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When I read a recent headline that said Meredith Grey would be leaving Grey’s Anatomy, I was absolutely shocked—I honestly had no idea the show was still on TV. So, maybe I’m off-base here, but if the medical drama formula has remained the same since I watched in the Katherine Heigl heyday, you can count on any given episode to involve insane injuries (at least one a year is rectal, am I right?), mysterious illnesses, and of course, plenty of collegial broom-closet canoodling.

The medical drama I wrote for our March issue only ticks one of those boxes. A gas explosion nearly killed three Dallas firefighters in September 2021. The injuries the three suffered were so horrific, I questioned whether I should even include some details. Firefighter Pauline Perez gave me the green light on one particularly graphic image, saying, “I want people to know how bad it was.”

But the story also includes the kinds of things you will never see in an episode of Grey’s: a realistic portrayal of how a hospital functions during a mass casualty event and a profile of a stand-out nurse who gave the blast survivors a ray of sunshine when they needed it most. The story is online today.

Mavs Lose Back-to-Back Games Against Lowly Hornets. No one was expecting anything out of the Hornets on Friday night. They were on the second game of a back-to-back, have a seriously depleted roster, and have long since given up on the season. The Mavs came out flat, rallied, but could never quite overcome starting off so terribly. OK, a wake-up call, right? Well, Sunday at noon, they came out flat, rallied, but could never quite overcome starting off so terribly (though they did at least get a very brief lead in this one). That leaves them at 36-39, a game out of the play-in. The Western Conference is bunched up so tight, the Mavs could hit a run and this will all be fine. But I sincerely doubt it. We should move on to other topics, like should Jason Kidd come back next season.

Two Cold Fronts Coming. Make up your mind! I’m switching back and forth between heat and cold, wearing sleeveless t-shirts under long-sleeved snap shirts.

FC Dallas Loses to LAFC. Despite playing a man down the entire second half, FC Dallas rallied to tie the defending MLS champs, only to give up a goal in the 84th minute. Rough one, buddy.

To work inside a county hospital like Parkland, you have to keep a steady gait while the ground shifts beneath your feet. That’s what Katie Mapula loves about her job as the nursing director over all five intensive care units and burn center operations. You think you know what the day will look like, and then—boom—there’s an urgent rush to make order of fresh chaos. 

On the morning of September 29, 2021, Mapula was making order of yet another exhausting COVID surge. The swath the Delta variant cut through Dallas had filled every bed in the ICU and then some. She had already converted 12 more beds on the Medical Surgery floor to handle the growing demand when—boom—a startling notification rang in. 

The City Council next month will learn about an ordinance that will ban short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods in Dallas.

A recommendation from the City Plan Commission would push Airbnbs, Vrbos, and other platforms out of single-family zoning, where, city staffers say, about 95 percent of the registered stock in Dallas currently operate. By a count of 9-4, plan commissioners in December voted to recommend redefining these properties as “lodging uses,” which makes them illegal in residential communities.

The city of Dallas has been mulling over this matter since 2020. There have been three task forces, dozens of community meetings, a study, and the plan commission’s recommendation. Now, it will be up to the City Council, which appears poised to vote before the May election.

It has been contentious. Those who want short-term rentals out of residential neighborhoods cite quality-of-life and safety concerns, juiced by large parties, high-profile shootings, and what police described as a brothel. They consider these 30-days-or-fewer rentals to be businesses that, under existing city code, are operating illegally in single-family neighborhoods.

Those who speak in support of these rentals believe zoning to be too blunt of an instrument. Instead, they say, pick up the scalpel. Hike registration fees to pay for more code enforcement to cut down on nuisance houses and crime while generating more hotel tax revenue for the city and allowing property owners to have another revenue stream.

The Quality of Life Committee was briefed on the plan this week. The body immediately went into executive session after the briefing and punted questions until the full Council hears the details on April 4. So we don’t know exactly where all of the Council falls on this. But five members requested the vote in April: Paul Ridley, in downtown, Uptown, and East Dallas; Carolyn King Arnold, in South Oak Cliff; Omar Narvaez, in West Dallas; Cara Mendelsohn, in Far North Dallas; and Gay Donnell Willis, in Preston Hollow.

One thing is clear: Dallas has missed out on a significant bit of money. City Hall didn’t start collecting hotel taxes on these properties until 2019. The contractor in charge of registering these properties and collecting their taxes reports that there are 1,735 properly registered and active—and about 1,200 “possible” locations that aren’t registered and aren’t paying any hotel tax. Other third-party databases show more than 6,000 operating in the city, a number the anti-folks believe is more accurate.

