The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  “We can’t go back there,” she repeated, her eyes pleading with Jimmy James, who stood there and shook his head. In the distance the black crap from hell continued to rise into the blue morning sky. To return to their car meant skiing directly back toward the ever-growing cloud of ash.

  Penny turned to her left and began to calculate her options.

  “Babe,” Jimmy said, knowing what Penny was thinking. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can; shit, I don’t know if I can make it. You’re a hell of better skier than me.”

  “We can’t go back to the car,” Penny replied, scared. The wolves resumed their howling in the distance. They were afraid as well. The ground started to vibrate again.

  Jimmy James started to get a loosey-goosey feeling in his bowels. Penny was the first to speak.

  “If we get over the pass, we’ll have clear sailing. We can ski downhill to Billings if we have to. It’s all downhill. If we go east we’ve got range after range, valley after valley; nothing but crap skiing!”

  Skiing east from Yellowstone was impossible because of the terrain. Skiing north you only had to clear Beartooth Pass, at 10,947 the third highest road pass in the United States, in the dead of winter.

  I-90 Floating Bridge/Mt. Baker Tunnel

  Seattle 6:20 PST

  BJ Tucker carefully maintained speed as he crossed under the Mercer Island “lid” on I-90, a route he’d done for twenty-five years, even before there had been a “lid”. He’d been there on that fateful Thanksgiving Friday in 1990 when the original I-90 bridge had collapsed and sunk into Lake Washington because the US Environmental agencies had said workers, scouring the existing roadway in preparation for roadway repair, couldn’t slush the scoured water off into Lake Washington because the water contained the remains of the pedestrian walkway, well above EPA water hazard levels. Instead, WSDOT looked at the floating bridge itself, decided that the pontoons had enough extra capacity for water/crap runoff, so they opened the hatches and let the water enter the pontoons. Well, on a rough afternoon (November 25, 1990) a three-day storm added to the water accumulated in the pontoons, and simply sank the bridge, bad crud and all into Lake Washington. It wasn’t red letter day for WSDOT.

  “Oh, yeah!” shouted BJ Tucker as the Roulette’s song blasted across the airwaves.

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright

  It’s alright, it’s alright

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright

  It’s alright, it’s alright

  Well, if you want me

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  It’s alright (it’s alright)

  Across the deck of the I-90 Bridge BJ guided his heavily-laden tanker—filled to the brim with 8,000 gallons of gasoline toward the city of Seattle, where he would spend the next eight hours transferring his load to various gas stations.

  It was a bummer of a day; overcast, rainy, no view; typical Seattle February. Crossing Lake Washington, BJ slowly entered the eastern portal of the Mount Baker Tunnel when the 27th (it’s alright) from the Roulettes wasn’t OK.

  The world as he knew it started to end. BJ Tucker had about ten seconds to live.

  The massive tanker began to shift lanes inside the tunnel; brake lights, blaring horns from other vehicles, then the ever-so-slow fishtail as BJ’s brain turned to oh-shit from it’s alright. Engineers had assured city management that at most the Mt. Baker Tunnel would warp by ½ inch or so; the pressure of the land surrounding the tunnel would make an oval-shaped object virtually impregnable to an earthquake.

  They were, of course, right.

  Except for the fact that independent gasoline hauler BJ Tucker was bringing a full tanker truck of gasoline to the city of Seattle; perfectly legal, this February 20th wasn’t ban week where the fire suppression system was being tested. On the back of BJ’s truck was the familiar 1203 hazard sign indicating his load.

  BJ’s truck slid across the lighted lane—whoops—no light now, the earthquake had knocked out all lights in the city of Seattle, including lights inside the tunnel. BJ did what he could to right his tanker, but the huge shaker was more than he could handle. The tanker bounced, then slid, hitting the south wall, then back to the north; cars behind him started to smash into each other as the catastrophe came to a conclusion, it slid along the double lanes sideways, throwing up sparks, gasoline spilling in hundreds of gallons by the second, soon ignited.

  Then whoosh, the westbound lanes of the Mt. Baker Tunnel lit up like a giant Bic. The explosion rocked the entire mountain; flames erupted end-to-end on the westbound tunnel. For someone driving toward Seattle, it would be like being chased by a dragon on drugs with fire coming out its mouth and its ass at the same time; for someone following the truck into the tunnel it would be like being a burger driving into a forty-foot tall BBQ grill. There was nothing left of Mr. BJ (used to like them) Tucker.

