GWOT V - The Great Rescue
Dec. 25th, 2023 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT V - The Great Rescue
It started out as an ordinary day, as these things so often do.
Then it was a routine call.
Then it was balls to the wall, fangs out and hair on fire.
Then it got weird.
###
"Rampart, this is Echo 18 Actual. Priority operational traffic."
The controller was clearly bored.
"Echo 18 Actual go."
"GPS coordinates. 32 degrees 35 dot seven six minutes north. 116 degrees 23 dot seven seven minutes west."
I made him confirm the coordinates. He did.
"Level Seven repeat Seven Mass Casualty Incident at these coordinates. Prepare to copy a large resource order."
There was a reason I had sent the coordinates first.
"Say again level of MCI?"
"Seven repeat seven."
An audible gasp.
The voice changed to the duty officer. She was crisp and efficient.
"We copy a Level 7 MCI at thirty two degrees thirty fiver dot seven six minutes north by one hundred sixteen degrees twenty three dot seven six minutes west. Clear to copy your resource order."
"Seven BLS ambulance strike teams. Six ALS ambulance strike teams. Two physician strike teams. One field hospital. Logistics in proportion for sheltering an additional five hundred endangered persons. All repeat all available air ambulances on expedite. Request that all air ambulances carry maximum stock of intravenous fluids inbound. Break."
A brief pause while they made sure they'd heard what they had heard. All on a recorded radio channel, so they could play back as needed.
"Echo 18 continuing. Security situation is stable. Moving my entire unit to this position minus a security detail at McNasty. Also requesting four potable water tenders and two non-potable water tenders, immediate need."
Immediate need meant Right The Fuck Now.
"What is the nature of the MCI?"
"Rescue from multiple containerizations."
A long pause.
"What is a containerization?" the duty officer asked.
"They locked refugees in containers and left them there. Time period unknown."
This provoked thought. But as the front of my brain was thinking about all the dying people, the back of my brain was thinking about next steps.
"Break. Alarum alarum alarum. This is not an exercise. Requesting air cavalry forthwith and a full defensive package."
"Rampart copies all."
My mobile display terminal pinged as the resource order hit and a huge number of incident templates, frequency assignments and combat intelligence updates slammed into it.
I ignored the MDT and went to my MP platoon leader.
"Put out observers and snipers. Everyone else except you and me on primary rescue. I will coordinate comms. You will set up a landing zone and serve as air rescue manager. Kids fly, adults die."
She nodded, went to the back of her vehicle, gave orders to her squad leaders, and got out her signal panels and comms bag.
A few California scout-soldiers melted into the rocks to our north and east.
The rest made a human chain and helped carry feeble people out of the double doors of the rusty ancient forty foot containers and into the shade just outside them. We'd already popped the padlocks of course, as soon as the scout had reached the first container and heard the cries for help from inside.
The medics moved from person to person wearing fanny packs with rolls of flagging tape. A touch, a moan, and a strip of colored ribbon tied around the right wrist.
Within minutes they had an exact count.
Seventy four immediates. Red ribbons. In immediate danger of death, from altered mental status related to dehydration and heat stroke.
One hundred and seventy two delayeds. Yellow ribbons. In need of immediate medical attention, but delaying that attention would not kill them swiftly. They could wait a few minutes. Not a few hours.
Sixty seven walking wounded. Green ribbons. They needed to be processed and were thirsty, but did not appear to be at risk of dying suddenly. We could be wrong though.
Not an exact count of dead. Over eighty though.
Our single ALS medic was on her knees next to a pile of IV bags, our entire stock made up of the medical kits plus the bag every scout-soldier carried in our web gear. A stretcher team would bring her a pediatric body. She would efficiently put an IV into the dying child's arm, a soldier would hold the bag high, and the child would be moved to the shade. A green ribbon would be recruited to hold the bag up, in lieu of an IV stand, which put them mostly in the shade too.
Twice she did not place an IV. She motioned and the body was carried away and dumped in the sun.
