The Tsunami Countdown (10 page)

10:24 a.m
.
58 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

T
he horror of watching Dr. Aspen’s and Brent Featherstone’s deaths confirmed Kai’s nightmare scenario. “What the hell is going
on?” Brad said. Then he pointed at Kai with an accusing finger. “How did you know the tsunami would be so big?”

“I didn’t know, all right?” Kai yelled. He calmed himself, but his pulse was still racing. “It was just a guess based on Crawford
and Mader’s research. I saw on the news that a TransPac jet went down somewhere over the Pacific. They showed a graphic of
the plane going down in the exact same location as the earthquake.”

“So?”

“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence. Brad, since it’s just me and Reggie here, I’m going to need your help. Call the FAA
and find out exactly what the latitude and longitude was where they lost contact. And see if there were any
other planes in the area. And don’t take no for an answer.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain when you’re off the phone.”

“But who do I call? It’s a holiday.”

“I don’t know. There’s got to be an emergency number. Here.” Kai gave him the number for Hawaii State Civil Defense. “Call
Brian Renfro at HSCD. Get the number from him. Tell him you’re my brother.”

Brad looked dubious, but he saw that Kai was serious and went into the other room to make the call.

“Kai,” Reggie said, “do you know what the chances are of this happening?”

“I don’t know. A million to one? But, Reggie, what if it did happen? We’ve got no scenarios for dealing with it.”

“If we’re wrong about this and word gets out, we are going to be the laughingstock of the seismic community.”

“I know, Reggie, but …” Kai tapped his watch. He didn’t have to tell Reggie the clock was ticking. “I’m going to get on the
phone with NASA and find out if they have any satellite data or photos from the site of our earthquake.”

“And me?”

“Start doing a search of relevant papers in the
Science of Tsunami Hazards
. See if you can find that formula from Crawford and Mader.”

“Gotcha.”

Kai dialed HSCD. Although the PTWC notified many different organizations throughout the Pacific about tsunami hazards, NASA
was not one of them. Kai had no emergency number for them.

Brian Renfro picked up the phone on the other end.

“Brian, it’s Kai Tanaka.”

“Kai, what is going on? Your brother just called me asking for the number for the FAA.”

“You gave it to him, right?”

“Sure, but that’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

“It’s going to get weirder. Who would we call to get emergency satellite imagery?”

“Satellite imagery. Why do you need that?”

“I think the situation may be worse than we first imagined.”

“Worse than a tsunami? Is there a hurricane coming too?”

Brad came back in holding a slip of paper.

“Hold on, Brian,” Kai said. To Brad: “That was fast.”

“While I was on the phone, I looked at CNN’s Web site. They already had the latitude and longitude reported in the story.”

He gave Kai the slip of paper with the coordinates. Kai gave it to Reggie, who took a red dot from the container and stuck
it on the map at the indicated coordinates. It overlapped with the dot of the earthquake.

“Jesus!” said Reggie. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What do you think?” Kai asked.

“I think I’m wrong about the seamount.”

“Brian,” Kai said, “it’s worse than a hurricane.” He told Renfro about the video of the disaster at Johnston Island.

“And Christmas Island?” Renfro said.

“It’s probably completely wiped out. Brian, the reason I wanted Brad to call the FAA was because I wanted to confirm that
the TransPac flight went down at the same location as the earthquake.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

Kai took a deep breath. It was the first time he’d say it out loud. “Because I think that we’ve had a meteor impact in the
middle of the Pacific.”

Renfro laughed. “Yeah, right.” When Kai didn’t laugh with him, he became silent. “You’re serious?”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“You think satellite imagery can confirm it?”

“Yes. Who is the best to call? NASA? They operate Landsat. How about NESDIS?” NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data,
and Information Service operated the GOES weather satellites that were used for all of the nation’s hurricane forecasting.

“They’re a good place to start,” Renfro said. “I’ll patch you in when I get someone on the line.”

With that, he hung up.

“Wait a minute!” Brad said. “What did you just say? A meteor?” “Actually, if it hit the earth, it’s a meteorite,” Reggie said.

