On June 17th we had a terrific dust storm with high winds and thunder and lightning. The walls of my hooch rocked and whistled all night long against the steady pressure. The lightning flashed outside, painting the inside of my dancing room blue. I kept expecting the generator to be shut down, but it chugged on through the storm and kept my air-conditioner running.
In the morning there was a thick coat of red dust on every object in my room and the floor was covered, leaving footprints as my flip-flops dragged across it. The daylight outside was still filtered and orange as the dust continued to settle from hundreds of feet in the air, covering the walls and vehicles and camouflaging the already dried mud spots where rain had dropped through the fine grit.
As I drove to the DFAC for a bite of breakfast I was astounded by the damage that I found across the camp. Porta-Johns were torn from their moorings and pushed every which way across the ground. One huge maintenance tent, probably 100 feet by 50 feet, had been torn apart in the winds. The green canvas was missing from the roof and the yellow fiberglass insulation was scattered for miles to the east. The inner lining, a white layer of light-weight material was shredded by the wind and flapped peacefully in the breeze that continued to push eastward. The roof was nothing more than an aluminum skeleton. A few labor crew employees walked across the barren fields dressed in plastic hazmat suits, plastic gloves, hard hats, dust masks and safety glasses as they picked up the torn, scattered fiberglass, a very hot job when the temperature reaches into the nineties very early in the day.
That was the wind that blew outside through the night. Inside the office another wind was blowing—an ill wind.
(To be continued)
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