She ran out of bags before she ran out of child patients. With the help of tarps, we did not quite run out of shade.
A sonic boom announced the arrival of air cavalry.
They were very, very careful not to overfly Mexico. But they could see and their sensors could update my MDT.
Observers in the rocks and hills to our south.
Almost certainly Cartel.
What this was, was a distraction. A distraction we could not ignore, with so many lives in peril.
But the Cartels would ruthlessly expend hundreds of civilian lives to smuggle across an especially important shipment.
I was already in gross violation of my mission.
We're not out here to save lives.
We're out here to secure borders.
But they shouldn't have put me out here and expected me to turn my back on dying children.
They can court martial me tomorrow.
Not today.
"Raven Four, Echo 18 Actual on Air Ground."
I acknowledged.
"We have movement north of the Border on Shockey Truck Trail headed northbound. Four trucks no IFF."
I thought about it. Court martial if I'm wrong.
It was about the timing.
The refugees were not all dead. So they hadn't been here for three days or more.
The refugees were dying. So they'd been locked in the containers for several hours, possibly a day or two.
"Are the trucks tractors?" In other words, could they tow container trailers like the four I was looking at?
"That's affirm."
"Fire mission in hot with guns. Kill them all. Strafe the survivors until you are bingo munitions. War code Anetsky Four."
This wasn't technically a war, so the containerization was not technically a war crime.
I didn't care. They were therefore mass murderers fleeing the scene of their mass murder.
"Kill them all," I repeated brutally. "Break. Echo 18, California Eight Control."
That was the border checkpoint. West/East not direct. Protecting San Diego from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was the California deserts.
"Shut it the fuck down. No traffic except emergency and military and resource immediate need. Deadly force authorized. We have a potential major incursion."
That cut off a third of the sector and a third of the problem.
It also cost the California Republic thousands of dollars - even if inflated CAD - per minute that traffic was interrupted.
Fuck 'em.
The first ground resource other than my MP company arrived.
A single CHP unit with a single CHP trooper.
I flagged him over.
"Officer. This is a complex crime scene. Process the ever living fuck out of it."
This may be the Border, but this is the California side, and this is not lawless territory.
The CHP officer nodded, got out his digital camera and crime scene tape and notepad, and started a task that would take a war crimes investigative cell weeks. But evidence was perishable, if not as perishable as the victims.
A second ground resource. A single battered fire engine. Campos Indian Reservation volunteers. Three wildland firefighters.
"For this purpose your water is potable. Your rule is, everyone who can swallow gets water. Figure it out. We have medics, we will keep doing patient care. All I want you to do is water these people. How much water do you carry?"
"Five hundred gallons," the weather beaten volunteer driver said. They had already unloaded their ice chest and ran it to the ALS medic, who started using ice and water bottles on pediatric victims at once. Now, moving with the quickness, they hooked up hoses and connectors and made their engine into a forest of small diameter garden hoses flowing water to fill containers people could drink from. More walking wounded were pressed into holding hoses and being human water fountains.
"I've requested four potable and two non-potable water tenders. Use all yours up, more is coming."
A single Red Lion medical helicopter made a smooth landing but kicked up a plume of dust. The flight medic paused and the air ambulance crew stripped all their portable equipment and made a pile of it. Gear weight for lives per pound. Four babies were loaded and the helicopter took off immediately, running west to El Cajon instead of north for once. Basic care now was better than advanced care too late.
I checked the MDT for deployments. The air cav had worked over the putative enemy convoy. My reaction platoon was headed right for them but would take another hour to get to the burning hulks and search for any survivors. Once caught they would be interrogated, tried and hanged. I wouldn't allow them to be merely shot. Not for this.
Soon we had an air game above us. Circling fixed wing aircraft on one side, circling rotary wing aircraft on the other.
"Hellguard on Air to Ground Three, incident commander, your wishes?"
Callsigns Hellguard, Hydra and Horatius were incident command aircraft. Their role was to keep the military and civilian aircraft from "conflicting" i.e. crashing. They would keep track of all that for me.