“What are you, the language police?” Brad said. “Who cares?” He turned to Kai. “Come on! If a meteor or meteorite or asteroid
or whatever was heading toward us, it would have been big news all over the TV for months.”

“Not if no one saw it coming,” Kai said.

“Maybe it came out of the sun,” Reggie said.

“You mean they might have missed an asteroid big enough to cause a tsunami? I’d like to know who’s in charge of that screwup.”

“That’s not important now,” Kai said. “We’ll just have to assume it’s an asteroid impact and work from there.”

“Why does it even matter?” Brad said.

“Because if it
was
an impact, we don’t know how big the resulting tsunami would be when it reaches Hawaii. Asteroid impacts move water in a
way completely different from earthquakes. That’s why we need to get some data. Reggie’s looking to see if he can find Crawford
and Mader’s latest projections.”

Brad looked confused. Kai explained further, as much to help himself wrap his head around the scenario as for Brad’s benefit.

“Crawford and Mader are researchers at the Los
Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. They wrote a series of papers about computer models they had developed predicting how big
tsunamis from an asteroid impact would be. Of course, they had to make a lot of assumptions, like material density, velocity
of the asteroid, and angle of impact. But part of their research estimated how big the tsunamis would be as a function of
the distance from the impact point and the diameter of the asteroid.”

“But if the asteroid wasn’t detected before it hit, how can you know how big it is?” Brad was quick.

“Because we know how big the earthquake was and how deep the water is in that part of the ocean,” Kai said. “They developed
a formula that would approximate the magnitude of the resulting earthquake depending on the size of the asteroid. We’ll solve
the formula in reverse based on the size of the quake. From that, we can estimate how big the waves would be at various distances
from the impact zone.”

“Fine,” Brad said. “But how do you know they’re right?”

“We don’t,” said Reggie. “We’ve never gotten seismic readings from an asteroid impact. There have been a lot of different
papers written about asteroid-generated tsunamis, and the estimates are all over the map. Even the Johnston Island images
only give us a minimum size.”

“The data from the DART buoy should give us an accurate reading,” Kai said.

“So until then,” Brad said, “you’re guessing.”

“Educated guessing. It’s better than nothing.”

“So, if it is an asteroid, what do we do?”

Kai honestly didn’t know. The PTWC had been founded to warn against tsunamis generated by earthquakes, the most frequent cause
of Pacific-wide tsunamis that were a threat to Hawaii. Most of the dangerous quakes were centered in Alaska, Japan, or Chile,
but tsunamis could also be generated locally by volcanic quakes and landslides. Tsunamis originating from the Pacific Rim
would take five hours or more to get to the islands, leaving plenty of time to evacuate the coastline, even if it was extremely
costly and time-consuming. Locally-generated tsunamis could arrive in a matter of minutes and were therefore much more dangerous.
In either case, evacuation routes and procedures had been carefully planned out, based on the size of tsunamis typical for
those sources.

But there were no procedures for dealing with an asteroid-generated tsunami. It was just too unlikely to spend the PTWC’s
limited time and resources on.

“I’ve got the formula,” said Reggie. He started tapping it into the computer. “So let’s see. We registered an earthquake of
6.9. What’s the depth of the ocean at that location?”

Using a map of the Pacific Ocean floor, Kai sounded out each digit to make sure Reggie understood. “Four nine two five.”

“Got it.” Reggie continued typing. “And now I just type in how far we are from the epicenter, and that should give us a ballpark
height of the biggest wave.”

When he was finished, he leaned forward and looked confused. Then his eyes widened suddenly, and he pulled his hands back
from the keyboard as if it were hot.

“What is it?” Brad said.

“Maybe I did the calculation wrong.” Reggie started over and typed all of the numbers in again. When he saw the results, he
leaned back and shook his head.

“Oh, man,” Reggie said, “if this model is anywhere close to being accurate, we’re in serious trouble.”

“How big?” Kai asked, already knowing that it was beyond his worst fears.

Reggie let out a heavy sigh. “At least seventy when it gets here.”

“Holy shit!” Brad said. “The Asian tsunami didn’t get bigger than thirty feet high, did it?”

