The Devil Came to Town and the Angels Followed by Bonney Hogue Patterson

Author:Bonney Hogue Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

Fire Rescuers McCann and Reeves, left, assisting in the careful removal of Mason from the shattered truck, foreground. Chief Reeves is partially hidden, to the right, wearing a black fireman’s hat. Mason’s grandfather is in the foreground, with Mason sitting upright, in the same position as when she was struck, with the iron bar still in her body. She went into the OR on the same gurney. Photo courtesy of Sharon Lillard.

Rodney had been assured they would soon extricate Sharon, and she would follow in a separate ambulance.

Later, when they towed what remained of the truck away, it was discovered that the floor of the truck had cracked open down the middle, and the drive shaft had punched up through the damaged floor from the force of having been slammed down, or dropped from a great height by the tornado. That this missed striking, or killing, the occupants of the vehicle was a stroke of good luck.

Also, even though Lage was very seriously injured, his Grandmother’s insistence he move to the other side of the truck had prevented him from being crushed. The entire passenger side of the vehicle was flat as a pancake.

Someone, as they say, had indeed been looking out for them.

Everyone, from first responders to the doctors who would later remove the rod in the operating room have all commented on Mason’s calm demeanor throughout the ordeal, but, she later confessed, that “If I had started to scream, I probably would not have stopped.”

Her angels sustained her. Some measure of the calm she had felt upon seeing them remained with her.

Doctor Raymond Vetch, surgeon, had been summoned to care for Mason. 11 He found the inch-thick rod had entered her shoulder, angled through a lower section of her lung, and barely, by an inch or less, missed her liver and spine.

Dr. Vetch had nothing but praise for both his patient and the rescue crew; his patient, he said had a remarkable will to live; and that it was indeed fortunate they did not remove the rod at the scene, sawing it off and transporting her in the position as they had found her.

The ambulances ferrying others in need of medical attention were constantly rushing to and fro—so many sirens that Chief Reeves later said, “You just wanted them to stop. It was continual.”

The ambulance crews stayed busy for the next two weeks. After transporting people to Freeman, and then after stabilizing the patients, they then shipped out to other locations, some as far away as Kansas City. There simply wasn’t room for all the wounded at that location, and some needed specialized treatment.

The crew that had arrived from Quapaw meanwhile redoubled their efforts in the parking lot.

“The first thirty minutes (was) chaos,” Fire Chief Reeves says of the initial triage and set-up phase on the Home Depot parking lot. “If you’ve never been in a triage situation, it is difficult to comprehend.”

They estimate they saw 300 patients within the first couple of hours. They treated a few

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