The Yellowstone Conundrum (10 page)

University of Washington

Johnson Hall

Geo Survey Lab, Seattle

 
The emergency lights came on in the lab.

 
“Seismic event!” Karen managed to grab her lab phone.  “It’s an 11.2—seems like it was right under our seats but it wasn’t. Its eight hundred miles away; wait a minute!  There’s been a second one, 9.45 ten miles north of here; Bainbridge Island. I don’t know what to do!” Karen continued to shout.

 
There was no response on the other end. The line was dead. It was supposed to be a direct connection to Golden.

The emergency lights flickered and went out.

  In the coffin-like confinement of the basement lab, Karen looked around her for any source of light.  She could hear destruction rumbling above her.   

 
Uh, oh.

 
The sound of a collapsing building got louder.   
Poundapoundapoundapounda
and whoosh. The lab was filled with dust, like someone had emptied a completely full vacuum bag in front of a fan. Karen began to cough uncontrollably, and fell back to her knees. She found her coat and tried to use it as a mask, but it was too clumsy.  

 
Thank you, God
. The first floor hadn’t collapsed into the basement. Johnson Hall, Earth & Space Science was one of the older buildings on campus; although completely re-modeled in 2004-5. 

 
“Hello?” she shouted weakly; coughing, sputtering, in the pitch dark of the basement.

 
“Hello” she shouted again, not hearing a reply.  ‘Hello!” she yelled a third time, a noise that came out as a cross between a squeak and a croak. Nothing. 

 
Above her Karen heard nothing.  Deadly silence. Not even a brick. Not a rat. Nothing. 

 
“Hello!  I’m here!” she shouted.

  It was early.
But, shouldn’t someone be here? The emergency lights aren’t on because this isn’t an emergency. No. it’s a disaster, she reasoned.

 
Lab equipment, student experiments, papers, computer equipment; all had turned into hazards for walking.  Knowing in her mind’s eye where the stairwell was, coat wrapped around her shoulders, she inched across the lab—through the land mine of physical maze
. Ouch
she touched something sharp.
I’m bleeding!
She could feel the sticky dripping of her own blood
. Crap!
That’ll be a good picture,
she thought
. Lab technician stabbed to death by a pencil
.

Lights out, dust clogged the room, Karen made her way by memory toward the opposite side of the room.
No sense trying the elevator. But, what if someone’s in the elevator? 
Come on, nobody comes to the basement of the eco-lab at 6:30 in the morning unless they’re already here.  I’m here. Nobody else was expected. 

 
“
help”

 
Shit.
She thought she heard something
. I need to get to the stairs. I’m going to suffocate. Did you hear anything?  I DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING.
  

 
“
help”

 
It was a voice from somewhere below her.

The White House

9:40 A.M

 
Charles Leonard, 55, faithful friend and intermediary to the President since he started his first political campaign 10 years ago, now was his Chief of Staff. Unflappable he’d been called. Throw anything at him and he’d eat it up and make political lasagna out of it, something palatable for everyone. 

 
Charles walked into the White House kitchen where he suspected the President would be.

 
“Sorry to intrude, sir. “

 
“But, it’s your job, Chuck,” the President said with some resignation in his voice. “Can you let me finish my pancakes and box scores?”

 
Leonard shook his head softly.

 
“Would you like some pancakes?” The President offered.

 
Charles shook his head softly again.

 
“What is it?” The President asked.

 
“It could be the end of the world, sir.” Leonard replied directly.

Fort Peck Dam

 
Robert O’Brien turned from his examination of the new soil features blooming on the mile-wide sloped berm of the Fort Peck Dam. It was disturbing. The sand boils indicated violent activity beneath the surface, vibrations so powerful that the water in the sandy soil would become separated from the soil itself, separating into soil and water, forcing sand upward. Not good. That allowed water from the impounded lake, one of the largest man-made lakes in the United States, Fort Peck Lake, to penetrate where the soil used to be. Earthquake vibrations then started the sloshing effect.

 
What made it worse was that the sand boils were being created as far as the eye could see across the entire five-mile width of the dam.

 
The men retreated to the eight-story high Power 2 building, located on the SW bank of the downstream Missouri River, about 400 yards away from Power 1 building originally built in the 1940s. Connecting the two power plants were four tunnels, two of which went into the two power plants, and another two that were used to pass water from Lake Fort Peck to the downstream Missouri River. The altitude difference between the lake and the river was about 180 feet, a gentle walk in the park from the towers to the berm above the lake, where a highway ran the entire five-mile length of the earthen dam.  In the control center for the automated dam were two first-shift operators who were wide-eyed, no-party-here. Not only was the Big Boss in town, Shit was Happening. 

 
“Slim, I want you to get your people out of here,” Robert said, urgency in his voice. 

 
Robert’s comments were punctuated with sound like that from a giant cement mixer—gravel and sand and water and cement shit, all slowly gravelly rotating—
cachunk, cawhack, cachunk, cawhack
; only this wasn’t a low sound. It was a loud sound, like some devil monster under the earth trying to clear his voice. The two men on the consoles put down their headsets.

  Robert edged toward the door.
“Slim, it’s time to go.  Something’s happening here,” Robert said, urging his plant manager to leave.     

 
RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN!!!!!!!
Robert’s inner voice shouted. 

 
At 52 Robert O’Brien was no longer The Man He Used to Be.  He tried to exercise three times a week, well maybe twice, but the job didn’t allow much flexibility for keeping in shape. He tried to walk in the morning but he found himself driving in the morning instead; to work, with a stop at McDonalds more than once a week. What did they put in that food that made your saliva glands start perking when you saw the arches? Now, that’s something Congress should investigate.

