thumping of helicopters overhead, I plugged in Randy’s laptop and composed my first post-landslide email message, intended for family and friends around the world.
Dear ones,
I am using a borrowed laptop. Cannot really think straight. I twice escaped with my life only by a miracle in the past 48 hours. Thursday morning an enormous landslide took out much of Johnson’s Landing. It crushed our house and killed our cat. If I had been in the house I would have died. I was in Kaslo with a neighbour, whose house was also destroyed. Four other neighbours are missing.
I returned by boat Friday morning. Another slide came down and I only just made it back to the boat. There is nothing left. We have lost everything. We are in shock. People are kind. We have our Kaslo house but so much of value is gone. I have not told my mother, as in her precarious mental state it is better not to worry her.
You can see what happened by googling “Johnson’s Landing Slide.” I am interviewed in one clip. Please pray for us. We are devastated.
Much love, Mandy
Nobody was going to believe me—I barely believed it myself. Searching my webmail I found only a few names to send the email to; I hadn’t bothered to upload my contacts and I couldn’t email many other important people until I tracked down their addresses. Randy’s computer felt wrong, unfamiliar and clunky under my fingers. It held none of my information. It quit Safari when I tried to search for news online. Writing one email had been like trying to walk with my legs hobbled.
I flipped the lid closed.
My mind was a closet, packed tight with a mental inventory of things we’d lost; it was a deep closet. As I moved through the house, tidying up, washing cups, feeling the newness of shoes that weren’t in shreds, but weren’t new either, periodically the closet door opened just a crack and I’d remember something. A knife-blade of grief leapt out and stabbed me in the heart. I suppose we define ourselves through the things we choose to share our lives with, though I hadn’t made the connection