Deposition Daydreaming

I'm a week post-op and sitting in a crowded conference room full of lawyers, a court reporter and a deponent, all of us crammed into a room on the 2nd floor of a Savings & Loan in St. Tammany Parish. We wangled a conference room billed as sufficient to accommodate all of us and coincidentally situated close to the witnesses. As I wonder whether or not I'm bleeding through my bandage and my Kenneth Gordon button-down, it's easy to perceive that the air conditioning isn't keeping up. As the temperature creeps over 80, I find myself thinking that the room ain't livin' up to its billing.

There are 7 defense lawyers in this trailer explosion death case and, since they set this deposition, I will not get a chance to examine the witness for quite awhile yet. So, still a little gimped up and sore, I sit and take dutiful notes on my yellow pad. I already know what this witness will say as I’ve talked with him before. He has important insights to share but the line of questioning currently pursued has nothing to do with those insights. It has nothing to do with anything, really.

The drone of irrelevant questions and dutiful answers therefore allows my mind to drift and—soon—I am...well...daydreaming, I guess you would call it.

The morning of Wednesday, April 12, 2006 dawned clear and cool on Ulloa Street in Slidell, Louisiana. Linda and Johnny Meyer stirred to wakefulness, shoehorned with their few remaining belongings into the FEMA camper-trailer now providing the only shelter on their residential lot since the Katrina-induced flooding destroyed their longtime home the previous August. Johnny got the bedroom because he snored. Linda took the couch, located on the camper “slide-out” adjacent to the tiny trailer kitchen.

There was nothing about this morning to foreshadow that it would be the last morning Johnny and Linda would ever spend together.

Slipping quietly out of bed and likely still surfacing toward consciousness, Johnny padded by Linda on the couch, traversing the length of their small castle to the single, Spartan bathroom on the other end. Linda sensed him pass, but did not open her eyes. She heard him enter the bathroom and assumed he was going in there to smoke as he tended to his morning ablutions. That was their agreement. No smoking inside the living area of the trailer – only outside or in the bathroom with the fan on.

Linda heard the bathroom door close. There was a pause. She heard the exhaust fan in the bathroom come on.

Then....fearful madness.

From behind Linda and Johnny’s camper, on the adjacent lot sharing their rear property line, Bobby Zito and his wife, Tammy, were just starting their first cup of coffee in their own cramped FEMA trailer. Tammy was taking hers outside as she liked being in their rural residential neighborhood yard while it was still quiet and peaceful. Bobby sat at his miniature “dining room” table and watched the steam from his hot cup of Community Dark Roast combine with the curling white smoke wafting about him from his first pull on a Marlboro. All of his windows were propped open with staves and he remembered watching the steam and smoke mix and migrate out through the open camper window.

He felt the explosion before he heard it. But, he also heard it soon enough.

PA-WHUMP!

Bobby’s camper rolled back and forth as his coffee sloshed out of his cup and into the saucer underneath. Simultaneously, the windows all slammed shut, the staves knocked from their resting positions by the force of whatever the hell had just gone up with a sickening crunch. Gathering himself quickly, Zito hit the door on a run, flicked the Marlboro toward the street and headed into the yard. Tammy caught his eye – she was scrambling atop some cinder blocks stacked against their rear fence so that she could see into Linda and Johnny’s yard, where smoke was rising. He headed her way, saw her reach the top of the fence, look over and freeze, transfixed on the scene shielded from his view. In a few steps he was to the blocks himself and in a couple more he stood beside his wife and—in that moment—he saw, as well.

The Meyer trailer was split into several pieces, all of which jutted at crazy angles. The slide-out had been blown completely out of the camper and Bobby could see Linda struggling beneath her blanket to get out of the slide-out rubble, now tilted so precipitously that Linda was trapped in the “V” of the small trailer couch. He saw smoke rising, flames trickling along exposed surfaces and heard Linda's screams for help. Absorbing this surreal view, Bobby perceived the front door of the Meyer trailer was still shut and –if it was jammed—maybe no one else would get out.

