Author and Podcast Host:
Sandi Ault
Episode 10
Our country is falling off a cliff. Take it from someone who has spent some serious time on craggy canyon rims and treacherous slopes: when the structure of the surface beneath you starts to erode, fast-moving landslides can literally take away the ground on which you stand. In this country, we are all perched on the edge of a crumbling precipice right now.
This week, I’m going to skip the rant and start right off with a story from the WILD; and then I’ll come back to how it relates to the danger to our democracy. Get ready for a harrowing tale.
One late afternoon in spring, my fire radio sounded with a call for our volunteer department to respond for a rescue. The location: a mile marker along the county highway that snaked up the side of the mountain from the plains below. The road edged alongside towering stone bluffs on one side, and a precipitous descent—several hundred feet down—on the other. In those days, there were few guardrails along the winding course of this climbing, mostly-two-lane road.
It was not uncommon for us to receive a rescue call for a highway incident, especially near the end of a workday, when commuters from the flatlands drove up the mountain towards home—and, at the same time, tourists who had been visiting the national park high up in the peaks above us were headed back down that same county highway on the unbarriered rim side, which dropped away hundreds of feet to the river below.
Initially, only a handful of our team responded. Many on our crew worked outside of the valley and had not yet returned home. So a half dozen of us left the station in the engine and command vehicle; but more arrived in their personal cars on their way home, and donned their gear to help.
The incident occurred at midpoint on an S-curve, on the drop side of that two-lane stretch of the highway. A Toyota minivan transporting young people—tourists in their late teens and early twenties from Japan who had been visiting the national park—had veered too close to the rim, and the vehicle slid over the side and tumbled down a dozen feet or so into the arms of some gnarled Junipers growing out of the walls of the steep slope. The van had come alight on its side on a slender stone ledge not even as wide as the vehicle, leaving its wheels and the base—from midpoint to the rear of the van—hanging in thin air. The sliding doors had been opened on the topside, and most of the occupants of the van had gotten out and clawed their way back up the slope to stand on the side of the highway, where they waited for us, pointing excitedly into the abyss. But one young man had not gotten out in time and now stood in that opening hanging on to the roof rack and leaning inward towards the wall of the scarp in an attempt to use his weight to prevent the van from teetering into freefall. This was the first element of crisis we spotted. Another soon became evident: a young girl’s head emerged face-up from the ground just above the roofline of the van. The rest of her body was trapped beneath.
The first task was to stop traffic. We sent a firefighter in each direction to restrict all vehicles to rotating shifts in one direction at a time via the interior lane. This gave us the outer lane to work in. It was a hazardous challenge to control traffic on that steep, narrow road. Some folks drove too fast, and the curves made it hard to see emergency crews in advance, so it was protocol to place flares long distances on either side of an incident in hopes of slowing drivers before they arrived at the scene. It didn’t always work, and it was not uncommon to have a follow-on wreck at the traffic control points. But worse was having to try to stop (even to slow) an eighteen-wheeler or a concrete truck or other oversized vehicle barreling down the mountain. These rigs needed significant time and space to slow and stop. It often took a whole crew of people with flares, signs, and radios to coordinate traffic control alone. Our small team breathed a collective sigh of relief when our mutual aid partners from volunteer departments in the towns above and below arrived to take on this task.
We parked our engine across the road above us as a blockade to protect the team from any potentially reckless drivers as we worked, and we situated the command vehicle broadside on the downhill lane in order to use the winch on the front to help stabilize the van on the ledge below. As information officer, I ran comms, while the strongest, fittest firefighters on our squad got out ropes. A team of three went over the side, one with the massive steel hook attached to the cable and winch on the command vehicle. Their ropes were anchored on the engine and fed by two guys on top.
I asked dispatch to send two ambulances and a tow truck—a big tow truck like the ones that could pull a semi. We were going to need a lot of power to pick up the van from atop the trapped victim, and drag the vehicle back up over the rim. I walked to the edge of the precipice as I waited for confirmation. Looking straight down, I could see more than I had from inside the vehicle. The young woman lying beneath the steel and aluminum structure looked right at me, fully aware and awake, her face pointed straight upward. But her feet—just barely visible because of the van’s torqued and bent lower frame, were pointed in the opposite direction, straight down. She was contorted—one end up and one end down—and was stuck in that position. The frame of the van’s roof pinned her, while the rest of the vehicle teetered precariously out over the escarpment.
While two of our rappel crew worked to get the steel hook from our winch around a section of the framework of the van, the third put a rope around the young man standing on the crossbar of the van’s roof. Once the hook for our winch was connected and we engaged the motor to apply tension on the cable to help hold the van in place, our firefighters helped pull the terrified young man up to the road, and safely over the rim.
