It was a dark and stormy night. Unlike other dark and stormy nights, this is not the beginning of a childish horror story. Unfortunately this horror story is real.
This story takes place on a volcanic island in the middle of a large lake in Nicaragua. The farm we are on right now has two parts. An Eco-lodge at the top of the hill, and a small permaculture farm down at the bottom of the hill. Naturally we’re down at the bottom of the hill. We’d been sleeping in a tent for the past couple weeks under a structure next to a stone storage house (bodega). After a fellow volunteer’s time on the farm came to an end, we decided we would move to his tent structure. His was a bit more private, with a larger tent and lots of big beautiful trees around. There was even a family of howler monkeys living close by. The structure itself was built up on a cement slab to keep out flood water and a large zinc roof was built over it, held up by eucalyptus beams. We were excited to turn this little hideaway into a bit of a home. We had our best sleep in two weeks on our first night there.
The next night the winds were pretty crazy and it had already been raining for 48 hours with only brief dry spells. Quinn and Emma (fellow volunteer) and I were hanging out at the lodge trying to utilize the minimal internet connection when four surprise guests arrived, all within our age range. I never got their names so I’ll just call them by their origins. There were two girls, Oklahoma and Philly. And two guys, Texas and England. We all had a few drinks and made friends and at the end of the night decided we’d all do something together the next day.
Quinn and Emma and I walked down the long hill to our humble home in the jungle. Emma went to her little loft above the kitchen and Quinn and I headed to our tent.
On the path to our tent we noticed a tree had fallen. It wasn’t a very large tree and it obviously hadn’t fallen with too much force because it’s branches were still holding the trunk above the ground. Still, it was a bit alarming. Until then we hadn’t noticed just how windy it really was. Before climbing into bed we both scanned the scene, analyzing the trees and potential danger. None of the trees looked as though they could be a real problem for us. If anything, perhaps a branch might break, but surely, our structure could withstand a branch. The only tree that could possible pose a threat to us was enormous and healthy and had been standing in it’s place for at least 80 years. These were not hurricane force winds, there seemed to be no real danger.
Nonetheless, neither of us really slept that night. The wind was howling pretty strong and the sounds of small limbs falling on our zinc roof kept us up. Having spent hurricane Andrew hiding between a wall and a mattress while my house was torn to shreds, I must admit, heavy winds make me a bit nervous. However, logic told me I was being ridiculous. This kind of wind could not turn branches or sticks into projectiles, and I had a roof over my head. I was just being a worrier, as per usual.
When the alarm rang in the morning at 7:45. Neither of us felt rested. Quinn got up and took a look around our tent structure. Lots of old dead branches were scattered around and the tree we’d seen the night before was still laying there, unmoved. He came back into the tent and laid back down next to me. We discussed how creepy the trees had sounded the night before and how neither of us had gotten any sleep. The wind had died down for a while in the very early morning, but now it was picking back up, harder than before. It would come in under the structure and blow our tent so that it almost lay flat across our faces. We laid there for about ten minutes, both thinking that we should probably get up because something felt a bit unsafe about our situation. If you had asked us then what we were worried about, I’m sure we could not have told you.
We looked at each other and decided there was no point in lying around, we had to meet our new friends in 30 minutes. So we sat up to put our clothes on. That is when I heard the sound that I will never forget as long as I live.
My heart pounds and I start to feel dizzy as I recount the horror of this story.
The sound was of roots being pulled from the ground.
As soon as we heard the sound we knew we were in trouble. We sprang up onto our feet and had just enough time to see through the screen of the tent, that same massive, 80 year old tree coming down in our direction. Before I could do anything I felt myself being crushed and knocked to the ground. All I could see was the red zinc roof folding over me like a wave. It all happened more quickly then I could possibly explain. Faster than the blink of an eye. Faster then a thought flashes through ones mind.