 
Not feeling one tiny bit guilty, but feeling a tiny bit overweight, slow and old, Robert O’Brien, Undersecretary of the Department of Reclamation forearmed his way through the front doors of Tower 2 and headed across the macadam parking lot toward a grassy berm that separated the two power towers from the undulating, but uphill series of mounds to the south. Robert began to scramble, his suit quickly dirty, his shirt disheveled. 

 
The gravelly sound turned from a cement mixer into something much wetter. Robert turned to see an avalanche starting in slow motion. Facing the power plants, and now perhaps 50 feet above them in altitude and 500 feet in distance, he saw the material on the Missouri side of the dam start to slide toward the power towers, initially up to the second floor, disengaging from the dam proper in a goopy “slurp”. For an instant there was separation between the dam proper and the dam portion on the downstream side—which was the side where the seven-story power control buildings were. Massive tonnage of sloppy soil slid into the Missouri River, creating a temporary downstream surge.

 
Robert continued to climb ever so slowly through the scraggy brush, now quickly getting out of breath.
Feet don’t fail me now
.

 
The foundations of the Power Control buildings were now exposed like a tooth root stripped of its gums.

 
“No!” he shouted as the next portion of the mile-wide dam broke off from the main; like a cookie-dam being eaten from the wrong side. With the downside cookie having been pretty much eaten, first a portion then the entire dam on the tunnel side, the side connecting the lake with the river, gave way to the tremendous pressure and weight of the impounded water. The water exposed the buried concrete and steel tunnels, the land stripped. In one slow motion instant, water from Fort Peck Lake gushed in a 30’ wave downhill at the point of the breech, approximately 100 yards wide, flowing downhill 180 feet into the Missouri River. The twin power control towers were no match for the water, which was in party-on-dude mode;
yah-hoo, Big Muddy is headed for New Orleans
. The damage was irreversible.     

 
Standing on the sidelines Robert O’Brien was no more than thirty vertical feet above the rushing water. No man was alive below unless he’d followed Robert immediately out of the power control plant and was hidden from view somewhere.  Guilt would come later.

 
Robert O’Brien started to cry, a combination of thankfulness for being alive, of simply following the primal instinct for self-preservation, and for the knowledge that America would never be the same again.  Everything man had done had been torn into a new gig, a phrase from his college days.  Asunder was the new word.

 
Robert also began to realize that although it was eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was up, it was 8 degrees F and all he had on was a suit coat. In the distance to the SW the sky was black with volcanic ash.

 
“Shit!” he shouted. 

 
Robert stood on the east side of the Fort Peck Dam and watched as his rental car was gobbled by the lake, now quickly part of the downstream Missouri River. The dam itself actually ran east-west, right at a point where the Missouri River started one of its oxbow whirly-gigs.  Visitors, including Robert, drove across the dam from the west to the eastern side, parked and visited. To the left were the dam and the flatlands he’d crossed in the morning.   On the eastern side was nothing but rolling crappy land.

 
And nothing but a good old parka in that car, he thought to himself.
Yep, nothing but a nice, warm parka; you got out of the car, took off your fucking parka because it was too warm at the time; morning sunlight, no breeze, and the damn thing was so thick; and put it back into the car on the driver’s side. You fucking idiot.  Now your car is floating toward St. Louis, probably to be a tourist destination at Garrison Dam; Look, kids! Inside that car is the parka the idiot manager of the Bureau of Land Management needed to prevent from freezing to death during the Great Event. But, no! It’s still there. And the idiot manager of the Bureau of Land Management froze to death out there in Eastern Fucking Jeezebutt Montana. Kids, there is a lesson to be learned here
. 

 
It was possible someone might be alive in the power control towers at the dam, since they were both still standing; but, it was unlikely for long.  The incredible power of flowing water would wear the foundations down to the point where the buildings would be compromised at the sub-foundation level, then simply collapse. Everyone inside would be killed; no matter that they would stumble their way to the top of the building. 

 
There were no rescue helicopters. The buildings would surely topple and any survivors would be dumped, building and all, into the 33-degree Missouri River. Colder than a witch’s tit, they used to say.

 
While thoughts of his hot wife Nancy did flit through the synapses of his brain, God had sent him an emergency IM. 
GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE AND FIND SOMETHING WARM
which filled the foreground. The sight in front of him was unbelievable. The “cookie” which was the earthen dam had been eaten away from below, allowing the impounded Missouri River to break through at its most narrow point; unfortunately destroying the two control tower buildings and the water pumping facility upstream at the mouth of the four tunnels on the lake side of the dam. 

 
I’m on the wrong side of the fucking dam,
he thought.   Over there, across the breech in the dam are two roads that lead to Fort Peck, Montana. But, I’m not over there. I’m over here. There aren’t two roads leading to Fort Peck, Montana. Or to Nashua, Montana as there are on the other fucking side of the fucking dam. No, the only road leading from the eastern side of the dam was back into the middle of absolutely nowhere.

 
Tucking his hands into his pockets, Robert O’Brien turned and started walking east away from the Fort Peck Dam. 

It was eight degrees F at 9:30 A.M.
There was no chance of him being discovered and rescued by anyone. There was no way. He reached for his cell phone and fumbled for the power-on.
Blu-blu-bloop
it replied cheerily. No bars. No signal. No phone, no pool, no pets.

 
Nature had played a trump card. Robert took one last look at the raging waters of Lake Fort Peck as they plowed through the dam, falling 200 feet into the Missouri River.

 
I’m going to freeze to death.

 
With one forlorn look behind him, one last look at logic, nobody is crossing to the east side of the Fort Peck Dam today or in my lifetime. All of the people who can rescue me are on the west side of the river. I’ve worked here and there isn’t anything but coyote dung between here and wherever the hell I’m going.

 
I am so screwed
.