  By the time the earthquake had stopped, the automatic fire suppression system inside the four tunnels comprising the Mt. Baker Tunnel had already started, set to be activated automatically one minute after detection, unless activated manually by an operator at the Washington State Department of Transportation Traffic Systems Management Center at 15700 Dayton Avenue in Shoreline. The combination of the gasoline tanker explosion and the 9.45 earthquake caused the Water-Foam Deluge System to be activated not just in the westbound center 3 lanes and the bottom two HOV lanes, but also in the eastbound tunnel that used the original I-90 lanes.

  Using a Fuzzy Logic Ramp Metering Algorithm, the computer systems measuring the eastbound lanes, without hearing from TSMC, did the prudent thing and assumed the worst. The computers did their best because the Traffic Systems Management Center in Shoreline was exactly six miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, centered just north of Bainbridge Island. At 6:20:20 the 9.45 shake had crossed the narrow neck of Puget Sound between Indianola and the Shoreline Highlands and smashed the crap out of every shack, house, business and government building. The TSMC Shoreline had been destroyed.

  The power was out, the building severely damaged, three employees were hurt, two seriously. Ten miles to the south on the campus of the University of Washington WSDOT’s back-up server, located on the main floor of Kane Hall, which on a normal day was a five-minute walk from Johnson Hall, the start of Karen’s day, today was a maze of collapsed parking decks and building facades. The award-winning UWTV-channel 27, like everybody else, was offline.

  The Foam-Water Deluge system wasn’t terribly complex; when activated it dumped a shit-load of foam-water at high pressure onto and into the affected area. However, the issue with older pre-9/11 fuel suppressant systems was that no one really had an experience with melted steel girders, which melt at 1400-1600 degrees F. A gasoline truck that explodes inside a confined area will generate heat in the range of 3000-3500 degrees F.

  Unfortunately, the westbound lanes, the middle section of the tunnel, melted the ceiling of the HOV lanes below and dropped 3000-degree burning fuel into another confined space, which then rolled in both directions. Above, there were two layers of steel; one of which melted after a minute, before the foam-water deluge system could drench the fire; the second layer was the pedestrian path at the top cone of the system; heat yes, collapse, no. Westbound was fucked; eastbound, the same.

  The foam-water deluge system activated by the firestorm in the western tunnels caused non-meltdown but virtual destruction in the eastbound tunnel. Imagine it’s 6:20 in the morning, an earthquake hits, your car rolls toward the side of the tunnel, then back again; and then the great flood strikes! Not just any garden-variety flood, but a “total emersion foam-water deluge system”. Water begins to flood through seemingly every pore of the tunnel; not drip, drop, flip, flop, but water at nuclear, no Warp speed, down into the channel.

  The earthquake and the water caused a pileup of cars in the eastbound lanes. Dead people everywhere; cars smashed up against the tunnel, water
gushing in every direction. No fire as far as the eye could see, but plenty of water.

  Many years afterwards the only explanation that made any sense was that the universe had been tilted, altered by the playing of Adam Faith & The Roulette’s It’s Alright concurrently and randomly by KWYS 920 AM of West Yellowstone, Montana and KISS 106.1 FM of Seattle, Washington at 6:20 PST (7:20 MST) just as the worst earthquakes in the history of man simultaneously exploded, like a pair of cymbals crashing at the end of the 1812 Overture.

  Elliott Bay, Seattle

  Seated in the protected second deck along with 600 other passengers, Ray looked around. Maybe it was the experience of war where the brain demanded and expected more input; that voice said something strange was happening. Ray got out of his seat near the window, shouldered his backpack and started walking toward the center of the boat, instinctively feeling safer.

  One, two, three steps—bang—the Wenatchee was hit by the first shockwave, a jolt so powerful that it knocked him off his feet, making him tumble into a couple reading the morning Times in sections; the man holding the sports page and memorizing useless basketball statistics; the woman fantasizing over designer shoes in the lifestyles section; then they were all on the cold steel floor along with the newspaper, laptop, coffee, cinnamon buns and a majority of the other passengers. The shock sounded like a freight train; it was God’s short right hook smack on the kisser.

  Down goes Frazier down goes Frazier down goes Frazier!

  Scrambling to his knees, wide-eyed, oblivious to the high-pitched screaming all around him, Ray saw the event in slow-motion, like watching a rockslide. In the distance off the port side of the Wenatchee a thin white line seemingly hovered above the water line. Through the morning’s mist the line stretched from the northern tip of Bainbridge across the Puget Sound to North Seattle.

  Tsunami.