Next, one of our heroes who had gone over the edge went to the girl trapped beneath the vehicle. This firefighter’s name was Larry. He asked for some play on his rope, then dropped to the ground and shimmied his way as far as he could go under the wobbling van until he was almost alongside the young lady. Larry said: “I’m right here with you, and we’re going to get you out of here. I won’t leave you until we have you safely back on solid ground.” This was the gutsiest move I had ever seen.
The weight of the van, perilously cradled in the gnarled limbs, caused those venerable old conifers to creak and shift, their roots barely clenched around enough soil to sustain themselves, let alone hold the vehicle that had become entangled in their misshapen branches. Our command vehicle was also vulnerable, with the force of gravity pulling against it as the weight of that dangling box of metal strained against the steel cable of the winch. Mini rock slides erupted each time the van moved. If one of the trees became unrooted, we would not be able to control anything.
The first ambulance arrived, and the EMTs began to check over the half dozen youth…giving them oxygen, treating them for cuts, scrapes, and contusions. I told dispatch we needed a life flight for the young woman twisted in half beneath the van. Given her presentation, a spinal cord injury seemed likely. The chopper pilot would have to land the bird on the too-narrow highway, and get her as fast as they could to the nearest trauma center. And that was assuming we could get the girl out from under the van without losing her to the crumbling cliffside. Or losing any of our firefighters to the same.
Anyone who has done any climbing or mountain adventuring knows that a rockfall, a fast-moving landslide, can happen suddenly and unexpectedly in a variety of conditions. When a drought year renders the top strata of a slope parched, deep-rooted trees withered by the lack of water cease to hold the soil in place. Too much rain can wash away the earth beneath big boulders and send them suddenly plummeting down a slope, careening into other stones, trees, and more—causing an avalanche that inundates the landscape. Salt and chemicals from winter road treatments can degrade the integrity of the ground surrounding, preventing the plant life that normally anchor rock layers in place from thriving. Vibration from heavy equipment and road traffic can create a series of damaging microquakes that crack stone slabs underpinning those highways.
We were in danger of a rockfall. All of us. The first responders, our vehicles, the tourists, even those who were drive-by gawking from their cars as traffic in small batches passed slowly in single file—first heading up, and then down the highway next to the sheer wall of stone on the other side of the road.
All this was happening while Larry, our hero among heroes, lay next to the victim beneath the van, speaking softly to her. She was alert and aware, and I could see the terror in her face as she responded to Larry’s questions.
“Are you in pain?” She said no.
“Can you breathe all right?” She said yes.
“What is your name?” She said her name was Noemi. Like: No, Amy.
The tow truck arrived. One of our firefighters whose day job was professional pilot went down the road to look for a wide place to use as a landing zone for a chopper. Another ambulance arrived just for Noemi, to transport her from the accident scene to the life-flight landing zone.
All traffic had to be stopped now, diverted either back up or back down the mountain for the next phase of this incident. Sheriff’s deputies blocked entrance to the highway at the towns below and above. This was a welcome relief, allowing those of us on scene to focus solely on the rescue.
The diesel engine hammered, and its gears ground as the tow-truck driver maneuvered his long rig at an angle—crosswise on the highway—to position it for raising the van. Above all this mechanical noise, a sharp crack rang out as one of the juniper limbs tethering the front end of the Toyota to the ledge broke. We watched in horror as rocks, grit, and debris cascaded down the slope and the torqued frame of the vehicle ground against rock and sand and slowly slid a half-foot farther out on the ledge, then stopped. We could now see Noemi’s upper torso. It, too, like her head, faced straight up. The twist that had her feet facing down was likely in her lower spine. Larry had managed to squeeze closer to her as the van’s weight shifted. He had gotten ahold of her hand.
The minivan creaked now, as the steel complained of the strain of gravity against the cable attached to our winch. The afternoon light was waning. We had no idea how long this would take, and the pilot on our squad conveyed concern on the radio that we were in the dark phase of the moon. If we were delayed too long and without moonlight, there was no way to land a chopper on the highway in the blackness of night. Time was of the essence in every imaginable way.
Here, I will pause my storytelling—(I know, I know, I make a habit of this, don’t I?)—to cite some similarities between the minivan, its passengers, our rescuers, and the democracy we once trusted to carry us from cradle to grave as Americans. I want to call your attention to the parallel between the at-risk wreck victims and what is most in peril for all Americans, should our representative government be swept over the cliff in the fast-moving careless driving and downward descent of the authoritarians moving to wreck it all. I want to make an analogy between the first responders who rushed to the scene and we defenders of democracy who for some time now have heard the tone and have mobilized to show up.
