Real-life Survival: Train Wreck Topples Town | The Survival Mom™

Living two miles from the wreck, my front door was blown open and I was rudely awakened to a house that had no light, no heat, and no phone. Seeing the glow rising from downtown, I knew something was very, very bad. I needed light, but all I could find was a couple of decorative candles. I knew I had a flashlight, but it was packed in the camping gear, and I needed a flashlight in order to find it. I tried to find a radio but all my radios required electricity. Without electricity, the engine heater that kept the oil in my car from congealing and the battery from freezing was not functioning, so I went outside to start the car in order to keep it running in case I had to leave. I turned on the car radio and tried to tune into the Emergency Broadcast System but found nothing but static. All Helena radio stations were off the air. All my life I had grown up listening to the Emergency Broadcast System doing radio checks: “This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an REAL emergency….” Now, it was a REAL emergency, and the Emergency Broadcast System, which was supposed to tell me what was happening and what to do, was no where to be found. As it turned out, the Emergency Broadcast System runs on electricity with a battery back-up, and the battery had gone dead within minutes at 29 below zero.
So, I did the only thing I could: I paced the kitchen floor, and waited for someone to tell me what to do.

image by Joseph.M.

It was only by great good fortune that no one was killed or injured that day, though the heart of my city was utterly shattered. By mid-morning, one radio station was on the air providing a steady stream of information and directions. The Red Cross was asking people with running cars to help with evacuation since there were so many citizens, particularly college students and elderly, who had no heat at home and dead batteries in their cars. So that’s what I spent my day doing: shuttling bewildered, shivering, weeping people around town, while gawking at the damage done to the homes and businesses of my friends and neighbors.

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