I was pinned down under the zinc. The tree had come down directly onto my shoulder and it was holding me in a doubled over position with my back bent in the middle in a very unnatural way. I could hear Quinn screaming for me, asking if I was ok, but I couldn’t respond because I had no breath. I squeezed myself out of that position and managed to respond to Quinn meagerly, that I was ok. But I wasn’t sure that I really was. Quinn appeared out of the darkness, army crawling on his belly and helped me to lay down on my back. Seeing his face and knowing he was ok was a relief that words cannot express. I can still hear the strange sounds coming from me as I tried to breathe. Quinn was holding me and begging me to breathe for him and slowly my lungs began to catch up. The pain in my back was excruciating. I braced myself to attempt to wiggle my toes, so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to. Thankfully, everything moved the way it should. I began to believe that perhaps I was not going to die. However, the reality of our situation then started to set in. We were pinned under a zinc roof, inside a tent, trapped on all sides by eucalyptus beams and there was a massive tree on top of us. We had about ten inches of space. Quinn was stuck on his belly and me on my back. But at least we were next to each other.
As luck would have it, Martijn, our boss/friend had been standing in the outdoor kitchen staring in our direction, looking at the small tree that had fallen early in the night, when the large tree came down on us. Almost immediately he was there shouting after us. Quinn responded for us, as I could still not yet speak without my voice quivering.
I remember Martijn’s voice sounding panicked and him saying something about not being able to do anything with a machete or an ax and needing to run for the chainsaw.
Emma stayed behind and talked to us through the six inch gap created by the eucalyptus beams (which I am certain now are the sole reason we survived at all). For such a young girl (almost 18) she was so calm and collected, the steadiness of her voice helped to keep me from panicking.
Martijn returned rather quickly for having run up one of the steepest hills I’ve ever climbed and he had with him Texas, England, Oklahoma, and Philly, as well as a couple of the local workers, including Pablo, whom Quinn and I had been working alongside of for the past two weeks and had grown quite fond of.
It took them all an hour and a half to chainsaw the tree so as not to crush us further and cut through the bolts and pry the zinc roof up. The sound of the chainsaw merely inches from our heads combined with not being able to see what was happening and not knowing if they knew exactly where we were was maddening. In that hour and a half I must have asked Quinn a thousand times if he was ok. I was so afraid that he was lying to me to keep me calm, or that he was too concerned with me to realize he was hurt as well.
Believe it or not, throughout this whole ordeal I hardly cried at all. I cried once when I first realized that Quinn was alive and laying next to me, conscious and seemingly unharmed. But for the rest of the hour and a half I was more calm and patient than I ever could have imagined I would be in this kind of situation.
Finally Quinn was able to crawl out but he never left my side. Due to the nature of my injury a bit more work was needed to get me out. It was important to move me as little as possible. In a strange coincidence, England and Texas had actually just finished a nature emergency first aid course a week earlier so they had the training fresh in their minds and knew just what to do with me.
There was still a eucalyptus beam and tent poles that needed to go before they could get me out on a flat board without risking further injury to my back. However, the chainsaw had decided not to work. In that same moment of the chainsaw failing we got word of another tree that was in the road and would be unpassable, but the truck had decided it wasn’t going to start anyway. Spirits fell a bit, but I was relieved. I had been trying to explain to people that the truck would not do, that I was going to need to lie flat and that they should call one of the taxi guys in town with a large van or hatchback. But in the panic nobody was really hearing me and everyone just kept reassuring me that the truck was ready and everything would be fine.
Quinn crouched over me and protected me as Texas hacked away at the last eucalyptus beam that was only a foot away from my head. They sawed through the tent poles with little hand saws and cut away the tent with a knife. Finally they rolled me onto a long flat board and covered me up with towels. Since I had just gotten out of bed when this all happened I was only wearing a pair of underwear.
While everyone was discussing the best way to get me down the road to where the taxi was waiting on the other side of the road block, I could see that there were loose branches hanging directly above me. The wind blew again and I lost my mind. The site of the trees, the sound of the wind and my immobility made me dizzy with fear. My shouts of “get me out of here” and the accompanying sobs brought everyone out of discussion mode and into do mode. Slowly but surely, with Quinn at my head, they carried me to the taxi and gently slid me in, still on the board.
The ride to the first hospital was nearly unbearable. The eco lodge is quite a ways up the volcano and the “dirt” road, is no longer dirt, just a wide path of large rocks, in between which the dirt has been almost completely washed away by heavy rain. It more resembles a dried out river bed than a road. When driving on this road without a back injury it is still necessary to go no faster than 7 miles an hour to avoid seriously damaging your vehicle. The road in town was hardly better.