We fellow travelers through this moment of authoritarian greed-addicted overthrow of our democracy…and the horse we rode in on, so to speak…are as good as fallen off the edge, dangling from a degrading handhold of a ledge. All this while the tiny twisted limbs that struggle to survive from our roots show signs of either snapping or being ripped away from terra firma. The very ground on which our nation was planted and managed to somehow thrive against all odds for nearly 250 years has lost integrity. We are at the tipping point where we will either fall into the abyss, or respond to the crisis with eyes wide open and recognition of the extent of the danger and the damage. Should we come together to rescue our democracy, it will take tremendous teamwork, courage, strength, and devotion. This will mean putting ourselves in jeopardy. It will entail maneuvers we may not feel equal to, and a willingness to work together to give our all—especially when those at the forefront cannot possibly succeed without the weight and power of masses of us pulling behind them. We will have to get on top of the disaster that has befallen us; and some of us will have to get right down in the midst of the most danger, while the rest of us will have to hold the lifeline to keep the most heroic alive.
If we have any hope of rescuing our democracy, we can’t wait until we are in total darkness. We must have the light of truth—and willingness to see that truth; and it will require a panoply of skills and strengths brought together in concert with great haste, innovation, and dedication. We will need to give and receive mutual aid. Those who can fly and those who can drive, those who can communicate and those who can climb, those who can lead and those who can heal, and those who evaluate and report accurately and truthfully to call for what we need and keep us apprised of the dangers, those who will direct traffic and those who will light the flares, those who will hold the rope for those who will go directly to the danger.
While I’ve explained that cliffs retreat due to any combination of weathering, erosion, and/or mass movement, it is also significant to note that—like in my story—our democracy has long had too few guardrails.
The firm ground we were founded upon has had too many drought years in recent decades, without the nourishing tending and protection of our rights and freedoms from our leaders and our citizens whose duty it is to keep the base of our representative government alive. Too many things may already have happened that undermine our chances to survive:
Micro-quakes—like the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which allowed money to equal votes and set loose the hellhounds of greed on our every election and the very way congress does business—which have degraded our foundations. And the follow-on SCOTUS decision that the president is above the law. These have destabilized our constitutional foundations.
Erosion—like from Congress’ failure to protect and re-enshrine voting rights. Things like this have undermined the rich earth of our very underpinnings: equality and self-government.
Toxins—like the constant corrosive application of undemocratic schemes such as when Mitch McConnell and his radical GOP senators robbed the Obama administration of a Supreme Court judgeship, and the GOP’s stated determination to make everything an elected president did fail. Add that party’s sole focus on flooding the judicial branch with conservative, inexperienced, unqualified judges to the exclusion of passing any legislation that involved maintaining, improving, or even protecting the welfare of the citizens.
Sliding and slumping—from things like the two-thousand-plus challenges to the affordable care act in order to deny America’s citizens health care, the ever-growing corruption of lobbyists, the increasing privatization of the military industrial complex, and all the general rot and decay growing unchecked in the halls of power.
Callously caused wrecks and roadblocks—which choke the safe and healthy flow of progress in government, as in the overuse of the filibuster in the Senate to repeatedly constrict the flow of worthy bills and paralyze legislation, thereby deliberately disintegrating the power and integrity of the third branch of our government
Flooding—a firehose of lies and disinformation, of deceit as to the design to rape the country’s riches and resources and hand it all to the billionaires while our safety and welfare, our greater prosperity and protections for the rest of the citizens can go fall off a crumbling cliff.
Yes, we are in the midst of an erupting rockfall. Democracy—thanks to the citizens relinquishing the wheel to those who care little about our welfare—has wandered well away from the path we originally set out on, and has gone over the edge. Now, our democratic republic is caught on the slimmest ledge, and the soil is eroding, the trees whose limbs still cradle us are malnourished, and our roots in the constitution—in the way our founders paved for us—are pulling loose from the poisoned, starved, and degraded strata on which they once thrived. We are about to fall off the cliff into the apocalypse of one of the most egregious, fast-moving, all-encompassing oligarchic hellscapes ever created. The drivers of this are greed-addicted hellhounds without a hint of humanity.
