Chapter 334

Ten minutes later passengers started coming off the stairs. Hanna was still broadcasting live. She had been filling the time interviewing fire chiefs, then a group interview with Ching Lee, Marcy, Vicky and Jenny.

The camera was now on passengers who were very happy when they stepped on the concrete, high-fiving and cheering. The scene was repeated on the ZNN world wide news channel playing on the big screen on the TV in the restaurant.

While the passengers were eating, making calls and wearing out the bathrooms, the girls and I had a meeting in Lorrie's office. We needed to figure out how to help 200 people for another day or two.

Half an hour later we had at least a partial answer. We just had to ask a few questions after everyone finished eating. But we could not wait long; it was still snowing heavily and accumulating.

We started in the restaurant, "I would like a show of hands of all families so I can get a count." There were 39, some with 1 child, most with 2, and several with 3. That accounted for 140 of the 202 on flight 709. There were 30 single women, 28 single men and 4 flight crew.

The horsey house had 6 rooms with two twin beds.

The Crash house had three bedrooms with twin beds, a living room and a dining room that could each hold 3 army cots.

The gears in my head were spinning and my pencil making notes.

"OK, here is the reality of the situation. The storm is not going to clear out for another 24 hours at the earliest. Then it will be another day before the major airports are even marginally operational," I said.

"We have army cots coming, plenty of dry beans and potatoes, cabbage and corn beef on the way so you should be good; Right?" I asked.

A chorus of groans was the reply.

"OK, I take that as you being open to other suggestions. Unfortunately our options are few. But here is what we can do. I know a few of you are going to be disappointed."

"We have 40 rooms at the Holiday East that we reserved for our employees in this emergency. We are going to assign the 39 families to those rooms; all of them have two beds. If the children can't share a bed somebody gets to play army and get a cot to sleep on," I said.

"Now single ladies, I have 12 rooms with two beds each at two different locations."

"That leaves the rest of the men on cots at our gym. As bad as the gym sounds it has unlimited hot water showers, a cafeteria, internet, and good heat," I said.

"Can we use the gym equipment?" one of the younger passengers asked.

"Use it to your heart's content," I replied.

The next big task was getting the baggage off the plane. The baggage carts were pulled beside the plane and the offloading began. There was an estimated 400 bags to deal with.

The county officials started making appearances for the free publicity, along with a couple more news organizations.

Duke Justice, the county commissioner whose son had tried to kill me, came in and made a beeline straight to me.

"How can the county help? What do you need?" he asked.

"I could use three or four county ride buses to move these people around. I would like to get them where they need to go before dark," I replied.

"I don't know if we can find any drivers, but I will try. The plows are doing a better job of keeping the roads open," Duke said as he was dialing his cell phone.

Things were happening as always with my people, the girls just gave instructions and things happened. Melanie handed me several copies of the list of all the families and with the number of cots if they needed any. These were going to the motel.

One of the aircraft mechanics handed me another note, "All the baggage is laid out inside the hangar closest to the pilot's office," it said. The second note he handed me, "Both buses are running outside that hangar warming up."

I checked off enough families to put 25 people each in the bus. Even though they were 30 passenger buses, space would be needed for baggage. I selected families that did not need cots because they had not arrived yet.

"Melanie, call out these families, take them over to the hangar to collect their baggage and put them on the buses Get with one of the 4x4's with a plow and lead the buses, make sure this group gets into the rooms OK. When you get back the other buses will be loaded, waiting. Be careful," I said.