"Air cordon, report vehicle movements especially north. Maximize throughput of air ambulances, we have a major MCI here."
I listened distantly as Hellguard and my MP platoon leader made a landing zone into a field helibase. Three pads, to minimize helicopter loiter times.
The next helicopter to land disgorged California Republic soldiers.
Not mine. Not scout-soldiers at all, although they wore scout soldier insignia to which I knew they were not entitled.
On our side of the border they wore uniforms. Not on the other side.
"Operative Ramos," one saluted.
"Take two of our vehicles. Push a roving patrol west and another one east. Engage what you find. Put air cav on them. This is a distraction for smuggling. Whoever is doing the smuggling ordered _this_," I waved my hand at the bodies and frantic activity. "So fuck them up like angry bears do."
"Hooah! Bear Force!" they barked as they complied.
The Americans did not have a monopoly on special operation personnel, and I had ordered ours to go hunting.
Their helicopter lifted with several casualties and one of mine with a sprained ankle. Someone had to keep them under control during the flight.
That was a patch on the problem. We needed more. A lot more.
My duties were to wrestle with the Mobile Display Terminal. Incident Command. Set this shit up.
So much as I longed to make sure that the babies got water, my job was to see that their torturers got lead. Or hemp.
When I stuck my head up from the terminal, hours had passed. I was very thirsty and had to drink water from my own field pack's canteen.
This was now a forward operating base of the California Republic.
Two Cougar medium battle tanks now faced south, turrets quivering as they scanned the opposite side. Any cross border sniper would not survive to make a second shot.
Ground ambulances pulled in, were loaded, and left. The air game continued, if more slowly now that every air ambulance in a hundred mile radius was now in the cycle. Fly here, load, fly to hospital, dip out to refuel, fly here again. Repeat until out of sunlight.
In addition to the logistics support, the armor, the infantry, the mortar section... we had reporters.
Escorted by a Collections agent, of all things. His business suit was horribly out of place in our desert and already dusty.
I had no PIO. I was trained in some things before the War. I thought about where we were. Could I spare half an hour?
Yes.
"I can make a statement and take a few brief questions." The reporters pounced. I identified myself and my unit. "At 1145 hours this date, scout soldiers on border patrol discovered these four forty foot containers dumped at this location. Upon hearing cries from inside, we breached the doors and found that they had been packed full of people. Over one hundred of them are confirmed to be dead and another three hundred seriously injured by heat exhaustion and dehydration. This is an atrocity and the full weight of the California Republic will land upon those who ordered it, who assisted in it and who knew about it in advance but did not report it."
I paused. Then I used some magic words.
"Justice will find them, whereever they may be, anywhere in the world, by the ghosts of Alviso."
The Collections agent flinched. He knew what I had just said.
I wasn't still on the Commission. But I had said what I had said, and I knew what I knew, and the Governor had chosen to allow me to continue to have the authority to say things like that.
"Do you think this is the work of the Cartels?"
"No opinion." Of course.
"Was anyone taken into custody outside the containers?"
"No." No. If we had, they would be having a talk with me right now, possibly up in the rocks where their body could be discreetly recovered later.
"Why do you think this was done?"
"We are conducting a full investigation, there are several possibilities." The Cartels wanted to flex and wrote their message on the bodies of migrants.
"How do you feel?"
I felt like a broken record trapped in a vicious loop.
How do I feel? What does that have to do with anything? Feel? You want me to feel? Like that mother over there wondering which of the little bodies being flown out is her son or daughter or both? Like that father who is holding a garden hose because that's all we can trust him to do, but is saving lives by doing it? Like that man who clearly clawed at the interior and broke his fingers scrabbling at the seal, possibly when it was slammed on him so many hours ago?