On the way there, Martijn had tried to warn me that the “hospital” wasn’t going to be the kind of hospital I was used to and I knew he was right, but when such an insane and terrifying thing has happened you tend to focus on the next moment and only the next moment. When I was hit, I focused on breathing. When I could breathe again, I focused on wiggling my toes. When I could wiggle my toes, I focused on being freed. When they finally got me in the taxi I was focused on the hospital. I had not allowed myself to think beyond the hospital, the hospital was my savior and everything would be instantly, and magically better when we got there.
But when we finally got there, 4 hours after the tree had fallen, the “hospital” would hardly have qualified as a clinic in the states. They had no stretcher, no paramedics, not even any toilet paper. There was one doctor who was most likely my age and one old nurse.
The realization that my ordeal was not even close to over hit me like yet another tree. I cried uncontrollably while Quinn tried to reassure me. The nurse stuck a needle in my ass with some pain meds that hardly did a thing except burn as it spread through my muscle.
It was clear that the care I needed wouldn’t be found here so they put me into yet another van, still on the hard wooden board and raced to catch the ferry to the mainland.
I laid on the floor of the ferry, on my board, breathing deeply, trying to cope with the pain. Another hour and fifteen minutes.
When we arrived at the dock we were notified that the hospital’s only ambulance was all the way in Managua so the hospital had sent a Nissan pick up truck for me. This was a problem. I could not lie on the board in the back of a pick up truck, obviously, but there was no way the board was going to fit in the back seat of the truck either. I would have to be moved off the board. But first, I needed to be moved off the ferry.
Before I knew what was happening there was a large group of men, all speaking over one another in spanish, all trying to just do what they thought should be done without communicating to each other, and they were attempting to pick me up and move me haphazardly off the ferry.
The pain, the helplessness, the immobility, the chaos and the fear of someone moving me the wrong way or even dropping me... there are no words. One of the men even attempted to roll me off the board and onto the back seat of the truck as if I was a sack of potatoes. Hysterical is the only word that comes close to describing my state of mind in that moment.
Once again, Quinn was crouched over me, trying to hold me as still as possible while the truck sped off to the hospital.
Upon arriving at the hospital the situation was really no different than the ferry chaos. One man (actually wearing a stethoscope) tried yanking my arm to get me out of the truck and onto the gurney. This did not inspire confidence in the hospital’s knowledge and ability in back injuries. The brief calm I had breathed myself into during the truck ride was shattered and I was once again sent into hysterics. At one point I remember screaming, “what the fuck is wrong with these people”.
They rolled me into a corner of the emergency room and a nice young doctor came to ask me some questions and give me an anti-inflammatory.
Finally, after 7 hours since the whole ordeal began, I was in a place where they would be able to take care of me.
My hair was knotted up and full of leaves and dirt. My shirt, which they had managed to salvage from the wreckage along with my jeans was only halfway on and twisted because I could not move enough to pull it all the way on. I had no bra. My jeans were the same story, unzipped and only on up to the top of my thighs. As it turns out, it’s very hard to put clothes on when you can’t move your back at all. My feet were covered in dried mud and my shoes were still lying someplace deep inside the tent. My right arm had begun to display a range of colors resembling a sunset and was very obviously swollen in a gross, lumpy sort of way. There was a large scrape on my shoulder that lead down to an even larger raspberry that was all red and slimy, accompanied by more bruising. My knees were developing bruises, especially the right one, and my left knee had a small scrape. My right ankle was also a bit sore. Given the range of injuries I began to piece together an image of exactly what must have happened to me.
I had been sitting up, about to put on my clothes when I heard the roots. I jumped up to try to run but got nowhere. One of the main branches of the tree came down directly over my right shoulder and smacked me down on my knees while simultaneously scrunching my back in the middle, severely straining my back and knocking the wind out of me. The branch that came down on me was the size of a tree in itself.
