A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE HIT CLEVELAND TODAY
Today at exactly 8 o’clock today a tsunami plundered the shores of Lake Erie leaving thousands of people dead and missing.
The office of the mayor held a news conference and it was supplemented with large satellite photographs outlining the devastation that shook this northern costal town forcing hundreds of thousands to leave their homes and places of businesses.
Cars were crushed ‘neath the fallen structures killing hundreds of commuters during the peak of rush hour.
A statement issued by The President made clear that FEMA and the national guard were quickly being dispatched and rescue efforts are now taking place as we speak.
Several major hospitals sustained minor damage and are now setting up emergency medical sites to deal with the enormous task of treating the injured as they made their fateful trips to office buildings through out the city on the north coast.
Rescue efforts are being hampered by the severe after shocks that continue to rock the city to the core.
No one has been able to determine the exact numbers of casualties at this point but fears estimate the numbers could reach tens of thousands.
The clean up effort is hoping to rescue the last 8 o’clock travelers.
Making matter worse is the annual national jamboree for the Girl Scouts coming in from nations world wide.
It is hoped they will be able supply the needed Girl Scout Cookies for the displaced civilians that are camping out in the streets in fear of the regular after shocks that continue to rock this city. Nearby suburbs, have offered medical and rescue teams to aid in the mammoth task that lies ahead.
The Red Cross is taking blood donations and is supplying food and shelter in the way of tents which is all badly needed throughout the city. TV crews from the networks are covering these catastrophic events. In New York masses have gathered at Times Square to witness this drastic story as it unfolds before their eyes all in total shock.
Boy Scouts are offering their help with unburying the dead from the rubble of this devastated metropolitan area. Especially they are lining up volunteers of homophobic and considerable pedophile aid.
As night falls over the city smoke rises from the rubble where fires continue to burn. Rescue teams with dogs search through devastation for survivors.
With the collapse of major buildings the job facing the rescuers is, without a doubt, enormous! The interstate highways have buckled under the seismic calamity which brought down bridges creating great difficulty to rescuers trying to transport emergency supplies. As well the survivors are trapped in the devastated collapsed metropolis and cannot escape from this nightmare. Prisoners of this catastrophic tragedy.
I, though having faced major industrial collapse in the past in third world nations, sit down upon a curb and roll a cigarette while the smoke of the burning rubble lingers making it very difficult to breath.
And I unwrap a Hostess Cupcake with my water bottle by my side.
In the passing cataclysm I smoke my tobacco.
I listen to my transistor radio.
I take a photograph from my coat pocket and look at the image of my sweet love.
It begins to rain.
The Child of The Lamb before the opening of the fiery skies in the falling onslaught from the first night in this city of complete chaos.
The frightened citizens sit in shock in the suburbs on the safe edges of so many silent couches before the brilliance of national TV.
I can’t help but to think of that November in Dallas when I too was just a child.
All the while I stare quietly out to the lake.
And so I peacefully listen to the radio broadcast of the Betty Crocker teachings for our young Mothers.
And my adolescence during Vietnam.
I reach into my back pack and pull out rye bread toast wrapped in oiled cloth.
Then I open up a soda bottle and remember the last moments of foreverness.
I think about forever….while I look out upon the vast Great Lake.
Me…with my Hostess Cupcake.
If not forever…then well then…maybe the past 16 hours will somehow remain so dusty and so much like the burning city of Rome from the cartographical troubles in those old calloused cracking fingers that laid the quiet stone roads winding thru my aging hand painted silent memories in the fallen grief of my looking glass heart.
Peter Leon
|