"The Republic has asked us to uphold her honor." I found myself saying. "This is a despicable dishonorable deed that soils all that it touches. Blood washes off. Guilt does not. Whoever did this has no honor. This is not our culture. This is not Mexico's great culture. This is American styled skullfuckery, a poison of atrocity and genocide that has infected whoever thought of this. Anyone who loves California or loves Mexico would literally take the person who thought of this crime and take them outside and kill them. Right the fuck now. That is what I feel. No further questions."
###
She turned from the screen, looked at her associates, put away the gold and jewel encrusted iPhone, motioned to her most loyal bodyguard.
"Enrique, my associate, my dear associate."
Cruel, strong men turned as pale as their ancestries would permit.
"This ... was a misstep. An embarrassment. I do not like being lectured to about honor by a Goddamned gringo Californicator. Especially when he is right and you were wrong."
"Take him out back and beat him to death. Send the BBC the video. Express our fury and that we had nothing to do with it."
Enrique knew he was dead.
But there are deaths and deaths.
He stood, bowed, and walked out to the back courtyard with an entourage.
He did not start screaming until the third blow from the baseball bat.
It started out as an ordinary day, as these things so often do.
Then it was a routine call.
Then it was balls to the wall, fangs out and hair on fire.
Then it got weird.
###
"Rampart, this is Echo 18 Actual. Priority operational traffic."
The controller was clearly bored.
"Echo 18 Actual go."
"GPS coordinates. 32 degrees 35 dot seven six minutes north. 116 degrees 23 dot seven seven minutes west."
I made him confirm the coordinates. He did.
"Level Seven repeat Seven Mass Casualty Incident at these coordinates. Prepare to copy a large resource order."
There was a reason I had sent the coordinates first.
"Say again level of MCI?"
"Seven repeat seven."
An audible gasp.
The voice changed to the duty officer. She was crisp and efficient.
"We copy a Level 7 MCI at thirty two degrees thirty fiver dot seven six minutes north by one hundred sixteen degrees twenty three dot seven six minutes west. Clear to copy your resource order."
"Seven BLS ambulance strike teams. Six ALS ambulance strike teams. Two physician strike teams. One field hospital. Logistics in proportion for sheltering an additional five hundred endangered persons. All repeat all available air ambulances on expedite. Request that all air ambulances carry maximum stock of intravenous fluids inbound. Break."
A brief pause while they made sure they'd heard what they had heard. All on a recorded radio channel, so they could play back as needed.
"Echo 18 continuing. Security situation is stable. Moving my entire unit to this position minus a security detail at McNasty. Also requesting four potable water tenders and two non-potable water tenders, immediate need."
Immediate need meant Right The Fuck Now.
"What is the nature of the MCI?"
"Rescue from multiple containerizations."
A long pause.
"What is a containerization?" the duty officer asked.
"They locked refugees in containers and left them there. Time period unknown."
This provoked thought. But as the front of my brain was thinking about all the dying people, the back of my brain was thinking about next steps.
"Break. Alarum alarum alarum. This is not an exercise. Requesting air cavalry forthwith and a full defensive package."
"Rampart copies all."
My mobile display terminal pinged as the resource order hit and a huge number of incident templates, frequency assignments and combat intelligence updates slammed into it.
I ignored the MDT and went to my MP platoon leader.
"Put out observers and snipers. Everyone else except you and me on primary rescue. I will coordinate comms. You will set up a landing zone and serve as air rescue manager. Kids fly, adults die."
She nodded, went to the back of her vehicle, gave orders to her squad leaders, and got out her signal panels and comms bag.
A few California scout-soldiers melted into the rocks to our north and east.
The rest made a human chain and helped carry feeble people out of the double doors of the rusty ancient forty foot containers and into the shade just outside them. We'd already popped the padlocks of course, as soon as the scout had reached the first container and heard the cries for help from inside.
The medics moved from person to person wearing fanny packs with rolls of flagging tape. A touch, a moan, and a strip of colored ribbon tied around the right wrist.
Within minutes they had an exact count.
Seventy four immediates. Red ribbons. In immediate danger of death, from altered mental status related to dehydration and heat stroke.