Reggie shook his head. “There are some estimates that it got at least twice that high in Banda Aceh.”

Brad’s eyes goggled at the awe-inspiring thought. “So seventy feet will be huge.”

Kai put his hand on Brad’s shoulder. He didn’t get it.

“Brad, all of our figures are in metric units. Meters, not feet. Seventy meters. The wave is going to be over two hundred
feet high.”

10:28 A.m
.
54 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

T
he prospect of a two-hundred-foot-high wall of water hitting a populated coastline was unmatched in recorded civilization.
The biggest tsunami to hit any kind of populated area was the monster wave that resulted from the explosion of Krakatoa in
1883. The hundred-foot-high wave wiped out entire villages in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia, killing thirty-six thousand people.
Now they were facing the possibility of a wave at least twice that big hitting one of the most densely populated coastlines
in the world.

The phone rang, and Kai picked it up slowly, his mind reeling.

“Tanaka,” he said.

“Dr. Tanaka, this is Jeanette Leslie from CNN. I have some questions about the tsunami warning that was issued a few minutes
ago.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to answer questions right now.”

“But, Dr. Tanaka, you—”

Before she could get any further, Kai hung up. Within moments, the phone rang again.

“It’s started,” Reggie said.

“The phone’s going to be ringing off the hook.” Without a receptionist to field the calls, just answering the phone would
take up all of their time. Kai turned to Brad.

“I need your help again.”

“Answer the phones?”

“Yes. Reggie and I have too much to do.”

“But what do I say? I don’t know anything.”

“Actually, you know a lot. Maybe too much. I can’t have you giving out quotes to the media. Just tell them we will issue an
official statement in”—Kai glanced at his watch—“ten minutes. Until then, no comment.”

Dealing with the media was a double-edged sword. Fielding their calls would take precious minutes away from calculating wave
arrival times for the rest of the Pacific islands. On the other hand, giving the media statements could be a powerful tool
for warning the public to get to high ground. But Kai couldn’t blindside HSCD. He needed to confer with them first. And it
would definitely help to have some confirmation from NASA.

“What about the meteor impact?” Brad said. “Do you think we should mention that?”

“Look, Kai,” said Reggie, “I’m buying into your theory. We’ve got a big tsunami coming. But I think talking about a meteorite
impact at this point is premature.”

“Right,” Brad said. “Why should we jump to conclusions? We have, oh, fifty-three minutes left. No reason to panic!”

“I didn’t say we shouldn’t issue another warning!”

“Calm down, you two,” Kai said quietly. “Reggie, send out an update that we have lost contact with Johnston Island and Christmas
Island, and we believe a large tsunami may hit the coastline of Hawaii. We recommend that people get as far inland as possible.”

“Large tsunami?” Reggie said.

“Okay, massive tsunami.”

“I guess vertical evacuation is out.”

In most tsunamis, the downtown and Waikiki areas of Honolulu were so densely populated that evacuation by road, or “horizontal
evacuation,” would cause huge traffic jams, essentially stopping all motion on the roads and inhibiting the movement of emergency
vehicles and buses. For those who couldn’t evacuate away from the beach on foot or by vehicle, they normally recommended taking
refuge above the third floor of a building at least six stories tall.

But in this case, the biggest wave was going to be at
least the height of a twenty-story building. People following the standard instructions would be sentenced to death.

Kai nodded. “Recommend that people should get to high ground and that they may not be safe on high floors of buildings.”

“What about calling it a mega-tsunami?”

Mega-tsunami
, a term used by the popular press, had no scientific definition, but the generally accepted understanding was that it was
a tsunami over one hundred feet in height. Using the term would be a huge step. Warning about a tsunami was one thing. Warning
about a megatsunami was unprecedented. The media would latch on to it like lampreys.

“Not until we get confirmation from NASA or the DART buoy. Just say that it’s a massive tsunami and that we’re not ready to
estimate the height.”

“Gotcha. Helluva holiday, huh?”

Brad tapped him on the shoulder.

“Kai, I’ve got NESDIS on hold with Brian Renfro.”

