missing personComing south yesterday all was quiet until hitting Tennessee when the typical summer thunderstorms hit the eastern part of the state. I-40 was closed when powerlines dropped off the huge towers and onto the highway. Knowing the area, I dodged off and started on the backroads to skirt the city limits. After about 5 minutes I almost came to regret my decision when I encounter this :
Luckily we were there before the fire department so traffic took turns easing past in the far lane (I have no CLUE what that idiot is doing parking his car at the base of the power pole!)
I got into town quickly and back on the superslab and probably saved a 2 hour delay. I was a few minutes late for some great photos of the Chattanooga area in the wake of their evening storms - it was dark by the time I shot the gap at Missionary Ridge and descended into the city and past Lookout Mountain, but here is a quick peek out the sunroof between raindrops looking west :
As I settled in at home to read a newsy note from our own self professed "silent snuggs", a call came over the scanner for a search crew to respond to Cloudland Canyon State Park, a beautiful area between Trenton, Georgia and Lookout Mountain about 7 miles SE of our firehouse.
www.gastateparks.org/info/cloudland
It was a new call and our station was not paged to come for a missing persons report.
This morning the paper describes that Judy Payne, in her 40's was last seen going to work in Chattanooga (from her home in Rock Springs, GA) Monday morning. Her husband, when called about her car which was found at 10pm last night, said she had said nothing about stopping at the park.
They say no foul play, but what else could it be?
Judy Payne :
Judy Payne is 5 feet 2 inches and weighs 140 pounds. She has dark brown hair and was last seen wearing blue jeans and a blue t-shirt.
At noon they paged all personnel to respond to the staging area for a deeper search (they had been using a helicopter with heat seeking radar overnight as well as searchers on the park trails with no luck). I had been waiting for it and immediately jumped in the car and started that way. 10 minutes later the tones went off again and the page was cancelled. WTF?
Back home I called my friend who is a dispatcher at Dade County to ask what was up. He said the decision came down that due to more severe weather moving in, they decided to not commit to sending dozens of searchers into the canyonland for fear of flash flooding.
An hour later the chopper was grounded for mechanical problems, but no emergency as far as I could tell.
It's now 4 hours later and the afternoon storms are pounding us with a vengence after a sunny 95 degree day. Lightning, thunder, strong winds (just nearly leaned the tree in front of my condo thru my front window!), and hail.
Tonight is firehall night anyway, so I guess this is as good a time as any to start that-a-way. toodles.bb.