What means do we have to save ourselves and our democracy? Do we have a big enough tow truck to counter the gravitational pull of an intentionally-caused landslide? Do we have enough firm ground to stand on as we attempt to hold the descent of our beloved republic with whatever winches we can find until we figure out a better plan? Do we have enough folks with the skills and courage to rope down to the anguished, crumpled frame and rescue whomever and whatever we can? Our government has been twisted upside down and backward and is in critical shape. Do we have enough daylight left to save it? This has to be an all-volunteer effort, as the TrumputinVanceMusk regime are destroying the foundational government mechanisms that we might have counted on for help. The greed zombies will not send the big government machinery capable of extracting what is endangered. The hellhounds will not offer law enforcement’s help to stop the onslaught of fast-moving threats. The cruelty crusade will not send a life flight to save what is most critical in the democracy they have driven off the cliff.
I don’t have the answers to those questions, but I’m sensing there are more and more of us out there responding to the scene. There are more and more of us out there ready to stop traffic and unite to bring in whatever big measures and heroic efforts it might take to save what we can from the rockfall. There are some signs of hope. And I hope they are not too late.
Now back to my story from the WILD. The big tow truck that arrived on scene at the last possible moment was the measure we needed. Its powerful hydraulic lift and long mechanical boom were able to pull the wreck of that van off the trapped young lady so that our heroes could get a sled beneath Noemi and pull her up the slope to safety. The EMTs loaded her into the waiting ambulance, and sped back down the hill to the designated chopper landing zone. We still had daylight enough for the pilot to safely fly. And we all cheered when we heard the helicopter pilot on the radio reporting in-flight: destination the nearest Level 1 trauma center.
Unbelievably, the young woman did not suffer a spinal cord injury, according to the report we received. In fact, she managed to re-align herself as she was being loaded into the ambulance, and had feeling in all extremities. She ended up walking away from the hospital after a few days. I still can’t quite wrap my mind around that, after what I saw, but it’s the truth—incredible as it sounds. We were not always this lucky with wreck victims, but this one was a win.
The tow truck extracted the van from the cliff edge, dragging it over the shelf and far enough onto the road to get the crossbars beneath and pull it up onto the bed. This took a huge chunk out of the roadside, a big sinkhole with ragged edges that looked like a giant had taken a huge bite out of the asphalt and the mountainside beneath it. The county maintenance department had to bring up concrete barriers, solar-lit reader signs, and dozens of water barrels to divert drivers around the damaged area. The destruction was so significant that road work had to be done across the entire span of the highway for a half-mile in either direction to restore the integrity of the road bed.
Later in the spring, once the damage had been mended, a crew came to erect guardrails along that stretch of the rim side. The importance of (and the previous lack of) guardrails is so transparent here symbolically that I won’t waste your time saying any more about that.
But the project proved much more complicated than originally surmised. Including a gruesome discovery that was made by the construction workers who had to create the underpinnings for the guard rails. It turns out they needed to install protective steel netting clear down the side of the slope to minimize the danger of rockfall and further erosion, and this necessitated a crew working at the bottom of the cliff along the river to install riprap and lower slope reinforcements. There, at the base of the cliff, a rusting wrecked car was discovered standing on end, nose-first in rocky soil. The remains of the driver and his dog had decayed inside—indicating that the wreck had likely occurred some time ago without anyone observing it happening. The sensational story splashed about on the local news channels and in the papers with speculation as to whether it had been a one-car accident or suicide that caused his demise. The deceased might have been a man who had gone missing three years before, according to a family member and a landlady, both reluctant to appear on camera. Despite all the coverage, there was no mention of the absence of guardrails that made the highway more dangerous than it could have been. No reporting of the damage to the integrity of the supporting soil, or the chemical stress to the asphalt, or the micro-quakes of abuse from too much traffic. Nor the fact that there was increasingly less means and money for the county to take care of the roads, even as the population and tourist numbers grew.
What will the record say about the demise of our democracy if it goes totally off the cliff and we can’t save it? Much of the damage that imperils us has been deliberate. Many of us have just been along for the ride and not paying much attention. Will we be able to save ourselves from the imminent danger we are in?
A rockfall is a fast-moving landslide that happens when the earth retreats or crumbles or rolls down a cliff or a very steep slope, and I’m not the only one issuing the tone for all to respond. If your personal democracy radio wasn’t screeching at you before, I hope you can hear it now:
Calling all volunteers. Calling all heroes. Calling all Americans. Find your nearest local resistance group and report in. Danger. Danger. Rockfall.
This has been Sandi Ault—Reporting from the WILD. You can also listen to my stories on the companion podcast to this blog—wherever podcasts are found.
If you want more stories from the WILD, look for my WILD Mystery Series in book, audio book, and e-book. You can start with any book in the series and go WILD.