One hundred and seventy two delayeds. Yellow ribbons. In need of immediate medical attention, but delaying that attention would not kill them swiftly. They could wait a few minutes. Not a few hours.
Sixty seven walking wounded. Green ribbons. They needed to be processed and were thirsty, but did not appear to be at risk of dying suddenly. We could be wrong though.
Not an exact count of dead. Over eighty though.
Our single ALS medic was on her knees next to a pile of IV bags, our entire stock made up of the medical kits plus the bag every scout-soldier carried in our web gear. A stretcher team would bring her a pediatric body. She would efficiently put an IV into the dying child's arm, a soldier would hold the bag high, and the child would be moved to the shade. A green ribbon would be recruited to hold the bag up, in lieu of an IV stand, which put them mostly in the shade too.
Twice she did not place an IV. She motioned and the body was carried away and dumped in the sun.
She ran out of bags before she ran out of child patients. With the help of tarps, we did not quite run out of shade.
A sonic boom announced the arrival of air cavalry.
They were very, very careful not to overfly Mexico. But they could see and their sensors could update my MDT.
Observers in the rocks and hills to our south.
Almost certainly Cartel.
What this was, was a distraction. A distraction we could not ignore, with so many lives in peril.
But the Cartels would ruthlessly expend hundreds of civilian lives to smuggle across an especially important shipment.
I was already in gross violation of my mission.
We're not out here to save lives.
We're out here to secure borders.
But they shouldn't have put me out here and expected me to turn my back on dying children.
They can court martial me tomorrow.
Not today.
"Raven Four, Echo 18 Actual on Air Ground."
I acknowledged.
"We have movement north of the Border on Shockey Truck Trail headed northbound. Four trucks no IFF."
I thought about it. Court martial if I'm wrong.
It was about the timing.
The refugees were not all dead. So they hadn't been here for three days or more.
The refugees were dying. So they'd been locked in the containers for several hours, possibly a day or two.
"Are the trucks tractors?" In other words, could they tow container trailers like the four I was looking at?
"That's affirm."
"Fire mission in hot with guns. Kill them all. Strafe the survivors until you are bingo munitions. War code Anetsky Four."
This wasn't technically a war, so the containerization was not technically a war crime.
I didn't care. They were therefore mass murderers fleeing the scene of their mass murder.
"Kill them all," I repeated brutally. "Break. Echo 18, California Eight Control."
That was the border checkpoint. West/East not direct. Protecting San Diego from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was the California deserts.
"Shut it the fuck down. No traffic except emergency and military and resource immediate need. Deadly force authorized. We have a potential major incursion."
That cut off a third of the sector and a third of the problem.
It also cost the California Republic thousands of dollars - even if inflated CAD - per minute that traffic was interrupted.
Fuck 'em.
The first ground resource other than my MP company arrived.
A single CHP unit with a single CHP trooper.
I flagged him over.
"Officer. This is a complex crime scene. Process the ever living fuck out of it."
This may be the Border, but this is the California side, and this is not lawless territory.
The CHP officer nodded, got out his digital camera and crime scene tape and notepad, and started a task that would take a war crimes investigative cell weeks. But evidence was perishable, if not as perishable as the victims.
A second ground resource. A single battered fire engine. Campos Indian Reservation volunteers. Three wildland firefighters.
"For this purpose your water is potable. Your rule is, everyone who can swallow gets water. Figure it out. We have medics, we will keep doing patient care. All I want you to do is water these people. How much water do you carry?"
"Five hundred gallons," the weather beaten volunteer driver said. They had already unloaded their ice chest and ran it to the ALS medic, who started using ice and water bottles on pediatric victims at once. Now, moving with the quickness, they hooked up hoses and connectors and made their engine into a forest of small diameter garden hoses flowing water to fill containers people could drink from. More walking wounded were pressed into holding hoses and being human water fountains.
"I've requested four potable and two non-potable water tenders. Use all yours up, more is coming."