After some xrays they rolled me into where I would be spending the night. My room mates were all diabetic ladies who’s feet had begun to rot off. It was wonderful to see that each woman had at least one family member accompanying her at all times, sometimes two. Martijn explained to them what had happened to us and you could see the amazement on their faces. These ladies were very kind to us for the duration of our stay even if they did stare at us like we were aliens the whole time. They helped Quinn help me. I must have looked pretty pathetic at that point. The pain was still too intense to even roll over onto my side on my own. Quinn had to move me anytime I needed to move. He had to feed me and bathe me. You can imagine how difficult and humiliating going to the bathroom was. At night Quinn slept in the bed with me, with his head down by my feet, but otherwise he was confined to a rather uncomfortable metal folding chair. He never left me alone.
On the third day they gave me another xray and confirmed that I had no fractures and all I needed was a bit of pain medication and some rest. The doctor suggested I stay another night, but the previous night’s nurse had been so horrible, I wanted nothing more than to escape. I was so eager to leave that I attempted to pull out my own IV needle.
Martijn and the other owners of the lodge gave Quinn and I a free cabin to stay in for as long as I need it to fully recover. So we made the long trip back to the island. Along the way everyone seemed eager to help us. I can’t explain why it takes 5 men to push a wheelchair from the ferry to the taxi, but apparently it does. Meanwhile they left Quinn behind attempting to carry four bags on his own. o_0
So now here we are! All the staff at the lodge heard what happened and saw the fallen tree and crushed structure and they’ve all been coming up and asking how I’m doing and wishing me well and calling it a miracle of god that we’re alive. Pablo, the man we worked with in the garden and the man that did most of the chainsawing to get us out has come to visit nearly everyday. Emma comes up everyday to hang out and keep me company and complain about the new volunteers.
Tomorrow will be one week from the accident. I can walk now without too much assistance, but not far. I can roll over in bed and I can even get out of bed on my own, depending on how long it’s been since I took my pain meds. I can even sit at a table and eat now, though not for too long. The bruise on my arm has turned a deeper shade of purple, but it’s now only slightly swollen. The scrape on my back is scabbed over and already starting to flake off. You can just start to see the definition of my spine and the two separate muscles on my back instead of looking a bit like the hulk combined with Quazimoto. This morning I discovered a new bruise on my butt which makes me think I must have landed on a rock. Quinn’s head is doing fine as well. The knot has subsided as well as the headaches and his hand no longer twitches involuntarily. All in all, everything could have been so much worse and I’m grateful and surprised at how quickly I’m recovering.
Yesterday I was able to return to the accident site and get some photos. It was my first time seeing it from the outside.
Quinn took these photos from on top of the tree that fell.
Martijn demonstrates our position under the zinc roof.
The eucalyptus beam that Texas hatcheted to get me out.
Quinn on top of the tree.
Me sitting on top of the branch that hit me.
The memory of the incident feels so surreal that it’s begun to take on a dreamlike quality. If it wasn’t for the pain I could conceivably convince myself that it was all a dream, that’s how surreal it still seems. It doesn’t roll through my mind like a film, it flashes in moments, like my brain was taking in too much to record it all. A flash of being under the roof and Quinn crying and saying he was so sorry. A flash of me saying in a shaky, breathless voice, “I don’t want to die” and Quinn reassuring me that this wasn’t how I was going to die. The sound of confusion and terror in Patricia’s voice when she first arrived and said, “they’re under there?”. A flash of Martijn’s face through the gap in the zinc. The screaming of the chainsaw. A flash of turning my head towards the light and seeing Emma patiently waiting just out of reach. The sounds of many voices in English and Spanish and the occasional Dutch swear word from Martijn all muffled through the rubble. A flash of Pablo holding my hand after the zinc was pried away and saying, “tranquila, no te preocupes, Todo esta bien”. A flash of Quinn crouching over me while Texas hacked at a eucalyptus beam with a hatchet. A flash of England explaining to everyone the best way to move me out. The relief of finally seeing the sky. The staggering fear I felt when I could see there were still loose branches hanging directly above me.
But no matter how dreamlike it all seems now, I will never forget it. If I ever hear the sound of massive roots being pulled out of the ground again... well let’s just say I would prefer not to.
I titled this post The Best and Worst Day Ever because although it was horrific, I survived and I have a new found appreciation for my life and my ability to move around on my own as well as an even deeper love and appreciation of Quinn. I’m more aware now than ever that I don’t ever want to be without him.
Quinn will be putting up an audio clip on his blog in a moment: http://quinnkiesow.posterous.com