“Good. Maybe they have something.”

“I also have Harry Dupree, George Huntley, and Mary Grayson holding. They called in as soon as they heard about the tsunami
warning.”

“Where are they?” Kai was hoping George and Mary might be close enough to come in. Having two more scientists at the PTWC
would be a big help.

“Harry’s in the Maui County Police Department. George and Mary are on the North Shore, at least an hour’s drive from here.”

“Okay,” Kai said. “They’re not going to do us any good here. Transfer the NASA call over here, and tell the others to wait.”

A few seconds later, the phone at the monitoring desk rang. As Kai picked up the phone, he motioned to Reggie.

“Reggie, once you’ve sent out the new warning, keep an eye on the DART data. Let me know the minute we start to get a reading.”

Reggie nodded and started typing at the terminal.

“Hello,” Kai said, getting back on the line. “Brian, you there?”

“I’m here, Kai. I’ve also got someone from NASA.”

“Hello. My name is Kai Tanaka, assistant director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Who’s this?”

A woman’s chipper voice responded. “This is Gail Wentworth, the duty scientist at NOAA’s Satellite Analysis Branch. Mr. Renfro
said it was important. How can I help you?”

“It
is
important. The lives of almost every person in Hawaii may be at risk. I need to know if you have any photos or video taken
over the central Pacific in the last hour. Specifically, at 1841 GMT.”

“Let me see. GOES-10 takes images every thirty
minutes. I’ve got an image from 1830 GMT. There’s also the MTSAT from Japan.”

“No. You don’t understand. I need an image from 1841 GMT or
after
. We have reason to believe a meteorite struck that area this morning, and that a massive tsunami is headed toward Hawaii.”

Wentworth paused to take that in, then slowly said, “Why do you think a meteorite impact is the cause of it?”

“Several reasons I don’t have time to go into,” Kai said. “Do you have any images from the area of the Pacific with these
coordinates?” He read Wentworth the longitude and latitude of the earthquake epicenter.

“The next GOES image is from 1900 GMT,” she said, “but even that may not help you. I don’t know if the resolution is great
enough to see an impact like that. Besides, there’s a storm in that area of the Pacific. It may obscure an impact.”

Wentworth’s pace was agonizing for Kai.

“We have fifty-three minutes until the wave gets here,” Kai said impatiently. “Less to the Big Island. Are there any other
options? What about the space shuttle?”

“Discovery is the only one in orbit. It’s docked with the space station. They’re over Egypt right now. As you know, the region
you’re talking about is hundreds of miles from the nearest inhabited island. A higher-resolution polar-orbiting satellite
may have been over that region this
morning, but it’ll take me a little while to check and get any images we have to you.”

“Please let me know as soon as you have confirmation. Minutes count.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Kai thanked Wentworth and gave her the e-mail address where she could send the images. When Kai hung up, Reggie waved him
over to his terminal.

“I’m getting the DART buoy data now.”

Kai bent over Reggie’s terminal, explaining to Brad what they were looking at.

“This graph shows the displacement of the height of the sea level as a function of time. As the line of the graph goes up,
the height of the sea level increases.”

“How can the buoy detect a change in sea level with all the regular waves going by?”

“The buoy is just a transmitting device. The scientific instrumentation is actually on the ocean floor, measuring changes
in pressure of the water above it. Then it sends those readings by an acoustic modem to the buoy, where it links with a communications
satellite. The wind-driven waves aren’t big enough to affect the pressure sensor on the seafloor, so it normally only fluctuates
with the tidal pull of the moon.”

Kai pointed to an historical graph that showed the sea level height going up and down on a daily basis. “But if a
tsunami passes over it, the entire column of water from the surface all the way down to the bottom is affected by the wave.”

“Will you look at that,” Reggie said, his voice weighted with awe.

The line on the graph had already started to climb. Kai held his breath, hoping it would stay small, nothing more than a blip.
But the line inexorably rose higher, propelled by the five-hundred-mile-an-hour wave. In two minutes, the line had topped
out at 0.65 meters above sea level.

“I guess we’re sure now,” Reggie said.

