Oh, Sunday… how can I even begin to tell your story?
I slept LATE and then slowly broke down the camp. I couldn’t find Spawn right away and was told that he had gone to breakfast MUCH earlier, but I wanted to find him so he could pack all his gear and I could get the car offsite, as severe rain was expected and I wanted to be able to leave, ever.
I did find Spawn and he s-l-o-w-l-y packed up his gear and tent and all and I parked the car in Day Parking. 5 minutes after I parked, the sky opened right up. I felt like, both coming and going, I had really good timing. Getting in in time and getting out in time, both.
Spawn had a shift to work at 2, which meant that he was going to miss the ONE BAND I wanted him to see, so I decided to head down to the Merch Tent and just buy a CD for him to listen to. I wasn’t scheduled to work that day (because of Martin Sexton the night before), but had to convince my crew that I was really there as a customer.
Immediately, though, they needed me to organize or answer questions or run information or cover someone for a few minutes, so, right away, I was put to work despite my "I’m here as a customer" protests. As I was trying to determine which CD to buy, the bug was put in my ear that we were expecting to lose power and, if that happened, we would lose the security cameras, so had to watch the exits.
And then came the maelstrom.
This is my story:
We were FLOODED with people, and we recruited the tallest people we could find to get the last of the tarps up around the perimeter. As a result, as the storm went on, I had no idea what was going on outside, only what was happening in OUR tent. The winds were so high that the tent poles started to come out and people ran to the sidelines to hold the tent up so it wouldn’t collapse. Other people were standing on tables using their umbrellas or bags to push against the roof and get the water off.
Many people (our crew included) were freaking out about the power being on. Given the credit card machines, cash registers, security camera and all peripherals and the electricity, we were EXTREMELY live. I immediately set to organizing. My crew chief was in the middle of trying to make a deposit when the storm hit, so she was holding several thousands of dollars in cash, which she kept putting down and then freaking out and picking up again. The other crew chief in the tent had a radio, which I told her to use to tell the Site Crew we were coming down and to CUT OUR POWER. Site Crew radioed back that they couldn’t get to our tent right away because they needed to deal with the Family Tent and Activities for Kids. Well, YEAH, of course they should do that, but we couldn’t see what was happening outside. They cut all the festival power shortly after that. Never before have I been in a situation where people cheered when the power went OUT, but we were all pretty happy about it in that moment.
All of a sudden, we started to feel a river running through the tent and (though I didn’t know why at the time) it was cold. The river turned into a pond and the water level rose to about 6" in the tent. Everyone in our area stayed calm. There were no small children and everyone kept their head. At some point, someone started singing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore", which relieved some tension, but apparently the only verse that anyone knew was the first one… so we sang that a couple of times.
Someone from Site Crew came in and explained to us that they were evacuating the festival. "The safest place for you to be is in your car, not moving." I saw Spawn at the other side of the tent and immediately, shifted mental gears into "I am a mother. I have to take care of my kid." I took off after him, knowing that if I didn’t catch him then, I might not find him… and he didn’t know where the car was.
I found him in the rain in bare feet, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, soaked through, and wrapped in a wet towel. I took him to the car, but he stopped on the way to tell my brother and mom that my niece was safe, where she was and who she was with. Once in the car, I gave him a dry towel, turned the car on and jacked up the heat. Spawn did not get hypothermia. Many other people did. However, there were no major injuries.
We sat out the storm, then sat out the traffic. Despite not having a chance to say our goodbyes (Spawn had to call his festival romance to say goodbye, but I believe they’ll see each other again), we headed out as soon as the traffic was clear enough for us to go. What an ending!
Spawn’s story:
Spawn and his friend (both Teen Crew) were in the Volunteer tent when it (the tent) started to come down and they evacuated. The two of them wound up with my niece (4 years old), who had run up to them the moment she saw them. My brother (Chaos) was valiantly trying to keep the tent from falling with a large number of other people.
They hazarded the hail and wind and rain and found a group of people without a car. They formed a "Penguin Huddle" around my niece to keep her safe and warm while the women explained the scientific reasons that hail forms. It worked amazingly well to keep the teens calm and together and, hey, they learned something interesting!
Spawn’s friend, carrying my niece, fell in the mud and started to lose it a little (and no wonder in that situation!), so Spawn picked her up and braced her, supporting her as they carried my niece to safety/shelter.
Spawn convinced a group of people in a van to take the girls in with them and he went off to (in order of priority) find Chaos and tell him that his daughter was safe and where she was; find his grandmother and tell her *everyone* was safe; find me because he knew his mom would take care of him.
He was stopped on his way by a volunteer on a golf cart who was concerned that he might have hypothermia, so he was taken to the med tent, where he was given a towel to wrap up in (which we later discovered says "Angelica", to our amusement). He had too many people to find and tell what was going on, though, so he didn’t stay there, opting instead to venture out to hunt down his family so we would all know where everyone was.
Even after he found me and I was taking him to the car to warm up and avoid hypothermia (which he did avoid), he ran off to tell Chaos and Mom where everyone was and that they were safe. I was really impressed to see these young teens really step up and take responsibility, especially when they found themselves in charge of a scared and crying 4 year old.
Mom’s story: http://blog.cavandkav.com/falcon-ridge-folk-fest-2008/
Stories on Live Journal: http://community.livejournal.com/falconridge/111066.html
Video of the storm itself: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QjGjqmQhiTk&feature=related (That’s the volunteer tent, where Spawn, et al, were evacuated from, coming down in the background).
Video of the aftermath: http://youtube.com/watch?v=J5PKSXi8tpM&feature=related and http://youtube.com/watch?v=QD-J0xP6qbg&feature=related
So, yeah, if nothing else, it was a memorable Falcon Ridge.