Читать книгу No Ordinary Heroes: - Demaree Inglese - Страница 13

That afternoon, while I was busy prepping my house and scouring the city for supplies, Captain Allen Verret and his deputies were readying the Correctional Center for the coming onslaught. By midafternoon they had everything under control except for securing the sallyport, the gated loading zone at the back of the building.

After taking inventory of supplies and equipment, Verret had dispersed flashlights, batteries, rain gear, and olive-green work clothes to the hurricane contingent of thirty-five deputies stationed in the building. Because more than a hundred people would take shelter in the building, he ordered staff to haul new prison mattresses out of storage, then modified security routines to permit easy movement between administrative floors. He hated having to prop open the steel doors to the fire escape stairwell—it ran the entire height of the building, including the floors that held the inmate tiers—but for now it would be too difficult to monitor the many people going up and down.

“Skyles!” Verret called. “Maintenance is on the way with the pumps. Get the crew and meet me in the sallyport.”

“Right away,” the deputy said, striding away. Thirty, tall, and a solid 270 pounds, Richard Skyles was ex-military with experience in handling explosives. He never flinched in dangerous situations, and Verret could always rely on him.

The captain took the elevator to the basement and walked outside through double steel doors. The sun was still shining, but a few white clouds were beginning to gather.

The sallyport was a short, wide driveway that descended from the street into the basement of the Correctional Center. Sandwiched between that building and the warehouse, the steep drive was bordered by concrete buildings on both sides. A retractable gate halfway down the drive allowed deputies to securely load and unload inmates and supplies. Vans and delivery trucks pulled past the retracted gate and parked in front of the heavy doors Verret had just stepped through. Deputies did not open those doors until the retractable gate was closed and locked.

Verret scanned the concrete walls on either side. Securing the sallyport was necessary whenever a major storm threatened the city. In a heavy rain, the roads around the Correctional Center flooded. The basement end of the sallyport was six feet below street level. Unless deputies blocked off the entrance, street water would pour down the steep decline, forming a pool and flooding the basement. Even mild flooding would be catastrophic.

The Center’s outside generators had been raised several years ago to protect the machinery from flooding. The preventive measure was well-intentioned but had failed to take into account two vital facts: the power was channeled through the electrical room in the basement, and the additional height wasn’t enough to save the generators from a fifteen-foot storm surge. Verret had often wondered what “genius” architect had put the generator relays several feet below street level in a city that flooded, but that didn’t matter now. He had to cope with the problem as it existed.

When Skyles showed up with five other deputies, Verret put them to work hauling large steel posts and metal plates from their storage area at the bottom of the sallyport. The deputies carried seven of the four-foot posts up to the street and inserted them into anchors spaced across the driveway. The men sweated heavily in the August heat, and they gladly took a break when a maintenance truck arrived pulling a trailer with two diesel-powered pumps bolted to it.

Verret stood at the top of the drive, directing the truck between two of the metal posts. The sallyport didn’t have a roof, and the pumps were needed to remove the rainwater as it accumulated. The driver parked at the top of the drive, just behind the posts.

Next, Verret and his men carried six steel plates—eight feet by four feet—up the drive. It took three men to carry each one. The deputies carefully slid each plate into grooves on the steel posts and then sandbagged the joints.

After two hours of backbreaking work, Verret and his men finished the job. The assembled structure formed a steel wall from the Correctional Center to the warehouse, a temporary dam to keep flood water out of the sallyport.

“I’m glad that’s over,” Skyles said, wiping sweat off his face.

“Yeah, but we still have to get the pumps ready.” Verret stretched to work a kink out of his back.

The deputies attached two long suction hoses to the pumps on the trailer and extended them down into the deepest part of the drive. Next they connected two outflow hoses and draped them over the steel dam to drain into the street.

As Verret followed his men back into the basement, he glanced over his shoulder. When the sallyport began taking water, they would have to come back out to start the pumps. It wouldn’t be easy in a driving rain and punishing winds.

In the meantime, there were other, less complicated, but still critical preparations to be done. Verret sent deputies to remove tree branches, secure loose objects, and stack sandbags on the back porch. They distributed pillows and prison mattresses to civilians and set extra mops, buckets, and towels by the front and rear doors.

Then he went to check in with his deputies on the tiers. The inmate housing units had televisions, and Verret knew the prisoners would be following Katrina’s approach closely. Security was always on the acting warden’s mind, but there was no way to anticipate what the hurricane would bring…or when. They needed to be prepared for anything.