Just 48 of those would be allowed to operate if the Council follows the plan commission’s recommendations.

Whew, That Rain Really Came Down. You’ve heard this one before: a severe thunderstorm warning spread across much of North Texas earlier this morning. Collin County is currently being battered by a storm that’s moving northeast at 45 mph and bringing wind gusts of up to 60 mph. Most of the warnings expired before 6 a.m., and this storm didn’t bring the damaging hail and tornadoes that we saw earlier in the month. We’ll still have scattered storms for the next hour or so, but the worst of it is northeast of us.

Toll Company Didn’t Properly De-Ice Roads Before Fatal Fort Worth Crash. The 2021 pileup on Interstate 35E in Fort Worth killed six people and injured dozens because the North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners didn’t adequately control the highway conditions. That’s according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board, which found that the consortium’s monitoring of the frozen conditions that day didn’t identify a stretch of elevated road for additional deicing treatment. The company “strongly disagrees” with the NTSB’s findings and says its work was “reasonable and consistent with federal and state guidelines.”

Man Killed During Test Drive in Arlington. Two men arranged a meetup to buy a car, then killed the 55-year-old seller during a test drive. Arlington PD released photos to help find the two.

It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Most of the 1,400 or so students at Thomas Jefferson High School dispersed once school dismissed at 4:30 p.m. 

Band director Bob Romano was outside, near the parking lot that connects his school and the adjacent Walnut Hill International Leadership Academy, just off Walnut Hill Lane and Lenel Place. Athletic trainer Raul Velazquez was nearby in his clinic, tending to his athletes. The clinic’s bay door, which faces the parking lot, was open. Assistant athletic director Brandi Elder was leaving the building, her day nearly done. 

Ten minutes after the final bell rang, a car with two people—one likely a student, officials said later—drove up, shot another student, and then drove away. (By Thursday, an arrest had been made, but district officials declined to give more details.)

Seconds later, all three were rushing toward the parking lot where a student lay bleeding from a gunshot wound in the arm. All three are being heralded by Dallas ISD officials for the quick actions they took in the seconds and minutes that followed. 

“It didn’t sound like a gunshot at first; it was kind of muffled and away from us,” Romano recalled Thursday morning. “It wasn’t until I saw Raul running out from his clinic—and I was about 20 feet away from him—that we both ran over there.”

A new Dallas company called Snaps Clothing is making Western shirts. They offered to send us two shirts. So Zac and I put on those shirts and talked about them in this episode of EarBurner. Does this mean we’ve become influencers? Yes, it does!

We also talked about why Zac’s parents made fun of him when he wore snap shirts as a kid, the 1978 movie that supposedly popularized snap shirts, and the intriguing magazine Zac recently encountered called Huntin’ Fool. By the way, that’s not a Snaps shirt pictured at the top of this post. That’s just a really hot stock image I found when I searched for “cowboy.” You’re welcome. Listen after the jump.

In the March issue of D Magazine, Laray Polk wrote a fine piece to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of a dumb idea: turning the Trinity River into a barge canal that would have run from Dallas to Galveston. You should take the time to read it.

A woman named Marilyn Prokup took the time. And she wrote us a letter that created some work for an intern. Here’s what Marilyn wrote:

“Being one of the fortunate Dallasites to have the East Prong of Dixon Branch running through our backyard, the 50-year history of the Trinity River was most interesting and informative. After reading about the perils that beset the Trinity River, our family is celebrating the brave people who fought back the barge canal. This article is only surpassed by the D Magazine October 1979 article ‘Time and a River,’ by David Dillon, which covered the legendary White Rock Creek from prehistory times to present. Please consider reprinting this article because it also shows the value of protecting the Trinity River and the  other creeks that are in our area.”

This is one of the reasons I love my job. I’ve worked here more than 20 years and have read nearly every issue of the magazine, going back to its founding in 1974. But I’d somehow overlooked this Dillon story. Having readers so connected to the magazine that they know the archives better than I do is a joy. And a responsibility.

Once there was a city called Frisco, and she loved a little boy. Every day the boy would come and play in her fields and creeks. He would pretend to be Roger Staubach slaying a fire-breathing dragon, or he would pretend to be Bob Lee Swagger, Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie Shooter, taking into account humidity, temperature, wind, and the Coriolis effect before sending his lead downrange. 

