By Chris Hankinson, C1 Contributor
On April 30, 2014, my wife Shannon and I clocked in to work the night shift at the Escambia County Jail.
I worked in the booking section, and Shannon worked in security. As we were entering the building, we smelled an odor of gas. We were told by our supervisors that the basement was flooded with approximately 12 feet of water and we were running on generators. They told us that they were told by the previous shift that the gas had been turned off. It was our understanding that a retention pond overflowed, similar to the situation that we had two years prior to that, causing approximately 12 feet of water to enter the basement then, too.
The kitchen, laundry room, inmate property room and mechanical room were all located in the basement, all of which were at a total loss. The basement was gutted and all of the equipment was replaced and put back in the same location. This time the gas dryers were not bolted to the floor and floated, causing the gas lines to rupture, filling the jail full of gas over a 24-hour period.
I was assigned to work the inmate property room and Shannon was assigned to one of the second floor housing units. When I entered the property room, there was the smell of gas and sewage, but it was not bad enough that I thought that my life or the lives of others were in any danger.
At approximately 11:30 p.m., I sat at my computer and started to build a property record. Out of nowhere, I felt something hit me in the back of the head with tremendous force, harder than I’ve ever been hit in my life. Then everything went black and I realized I was under water.
At that very moment, I thought that the four stories above me were crumbling down and I was going to be buried. Not knowing if I were upside down or not, I didn’t know which way to swim. As I tried to swim, I realized that I was paralyzed. There were still pieces of the building falling through the water on top of me, and I was able to push them over and swim upward. Luckily I had a coworker assigned to help me that night.
She was hurt, but not as badly as I was. As soon as my ears cleared the water, I heard Kelly screaming my name. I called to her and told her, “I’m over here, Kelly, and I can’t move my legs.”
She worked her way over to me, then took me by the shirt and held my head above water. There was a thick cloud of cement dust in the air and we could barely see. As soon as it settled, we could see a single fluorescent light dangling by wires, sparking with electricity. She could only stand on debris to keep us both above the water. We heard a constant roar of water rushing in due to a water main that had broken.
The water was coming in as fast as it was going out and created a current. The roar of the rushing water made it impossible to know if anyone heard our screams for help. We looked up and saw that there were huge sections of cement still hanging by rebar, waiting to fall.
Kelly screamed for help over and over. She called out everyone’s name. We didn’t know if anyone even knew we were down there. We didn’t know what the kind of shape the rest of the jail was in. I didn’t know if Shannon was ok. Time stood still.
The percussion from the blast ruptured the aorta to my heart. I later realized that the impact of what I thought was the building falling on me was actually me hitting the second floor due to the first floor exploding, catapulting me into the ceiling. It split the back of my head open, broke seven ribs in multiple places, my T12 and C5 vertebrae, shoulder blades, clavicle and pelvis. I only had the use of my right arm.
I told Kelly to push me over to some debris so I could hold on. I told her to try to find something to climb out of there. She refused and told me that she wasn’t going anywhere. She said “I’m not leaving you, we are getting out of here together and we are getting out alive.” She continued to call out for help.
At one point we saw someone fall through the floor above us. They caught themselves before falling all the way into the basement and were able to climb back up and then disappeared. We weren’t sure if they heard our cries for help. It was later determined that it was only a half an hour before we were rescued, but it seemed like an eternity. I started having shortness of breath and crushing pain and pressure in my chest. I started having a hard time breathing and told Kelly to tell Shannon that I love her. I thought I wasn’t going to make it.
Kelly told me no, that she wasn’t going to tell her anything, because I was going to be ok. She stayed with me until help arrived. The firefighters lowered a ladder and climbed down into the water. After one of them climbed down, Kelly climbed up the ladder to safety and they lowered a basket. I will never forget the first thing that the firefighter said when he climbed into the water.
“Hey buddy, my name is Jason. We are going to get you out of here.”
I have never been happier to hear those words in my life. As I was being loaded into the ambulance, Shannon found me. I was thankful she was OK. Immediately following the blast the Lieutenant radioed control to contact the Sheriff’s office, city police dept., highway patrol, National Guard and EMS to respond.
“The jail had been compromised.”
I was immediately rushed to Baptist Hospital for heart surgery. The first thing they did was an MRI. Afterwards they called Shannon to the back and the doctor explained to us that I was paralyzed from the waist down due to a T12 burst fracture, and I will never walk again. I looked at Shannon, then I looked at the doctor and asked “Do you think you could at least save Mr. Winky?” With a look of shock on his face, he looked back at Shannon and asked in a serious voice “…is he for real?” Shannon laughed and said to him, “meet Chris Hankinson.”
I had heart surgery that morning, then flew to Birmingham for back surgery. I only remember a small part of the jet ride;.the next thing I remember is a nurse telling me to take a deep breath because they were removing a breathing tube from my mouth. I was in an induced coma for three weeks. The day after the back surgery, I developed a pocket of fluid putting pressure on my lungs. So they were putting in a second chest tube in to drain the fluid. During that procedure they noticed that I had blood that coagulated on the lining of my lungs, and they needed to scrape it off. Doing so, the resident that was performing this procedure, accidentally punctured my lungs, spleen and diaphram.
My blood pressure dropped drastically, so they rolled me over on my back and cut me open for emergency exploratory surgery to find out what went wrong. During that time, the blood transfusion machine could not keep up with the blood I was losing. I lost practically all of my blood, so my heart stopped and a doctor slid his hand under my rib cage and palpitated my heart until the machines could pump blood back into me. They removed my spleen and sewed up my lung and diaphram.
By some miracle I survived that ordeal as well.
Two days after that, I developed pneumonia and when they tested me, they found MERSA in my lungs. They told Shannon that they didn’t know if I was going to recover from that either, but apparently they underestimated how stubborn I am. Three weeks later they decided that it’s time to bring me out of my propofol nap.
When I woke up, my family was there waiting. My brother is a sergeant that was assigned to the jail that is located a block away from the one that exploded. He stayed 24/7 with me and Shannon the entire time I was in Birmingham. He used his personal leave and sacrificed time away from his wife and kids for over a month and a half to stay and help me. I don’t know how Shannon and I could have made it without him.
While in Birmingham, I had approximately 40 visitors/coworkers drive from Pensacola (6 hours away) to visit me. The tremendous support from the corrections and law enforcement community has been, and is, amazing. After Birmingham, I was flown to Orlando where I stayed at a post-acute rehab facility called Neulife. I spent a little over three months there. Shannon was able to stay with me until it was time for our kids to go back to school, and get the house ready for me to come home. I am very lucky to have such an amazing family.
My father came down from Montgomery and took care of the kids up until that point. While at Neulife, I received my wheelchair and minivan. They trained me how to survive as a paraplegic, including how to drive. The facility was amazing and the staff was even more amazing. They took really good care of me. After being gone five months, I finally was able to “drive” home to my family. I was so glad to be home.
But home wasn’t the same. When I got home, it was hard to adapt. The simplest things are difficult still. Like picking a pen up off the floor, or rolling over in bed in the middle of the night. There were things that I could do before that now I can’t. I have always been a giver, not a taker. It was hard for me to ask for help. My goal was and still is to learn to be as independent as possible. I still have to, not only be independent enough to take care of myself, but I want to take care of my family too.
I will fight through the pain every day. I don’t want my wife to be my caregiver. I want to be the provider, the husband and the father I once was.