A single Red Lion medical helicopter made a smooth landing but kicked up a plume of dust. The flight medic paused and the air ambulance crew stripped all their portable equipment and made a pile of it. Gear weight for lives per pound. Four babies were loaded and the helicopter took off immediately, running west to El Cajon instead of north for once. Basic care now was better than advanced care too late.
I checked the MDT for deployments. The air cav had worked over the putative enemy convoy. My reaction platoon was headed right for them but would take another hour to get to the burning hulks and search for any survivors. Once caught they would be interrogated, tried and hanged. I wouldn't allow them to be merely shot. Not for this.
Soon we had an air game above us. Circling fixed wing aircraft on one side, circling rotary wing aircraft on the other.
"Hellguard on Air to Ground Three, incident commander, your wishes?"
Callsigns Hellguard, Hydra and Horatius were incident command aircraft. Their role was to keep the military and civilian aircraft from "conflicting" i.e. crashing. They would keep track of all that for me.
"Air cordon, report vehicle movements especially north. Maximize throughput of air ambulances, we have a major MCI here."
I listened distantly as Hellguard and my MP platoon leader made a landing zone into a field helibase. Three pads, to minimize helicopter loiter times.
The next helicopter to land disgorged California Republic soldiers.
Not mine. Not scout-soldiers at all, although they wore scout soldier insignia to which I knew they were not entitled.
On our side of the border they wore uniforms. Not on the other side.
"Operative Ramos," one saluted.
"Take two of our vehicles. Push a roving patrol west and another one east. Engage what you find. Put air cav on them. This is a distraction for smuggling. Whoever is doing the smuggling ordered _this_," I waved my hand at the bodies and frantic activity. "So fuck them up like angry bears do."
"Hooah! Bear Force!" they barked as they complied.
The Americans did not have a monopoly on special operation personnel, and I had ordered ours to go hunting.
Their helicopter lifted with several casualties and one of mine with a sprained ankle. Someone had to keep them under control during the flight.
That was a patch on the problem. We needed more. A lot more.
My duties were to wrestle with the Mobile Display Terminal. Incident Command. Set this shit up.
So much as I longed to make sure that the babies got water, my job was to see that their torturers got lead. Or hemp.
When I stuck my head up from the terminal, hours had passed. I was very thirsty and had to drink water from my own field pack's canteen.
This was now a forward operating base of the California Republic.
Two Cougar medium battle tanks now faced south, turrets quivering as they scanned the opposite side. Any cross border sniper would not survive to make a second shot.
Ground ambulances pulled in, were loaded, and left. The air game continued, if more slowly now that every air ambulance in a hundred mile radius was now in the cycle. Fly here, load, fly to hospital, dip out to refuel, fly here again. Repeat until out of sunlight.
In addition to the logistics support, the armor, the infantry, the mortar section... we had reporters.
Escorted by a Collections agent, of all things. His business suit was horribly out of place in our desert and already dusty.
I had no PIO. I was trained in some things before the War. I thought about where we were. Could I spare half an hour?
Yes.
"I can make a statement and take a few brief questions." The reporters pounced. I identified myself and my unit. "At 1145 hours this date, scout soldiers on border patrol discovered these four forty foot containers dumped at this location. Upon hearing cries from inside, we breached the doors and found that they had been packed full of people. Over one hundred of them are confirmed to be dead and another three hundred seriously injured by heat exhaustion and dehydration. This is an atrocity and the full weight of the California Republic will land upon those who ordered it, who assisted in it and who knew about it in advance but did not report it."
I paused. Then I used some magic words.
"Justice will find them, whereever they may be, anywhere in the world, by the ghosts of Alviso."
The Collections agent flinched. He knew what I had just said.
I wasn't still on the Commission. But I had said what I had said, and I knew what I knew, and the Governor had chosen to allow me to continue to have the authority to say things like that.
"Do you think this is the work of the Cartels?"
"No opinion." Of course.
"Was anyone taken into custody outside the containers?"
