For the record.
A full and accurate account of the Thunderstorm Incident, filed by the only witness who was actually there.
By Murray, Sergeant Major & Chief Correspondent at Large | Houston Heights Independent
My colleague the Editor has filed a story this week about the Cypress Creek Fire Department. It is a fine story. It has basketball in it. It also has a section near the end called “Full Disclosure,” in which he tells you about me. I have read it. It is accurate in the way a police report is accurate: every fact is correct, and none of the important ones are in it.
So here is my statement.
I was on assignment at the home of the Editor’s brother. I had secured the perimeter, inspected the kitchen, and was conducting a routine survey of the back of the couch when the sky attacked.
I want to be clear about this. It was not rain. Rain is water that falls. This was the sky picking a fight. It cracked open directly over the house, it flashed, it shook the windows, and then it did it again, closer. I have been trained to recognize a hostile environment, and I recognized one.
A good Sergeant Major does not panic. A good Sergeant Major conducts a tactical withdrawal. I conducted mine through a door that somebody, and I am not naming names, had not fully closed.
Then I ran down the street. I want credit for this part. People see a basset hound and they assume we do not run. We run. We run low, with our ears out like wings, and we do not stop to explain ourselves. I covered ground. I covered a great deal of ground. At the time I was not yet wearing what the Editor now calls my “tracking device,” so nobody knew where I was, which was the point.
I needed cover. I found a house with a front door behind a metal cage, the kind with bars, and I went for it. My head went between the bars beautifully. My shoulders were a negotiation. The rest of me did not get a vote. For the record I was not stuck. I wanna make that clear. I was simply attempting to illuminate the terrain in which I found myself currently deployed. Discretion being the better part of Valor, I held my position in the bars.
I would like to address the bars. Whoever spaced them has never met a basset hound. They were designed for a slimmer sort of animal, a greyhound perhaps, or a cat, or a dog with no ambition. I was not stuck. I was holding a defensive position with limited room to maneuver. There is a difference, and anyone who has been to a SERE school will tell you so. The Editor has been to two. He knows.
The lady who lived there came to the door. I gave her my most dignified look, which from inside a security cage is a challenge. She did not invite me in, and given the circumstances I do not blame her. She did something smarter. She called the fire department.
They came in a truck the size of a building. Men in heavy coats got out, looked at the situation, looked at me, and did not laugh, or at least did not laugh where I could see it. That is professionalism. They got me free. Then one of them ran a little scanner over the back of my neck and read my chip, which is how they learned who I am and who I belong to. They checked my papers. I respect a unit that checks papers.
The Editor arrived. I would describe his expression as relieved, and also as the expression of a man already thinking about buying something.
He bought an AirTag. It hangs on my collar now. The Editor says it is so he can find me. I say it is a security clearance. Every important operative is monitored. It means they cannot afford to lose you.
I have now reviewed the photographs of these same firefighters playing basketball in their air masks. I have notes. Their footwork is heavy and nobody passed the ball. But I also noticed that when the ball got away from them, they went and got it, every time, no matter where it went.
That is the whole job, as far as I can tell. Something gets loose, and they go get it.
Thank you, Cypress Creek. The bars won this round. You won the war.
— Murray is HHI’s Sergeant Major and Chief Correspondent at Large. Here in his position at the command couch. Houston Heights. For the record his statement :He is not chubby. He is built for Power. Bassets are very lethal at short distances.