And when the boy was tired after playing in the fields and creeks, he would sleep in the shade of the city’s trees. And the boy loved Frisco. And the city was happy.

But time went by. And the boy grew older. Then one day the boy came to the city, and Frisco said, “Come, boy, come and pretend to nail headshots from more than a mile away while you are inexplicably on a snow-covered mountain ridge where two helicopters have just landed, and be happy.”

“I am too big for that nonsense,” said the boy. “I want to buy things and have fun.”

And so the city gave her fields and creeks to Jerry Jones, who built The Star in Frisco, a 91-acre campus that included the Ford Center and Tostitos Championship Plaza and a Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop and a Mi Cocina and a Wahlburgers, as it turns out. 

Dallas Man Exonerated in 25-year-old Murder Case. Martin Santillan, who was wrongly convicted of murder 25 years ago in connection to a Deep Ellum nightclub shooting, was officially exonerated Wednesday. Santillan had been accused in the shooting death of Damond Wittman in 1997, despite having an alibi. DNA evidence re-tested in 2021 found no connection to Santillan but did lead police to a new suspect, who has been arrested.

Test-Drive Turns Deadly for Seller in Arlington. Arlington police are searching for two men accused in the shooting death of a man they allegedly met to test-drive a used car Tuesday night. Khudhair Hamdan, police said, agreed to go on a test drive with a potential buyer of a used car he was selling. While on the drive, one of the two men reportedly shot Hamdon and drove away, only to later abandon the car.

There Will Be 101 Fewer Places to Vote in May. Dallas County will cut 101 voting locations for the May election after the Commissioners Court voted to reduce the number of voting centers from 470 to 369. County Elections Administrator Michael Scarpello told the court that the move will shave off places with lower turnout and save the county almost $800,000. 

Alleged Serial Rapist Arrested While He’s Out on Bail. Dallas police arrested Christopher Michael Green Saturday in connection with a 2005 sexual assault and two days later re-arrested him in connection with at least 10 more previously unsolved rapes. He was out on bail at the time. Police said they were able to identify Green through DNA, and at least two victims picked him out of a photo lineup. Green was in Dallas County Jail as of Wednesday night.

More March Storms Predicted Overnight. The National Weather Service is predicting thunderstorms and showers overnight, with the potential for hail and wind gusts. The worst of it will probably be north of DFW, but you might want to consider taking your college flag in from the porch, even if your team does the improbable and beats UConn tonight in the Sweet 16.

This story was originally published at 2:23 p.m., and was updated at 4:42 p.m. to include the names of the Thomas Jefferson High School staff members that responded to the shooting and clarify how much the district gets from the state per pupil for school safety.

Staff at Thomas Jefferson High School, near Bachman Lake in northwest Dallas, has trained for the worst and often has had to put it into practice. A tornado destroyed their campus in 2019 and they had to help their traumatized students relocate 20 minutes away to Edison Middle School. Months later, the pandemic shuttered schools, making it difficult to offer those students the same ongoing support.

But despite all of that, or maybe because of it, the staff was ready for Tuesday afternoon. Shots rang out not long after dismissal in the parking lot of the new campus, which welcomed students and teachers a little over two months ago. Raul Velazquez, an athletic trainer, immediately rendered first aid to the injured student, who had been shot in the arm. Bob Romano, the band director called 911 within seconds. Assistant athletic director Brandi Elder called principal Ben Jones to alert him. Jones called Dallas ISD leadership, who arrived on the scene within 10 minutes of getting the call.

Dallas Fire-Rescue, Dallas ISD police, and Dallas police were at TJ within minutes, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said Wednesday morning. DFR said Tuesday that it arrived on the campus by 4:41 p.m.

There were about 300 students still on campus; the total student body is about 1,400. Other staff members rushed to get the kids back inside the building. The campus was locked down within two minutes after the shooting. It lasted until law enforcement determined the threat was over. 

The investigation is ongoing, but the district said three individuals were involved in the shooting. Two suspects were in a car that “drove up,” allegedly shot the victim, and then drove away. The male victim was a student at the school. He was taken to the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. At least one of the suspects is also enrolled at Thomas Jefferson. No one has been arrested, but Elizalde said there was no evidence to indicate a fight or altercation preceded the shooting.

The superintendent also said she is “confident” that the event was an isolated incident.