Help them, Tammy, he told his wife. Hurry. I’m bringing the truck over.

Turning, he hopped off of the blocks and headed toward his pickup. Behind him, Tammy did the same but peeled off to run around the end of the fence and into Linda and Johnny’s yard. There was a chain and grappling hook in the bed of his Ford, he thought to himself as he fished for his keys with one hand and dialed 911 on his cell phone with the other. During the years he had operated a wrecker, he had used the hook-and-chains many times and he was about to use them again. That camper door was coming off the hinges one way or the other.

Linda struggled to understand what had occurred. She seemed pinned into the sofa as she fought to get out from beneath her blanket. When she was able to get her head free of the linens, she was astonished to see she was outside in their yard…..in a hunk of debris from their camper….and the rest of the camper was before her, split asunder four ways from Sunday. In the interior she could see flames as Johnny came out of the bathroom and into the fire. She watched him as he paused in his boxers looking for his pants. Finding them finally, he started to put them on.

For God’s sake, Johnny! Linda screamed, Get out! Get OUT of there! Forget about those jeans, Johnny, GET OUT!

Complying, he went toward the front door, but Linda told him to escape out through the now opened trailer side where the slide-out had been blown from the camper. Come out THIS way, Johnny! she bellowed, as she herself finally made it out of the slide-out to stand in their yard. Jeans half on, Johnny stumbled out of the inferno and into the yard to stand next to Linda, who was clad only in a man’s button-up shirt. Smoke wafted off of Johnny. Most of his hair was burned away. His full beard was burned away. The skin on his chest, face and arms sagged ominously as he pulled up his jeans. Together, they took a few steps away from their smoking camper as the flames subsided a bit…..and then started to grow anew.

Tammy ran up but, as she looked at her neighbors, there was little she could think to say. Within seconds, Bobby’s truck roared into the yard and slid to a stop. Zito jumped out, grabbed his hook and chains and headed toward the smoking hulk, stopping as he came abreast of Linda and Johnny.

Everybody out? he asked, winded.

Yes, somebody said.

Bobby took in the scene of the devastated camper and his badly burned neighbors. He had worked bad wrecks before back in the day and he knew trouble when he saw it. He was looking at big-time trouble.

Johnny needs help, Linda murmured as she looked at Johnny, reaching toward him as he slowly crumpled to a sitting position.

My arms hurt, Johnny stated flatly as he surveyed the strips of cooked skin hanging from his forearms. That was the damage they could see. What they couldn’t see was Johnny’s scorched trachea and seared lungs. The inhalation of superheated air following the initial flash of the accumulated gas had registered frightful damage. Those terrible internal burns would make their presence known soon enough.

I called 911, Johnny. Bobby said as he dropped his chains and removed his shirt. Help will be here in just a second, bud. We’re all gonna be OK. Just, take ‘er easy, pardner.

Bobby wrapped his shirt around Linda’s naked bottom and Tammy then helped her secure it. Sirens could be heard approaching. As they waited for help to arrive, they watched the trailer --- containing all they had left--- burn.

6 days later, losing a little ground each nursing shift, Johnny would die in the Baton Rouge General Hospital Critical Care Burn Unit and Linda would be on her own. They had lost almost everything during The Storm but ---as they would sometimes say--- at least they still had each other. Now, that was gone too.

And, without ever having left my seat, I am back. You would never know I’d been anywhere, unless you were watching me very closely. No one is, thankfully. My eyes are stinging and I blink back the burning sensation. My recent surgery and the one on the drawing board have me a little emotional these days for some weird reason. I resume taking notes on my pad, calculating from my watch that I was “gone” for only a minute or so.