"No." No. If we had, they would be having a talk with me right now, possibly up in the rocks where their body could be discreetly recovered later.
"Why do you think this was done?"
"We are conducting a full investigation, there are several possibilities." The Cartels wanted to flex and wrote their message on the bodies of migrants.
"How do you feel?"
I felt like a broken record trapped in a vicious loop.
How do I feel? What does that have to do with anything? Feel? You want me to feel? Like that mother over there wondering which of the little bodies being flown out is her son or daughter or both? Like that father who is holding a garden hose because that's all we can trust him to do, but is saving lives by doing it? Like that man who clearly clawed at the interior and broke his fingers scrabbling at the seal, possibly when it was slammed on him so many hours ago?
"The Republic has asked us to uphold her honor." I found myself saying. "This is a despicable dishonorable deed that soils all that it touches. Blood washes off. Guilt does not. Whoever did this has no honor. This is not our culture. This is not Mexico's great culture. This is American styled skullfuckery, a poison of atrocity and genocide that has infected whoever thought of this. Anyone who loves California or loves Mexico would literally take the person who thought of this crime and take them outside and kill them. Right the fuck now. That is what I feel. No further questions."
###
She turned from the screen, looked at her associates, put away the gold and jewel encrusted iPhone, motioned to her most loyal bodyguard.
"Enrique, my associate, my dear associate."
Cruel, strong men turned as pale as their ancestries would permit.
"This ... was a misstep. An embarrassment. I do not like being lectured to about honor by a Goddamned gringo Californicator. Especially when he is right and you were wrong."
"Take him out back and beat him to death. Send the BBC the video. Express our fury and that we had nothing to do with it."
Enrique knew he was dead.
But there are deaths and deaths.
He stood, bowed, and walked out to the back courtyard with an entourage.
He did not start screaming until the third blow from the baseball bat.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-27 07:32 pm (UTC)To: Office GovCal
The estimated cost of the Container operation now exceeds $5M CAD. Requesting budget variance if this is justified.
From: GovCal
To: South Ops
Budget variance approved. Unlimited budget.
All survivors to be granted immediate citizenship.
I don't normally interfere in personnel decisions, but I want whoever wrote the words "if this is justified" transferred out of South Ops. Today.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 03:19 am (UTC)A puzzled pause.
"La Mesa Community, Lion Flight 7, go."
"We are inbound ETA 1436 with numbers four repeat four pediatric immediate patients. All have heat stroke. Two unconscious. Activate your mass casualty plan now. Read back."
"Ah, Red Lion, did you say inbound? This is a six bed Category Four community hospital."
"Affirm, we are aware of your limitations. Activate your mass casualty plan now."
The nurse picked up the internal phone and pressed PAGE.
"Attention. Attention. This is a mass casualty emergency. All medical staff report to the helipad now. All medical staff report to the helipad now."
"La Mesa Community, this is Army Flight Two Seven One. We are inbound with numbers nine repeat nine pediatric patients. We will land on the lawn southwest to keep your pad clear for Lion Seven."
"La Mesa Community, this is Red Lion Fourteen. We are inbound ETA 1456 with three pediatric patients..."
The nurse picked up the external phone.
"San Diego 9-1-1, this is the duty nurse at La Mesa Community. I am placing a resource order for a mass casualty incident... I understand that no ambulances are now available ... no physician teams either ... I need two engine strike teams any type immediate need for medical staffing, two chief officers and a helibase manager, also immediate need... OK I need fifty warm bodies any way you can get them."
###
La Mesa High School
"Now hear this. Now hear this."
Blood chilled as everyone heard the normally bubbly attendance secretary speak precisely and calmly over the PA system.
"The high school fire engine and all members of the campus Fire and EMS Club, and all police cadets, will respond in uniform at once to La Mesa Community Hospital, 8851 Center Drive. The Blood Club will immediately set up blood collection. All students with O negative blood type will line up for donation. Classes are suspended for the duration of this emergency."
no subject
Date: 2024-02-11 05:36 pm (UTC)