LAUREN CLENCHED THE STEERING WHEEL WITH both hands, the siren of Lou Hessel’s patrol car blasting as they approached the outskirts of Paducah. They had to cross the Route 60 bridge over the Tennessee River. Lauren dreaded the passage. The old, narrow two-lane bridge with a dogleg halfway across was nearly a mile long. She’d never liked driving on it, especially at night.
Bobby sat in the rear seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the flood heading toward them. So far, they’d managed to stay in front of it. Paducah was the end of the line.
Lauren thought the crest was a couple miles behind them and coming fast. She was focused on a single thought. She didn’t want to be out on the bridge when the water hit it.
“Bobby, can you see anything?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He blinked and stared into the darkness, looking upstream for what he knew was coming.
The bridge was just up ahead, the black superstructure outlined against a smoky haze. As they roared up the elevated approach ramp, Lauren got her first good look at Paducah, a city of twenty thousand residents, the largest in western Kentucky.
Fires had broken out in the central business district. But the real inferno was raging on the Illinois shore, just below where the Tennessee flowed into the Ohio. It was a solid sheet of fire. An oil storage depot had gone up in flames. The tanks were burning fiercely.
Lauren’s mind raced. Her plan was to skirt the downtown district, cut over to Interstate 24, and take the Hinkeville Road exit, going west. Her parents lived ten miles out in Heath. All she wanted to do was find them and get away.
They were almost up on the bridge. The span was separated into three sections supported by concrete pilings driven deep into the riverbed. The car’s high beams bored down the middle of the two-lane deck.
“I see it!” Bobby cried out.
Lauren glanced to the right, looking upriver.
It’s huge, she thought.
The leading edge of the flood had swept around a bend in the Tennessee. It was going to hit the bridge broadside. The surging water had covered the last ten miles downstream a lot faster than she’d expected.
Lauren was doing fifty miles an hour when she reached the sharp bend where the deck made a jog to the right. She was going too fast and clipped a guardrail, smashing out a headlight before she got the car back under control.
She took another glancing look at the flood and froze. The wall of water was nearly as high as the deck of the bridge and no more than fifty yards away. It looked like it was going to wash right over them.
Lauren punched the gas pedal. They’d passed the halfway point.
There’s no way we’ll make it, she thought.
The roar of the water resonated in her ears.
The bridge shook sideways as the flood smashed into the concrete supports. Amazingly, it withstood the initial shock. Water poured across the roadway, causing the car’s tires to lose traction. The rear fender banged against a railing.
Another heavy blow rocked the bridge’s superstructure. This time the supports buckled.
“Roll the windows down!” Lauren screamed to her grandson. “If we go into the river, try to get out of the car.”
Give me another twenty seconds, Lauren prayed. Please. Just twenty seconds.
There was another sharp vibration. Something heavy had slammed into one of the supports like a battering ram.
The roadway sagged and started to pull apart. A gap opened in front of them. Lauren hit the brakes, the tires spinning on the wet steel surface. She steered the car into the guardrail, hoping to slow it down. The heavy patrol car bounced off. She turned into the railing again, shearing away a fender. The car spun around a full 180 degrees and stopped.
“Get out!” Lauren yelled to her grandson, who scrambled out of the back scat. She opened the glove compartment and snatched the pistol Sheriff Hessel had told her about, slipping it into a coat pocket.
The car had stopped within yards of the gap that had opened in the roadway. The bridge had pulled apart at one of the places where the steel sections that comprised the roadway were bolted together. The opening was about five yards wide.
Lauren saw that they were no more than thirty yards from the end of the bridge. The only way to get there was a narrow catwalk that ran along the side of the superstructure. Used for maintenance, it extended over the river. They’d have to climb over the outer railing and step down to it.
“I can’t do this!” Bobby cried.
“Sure you can,” Lauren said. She climbed over the railing and, with her back to the water, lowered herself a few feet onto the slippery catwalk. She helped her grandson down. The catwalk was open to the water. A single handrail was bolted to the side of the superstructure.
Lauren looked up at the patrol car. The lights were still on. Then the bridge lurched and the car started sliding toward the gap in the roadway.
Gripping the railing with one hand and her grandson with the other, Lauren watched as the car fell through the opening and disappeared in the churning water below them.
“Keep going!” she told Bobby. “Don’t look down!”
With their backs to the river and holding on to the wet handrail, they slowly sidestepped their way down the catwalk.
Something large hit one of the supports, which shuddered at the impact. Lauren saw what had caused it—part of an electric tower swept downstream by the flood. At least fifty feet long, it was dragging its tangled wires behind it.
The jolt of the collision almost knocked them into the river. One of Bobby’s feet slipped off the catwalk, and he fell down on his knees. Lauren grabbed him by his belt and pulled him back up.
After they inched their way past the gap in the roadway, they climbed back up on the bridge and started running toward the end. Lauren felt the pilings move under them.
“Hurry, boy!” she shouted to her grandson.
They had another ten yards to go.
Another five.
They’d almost reached the end when the roadway started to pull away from the approach ramp.
“Jump!” Lauren screamed. Her lungs ready to burst, she put an arm around her grandson, who’d started to lag behind. She shoved him hard just as the deck gave way beneath them. Their momentum carried them forward. She landed on top of Bobby on the approach ramp, skinning her knee.
She lay next to him, gasping for breath, staring at the sky. She reached over and squeezed her grandson’s hand. She’d come so close to losing him. A matter of inches. They’d been so lucky. She closed her eyes and started to cry, the tears stinging her cheeks in the cold air. She loved and needed Bobby so much. She’d lost her husband and survived. If she lost her grandson, she wouldn’t want to go on living. She realized she and the boy were in the fight of their lives. As she lay there, still holding his hand, afraid to let go, she swore to herself that no matter what happened he was going to come out of this alive.
Bobby sat up.
“It’s going!”
Lauren pulled herself to her feet just as the bridge broke into three sections and started to lean toward the water. The surging flood knocked it over. A single concrete support at the middle was all that remained standing. Part of the superstructure lay on its side, still visible. A mobile home washed downstream was impaled on one of the steel girders. So was the smashed wall of a frame home.
“Look over there!” Bobby said, pointing toward downtown Paducah and the Ohio River. Just below Owen’s Island, where the river narrowed slightly before it swung by the city, the fire had spread from shore to shore.
More fires had broken out in the Lowertown district.
Lauren had little time to worry about Paducah. They needed to get off the elevated approach ramp, which was supported by steel trusses. She wanted to be clear of it before the next aftershock hit.
She started down the sloping incline with her grandson when a car pulled onto the ramp and started in their direction.
“Stop!” Lauren screamed, waving her hands over her head. “The bridge is out! Go back.”
The car kept coming. It had its high beams on and was headed straight toward them.