The lawyer for the trailer manufacturer is continuing his line of questions. He’s young, sharp and driven. As the manufacturer of the “thing” which included all the legally problematic devices, he knows he’s got what we call “exposure.” So, I’m sure he feels he must ask those questions about the Meyers’ 2 week separation 13 years ago. He must ask about Linda’s marijuana arrest during the 1970’s. He’s gotta inquire about Johnny’s “motorcycle club” membership and ask whether they were into gun-running and drug sales, like the Hell’s Angels and other motorcycle clubs he learned about in the movies. Johnny's Motorcycle Club is called The Fugawes. Fugawe....as in "Where the fug are we?" Oh, yes. These are some desperadoes, alright.

The lawyer for the LP gas detector manufacturer that never went off is next. He’s putting yellow “stickies” on a series of photographs which depict his gas detector in the trailer rubble. He’s well known to me, a past State Bar President and a hale-fellow-well-met. His device is supposed to sound an alarm if there is an accumulation of LP gas amounting to 20% of what it would take to be combustible, a point called the LEL – the Lower Explosive Limit. His detector remained mute and silent on that day of fearsome madness. Later, pursuant to a set of laboriously crafted protocols, we removed it from the Meyer’s trailer debris and ran tests on it. It powered up beautifully –nice green lights and what-not---but it never, EVER sniffed ANY gas. It NEVER sounded an alarm, even when we laid a hissing propane nozzle against it. It was worthless. Now this ole boy has a theory that the water from the fire hoses must have adversely affected the detector’s calibration and he’s lately trying to sell that bill of goods. Has a fancy expert and everything. Of course….his detector failed to perform even before the fire trucks left the station, much less before they arrived at the Meyer's destroyed camper, much less before the hoses were unspooled. But, hey, I haven’t the heart to tell him that. His theory means so much to him and, after all, I like the guy.

The lawyers for the company that got the government FEMA contract to deliver the trailer without providing appropriate orientation procedures or delivering operational manuals or checking to make sure the safety equipment worked are pow-wowing quietly. They sent 2 guys. TWO! What’s up with THAT? They say that their people did everything they were supposed to do. Just take a look at their forms, they say, all neatly and uniformly checked. There’s only one little hitch: No one who ever received a FEMA trailer from this outfit can ever recall them DOING any of the stuff that’s checked off as having been accomplished. I hate to judge, but a fella might sort of get the idea that those forms got all neatly filled out back in the office and away from the hubbub of the field, filled out perfunctorily to satisfy FEMA and the local regulators. That’s a lot easier than actually DOING what’s required to make sure folks are safely housed. These guys always like to remind me that—after all—they were very busy delivering trailers to people who desperately needed shelter after a terrible natural disaster. Thus, their point seems to be that the relaxation of the ordinary rules has to be understood. I just nod, although I have inquired about how much they were paid for the delivery of all those trailers. I will never have access to enough wheelbarrows to carry off the loot their client cleared….loot that was paid PER TRAILER delivered. You know, somebody back in the home office might have thought that, if you could breeze through those forms a little more smartly, you could deliver more units for more do-re-mi. But, as I say, I really don’t want to judge.

The manufacturer of the admittedly leaking gas camper stove has its lawyer in from Atlanta – maybe the most dangerous defense counsel in the room: Smart, polite, courtly southern manners and immensely likable. Our post explosion tests show that his stove leaks gas when all the burners are supposed to be off. His main defense to this discovery during testing is: Well, yes there may have been a gas leak in the stove…but….it wasn’t really a BAD leak. I never know what to say when he tells me that. So, I just smile and reply: I hear what you’re sayin', pal.

Then there’s the guy for the electrical system manufacturer that may have allowed power to fail to critical safety systems and the guy for the company which effected repairs on the Meyer trailer in the week before the LP gas explosion. Somehow during those repairs a 15 amp fuse got inserted in a place where a tag reads: DO NOT USE MORE THAN 10 AMP FUSE HERE.

I kid you not.

And then, of course, there’s me --- gimped up, bandaged and a little off my feed.

These boys are gonna need some more help, I think to myself as the deposition drones on.