“Zero point six five meters?” Brad said. “But that’s great! Less than three feet!” His enthusiasm waned when he saw Reggie’s
grim face.

Reggie shook his head. “That’s in the open ocean. In a boat, you wouldn’t even notice the change in sea level.”

Kai leaned back, finally coming to grips with the reality of the situation. “In the deep ocean,” he said, “the wave goes all
the way to the seafloor. Once it reaches shallow water, it’ll start to bunch up, slow down, and grow in height. How high it
gets on land depends on the run-up factor at that part of the coast. Multiply the run-up factor by the wave height at sea,
and you get how high the wave will be on land.”

“The run-up factor for Honolulu is forty,” said Reggie.

Brad did a quick mental calculation. “That’s twenty-five meters. Seventy-five feet. At least it’s smaller than two hundred
feet.”

Kai shook his head. “A seventy-five-foot wave is huge. Besides, that’s just the first wave. There might be more—maybe two
or three more.”

“The computer models from the lab at Los Alamos expected the first wave from an asteroid impact to be the biggest one,” Reggie
said. “But this has never happened before, so who knows? We’ll know if and when we get the next DART reading. In any case,
we have confirmation now, even without the NASA photos.”

Kai nodded. “Brad, call Brian Renfro back and conference him in with Harry, George, and Mary.”

After a few seconds, they were all on the line, with one added person Kai hadn’t been expecting.

“Kai,” Brian said, “when you first told me your theory, I took the precaution of asking the governor to make her way to the
HSCD bunker. She’s still on her way, so I asked her to conference in from her car.”

The governor didn’t waste time with chitchat.

“Dr. Tanaka,” the governor said, “is this a false alarm?”

“I’m sorry to say it isn’t, Governor,” Kai said. “We don’t have much time. I got you all on the line so I would only have
to say this once. We believe an asteroid struck the central Pacific about an hour ago, although we don’t
have confirmation from NASA just yet. What we do know is that a major tsunami is headed our way. And when I say
major
, I mean one that will make the Asian tsunami look like a kiddie pool. The first wave will be over twenty meters. If we get
more waves, the max wave height could be over seventy meters, but we won’t know for sure until we get the DART buoy readings
for any follow-up waves.”

“But you’re sure about the first wave, Dr. Tanaka?” the governor said.

“Yes, Ma’am. No doubt.”

“Okay. Good work catching this in time. Brian tells me that was a gutsy call.”

“Thank you, Ma’am, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

“I know. I’m getting off the phone now so I can mobilize the National Guard. You guys keep doing what you need to do. And
let me know if you need anything from me. I’ll be at the HSCD in ten minutes.” With a click, the governor was gone.

“Is everyone else still there?” Kai said.

“I am,” Mary said, her voice quavering. “But George got off the phone to call his mother. She lives near the beach in Hilo.”

Kai looked at Brad, who shook his head. No word from Teresa.

“You should all take a minute to call your families,” Kai said. “Mary, you and George are too far away to do us any good right
now, so I don’t want you to try to get back here.”

“Dammit!” Mary said. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Eventually, we’ll have to leave the center and relocate somewhere up island. I’m thinking that Wheeler is the best option,
so you can try heading in that direction. I don’t know how long cell phones will work, but keep them handy. Harry, since you’re
already at the Maui Police Department, you can help coordinate there. All we can tell people is to get as far inland and as
high up as possible.”

“Our houses will be hit by the first wave,” Harry said. Every person on the conference call would be homeless in a little
less than an hour.

“I know. And we don’t have any time to get your personal stuff out. I’m sorry.” It was the same story for Kai. Fifteen years
of his family’s memories would soon be lost forever.

“What about you guys?” Harry said, the concern in his voice apparent. “Don’t hang around there too long.”

“I will evacuate us in time to get to safety. But until then we have a job to do and very little time to do it. We’re going
to have to throw our normal procedures out the
window. At this point, all we can do is get as many people out of Honolulu as we can.”

The clock on the wall said 10:32.

“Fifty minutes,” Kai said. “That’s how long we’ve got to evacuate over half a million people.”