Generosity and Acts of Courage Amid Disaster

Moments after he escaped from his own crashed car, Rod Bailey found 3-year-old Lindsay crying for help and strapped into the child’s safety seat of a nearby vehicle. Her father was slowly dying, semi-conscious in the wreckage of the driver’s seat.

As the dust storm raged, Bailey called out to the driver that the child was all right. “Hang in there,” he then yelled. “You’re going to pull through this.”

On Saturday morning, Lindsay’s father was dead and the man who rescued the little girl was still looking after her at a Red Cross shelter where 40 people spent the night after surviving Friday’s massive pile up on Interstate 5.

As Lindsay huddled in a blanket with Bailey and his wife, the girl explained: “They had a crash and daddy was sick.” She had yet to be told of her father’s death. Her mother would soon arrive from Los Angeles to share in her daughter’s grief.

Like Bailey and his wife, Andrea, scores of holiday travelers found themselves stranded in Fresno, recounting the disaster.

They remembered how motorists emerged from their wrecked cars and worked frantically with paramedics and California Highway Patrol officers to help pull the injured to safety.

“There were people with bandaged arms and heads carrying others around,” Bailey recalled.

Some survivors spent Saturday frantically questioning authorities about the fate of loved ones who had disappeared in the confusion of crashes and explosions.

A woman who identified herself only as Esther had still not heard word of her husband more than 24 hours after the accidents.

Esther told rescue workers that she and her husband had been traveling with their three small children when their car crashed. She and the children escaped out the passenger side doors, while her husband walked out from the driver’s seat.

The man disappeared into a dust cloud, quickly followed by the sound of an explosion. She had not seen her husband since and he had not yet appeared on a list of victims.

CHP Officer Bill Beltz speculated that Esther’s husband could be wandering the fields around the highway after suffering a head injury. Or he may have joined the volunteers helping out at the scene.

“So far, nobody knows where he is,” Beltz said.

Many victims could not free themselves of the disaster’s images and sounds. One survivor said: “I keep hearing screaming in my ears, I keep hearing screaming in my ears.”

Those who had been separated from families, or who had a seriously injured relative, said they were haunted by strong feelings of guilt, wondering if the disaster might have been averted if they had left home earlier or taken a different route.

“People were thinking about what they could have done and should have done when in reality they probably couldn’t have done anything different,” one survivor said.

For many, simply telling a stranger about the accidents was therapeutic.

Bailey and his wife recalled a pleasant drive suddenly interrupted by a series of sandstorms, the last one leaving them blinded. They slammed into the rear of a diesel rig that had swept across the highway diagonally. Bouncing off the truck’s wheels, they were then struck from behind by another vehicle that pushed them out of harm’s way. They later learned the driver of the car was killed.

In the dust storm, the Baileys could hear wrecked cars piling up around them--tires screeching, followed by the sounds of explosions.

Louise Almy, 58, said paramedics who were racing to the scene of one wreck, became trapped in another collision, stepping from their stranded ambulance directly into the scene of the disaster.

The paramedics helped Almy’s 88-year-old mother, Bea Blossom Brady, onto a helicopter to be evacuated. The elderly woman had suffered injuries to her back and neck.

Later, Louise’s husband, Donald, tried to console a 16-year-old girl who had been separated from her parents.

“I know you’re scared,” Donald told the girl. “I’m scared, too.”

Chris Gwin, 22, said he joined a CHP officer in a search for victims. When they found a man trapped inside a car, the officer climbed into the vehicle and told Gwin to grab his legs.

“If you see any fire,” the officer said, “pull me out.” The officer checked for a pulse and found none.

Andrea Bailey said she was better able to cope with the disaster because of the hours she spent at the shelter consoling 3-year-old Lindsay.

“It helped me a lot to get my mind off things to help her,” she said. “It put things into perspective.”

Harris reported from Fresno. The story was written by Tobar in Los Angeles.