  The quake occurred on the eastern edge of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, at a point where the Juan de Fuca plate continues its relentless and ultimately futile eastward attempt to go underneath the North American plate, like an under bite grind. The water north of Bainbridge Island between the village of Indianola and Jefferson Point is the deepest in all of Puget Sound at 905 feet; and was the epicenter of the massive quake. Whether triggered by the Yellowstone explosion 600 miles to the east would be playtime for geologists to figure out. To Ray Spaulding and six hundred other passengers on the WSDOT ferry Wenatchee, cause was irrelevant; it is what it was, or as Popeye would say I yam what I yam.

  In the pilothouse, located in the center of the boat above the top passenger desk, 18-year veteran Captain Joseph Duvall knew he was in deep shit. Ferries were designed to go in one direction, forward. You don’t go forward from Bainbridge Island to Seattle then slip her into reverse to go back to Bainbridge, nor do you approach Seattle and maneuver a slick willy U-turn to dock it. There were two sets of “forwards”, depending on which end of the boat was going to which port.

  There was no way to stop or turn the ferry and head directly into the wall of water, which would have been the best solution. The WSDOT Disaster Preparedness Manual had no pages for the chapter “What to do when dealing with an oncoming tsunami”; which was very similar to the NYC Emergency Preparedness manual on what to do when multiple airlines crash into city skyscrapers.

  Hmmm, page 367, Appendix C—two jet aircraft, loaded with fuel crash into your city’s tallest skyscrapers. Action plan—this page intentionally left blank.

  “Sweet mother,” Duvall muttered as he sounded the emergency alarm while swinging the wheel to go with the flow of the oncoming water instead of broadside, which if there was an option for the Wenatchee to capsize, would have been the worst possible position.

  Klaxon horns sounded on the Wenatchee as it recovered from the initial shockwave from the earthquake. If the passengers weren’t awake, they were now. Hands grabbed the edge of the steel tables and bolted chairs.

  “Look!” shouted someone in Ray’s section of the second floor lounge. “The lights are gone!”

  Mother Mary thought Ray. The lights of Seattle were gone, power out. Seattle had been invaded by aliens. Ray staggered to a port side window and looked across Elliott Bay. Something wasn’t right. Although it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t snowing, wasn’t anything else but a normal day—something wasn’t right.

  There it was. The restaurant at the top of the Space Needle was gone. It can’t be! Yes, gone. The twin forces of the Yellowstone Super Volcano eruption along with the second earthquake at Suquamish had acted like Zorro’s whip, with the thin iconic tower snapping one way, then as quickly snapping back in the opposite direction. The Space Needle snapped two-thirds of the way up, approximately 400 feet; the reinforced steel column bending inexorably to the laws of nature as the whip was applied. SNAP! But the circular alien ship didn’t crash and burn; instead it fell and flopped like a bad yo-yo trick, then started a whack-a-thon as it moved back and forth. The original core of the tower was bent all to hell, with the elevator shaft running up to 250 feet, then horizontal for thirty, then back down for over 100 feet.

  For an instant Ray thought he’d OD’d on Seroquel.

  People in the main cabin were still screaming although they were scrambling to their feet. The hearty few from the top deck quickly padded down the cast iron steps to the covered second floor. Shrieks and cries could be heard from below on the first deck.

  How would you like to be in your automobile about now?

  Then there was silence with the exception of the Wenatchee’s engines; that and the change of direction. Thirty feet above them Captain Duvall and his engineers struggled to change the Wenatchee’s course. The engines whined differently.

  Ray looked to the windows on the port side. The thin white line was now a ribbon of white. They were about to be clobbered by a tsunami. The noise level in the cabin went from shouts to shrieks. There was no place to run, no place to hide. Nevertheless, the Wenatchee grunted its way to the southeast so as to not have the broadside exposure when the tsunami passed. Captain Duvall struggled to keep the boat on line.

  The wave had already destroyed the coastline along Bainbridge Island and done the same to the old, trendy neighborhoods of Highland Park and North Seattle across the short side of the Puget Sound.

  Klaxons blaring, Captain Duvall had done well, maneuvering the Wenatchee to be hit arrears.

  When the tsunami hit the Wenatchee, the huge boat dipped forward then was picked up on the surge like a surfer. While viewed as graceful perhaps from an aerial view, inside the ferry people felt like they were in a blender. The fore section of the boat tipped nearly 30 degrees, throwing everything and everyone who wasn’t hugging onto something made of steel across the large lounge like rag dolls in a dryer, Ray included.

  Down below on the car deck all of the bikes were swept overboard along with anyone who had decided to stay with his bike. Behind the bikes were four lanes of packed vehicles in two staggered heights. Water gushed into the open forward section, sloshing its way a third of the way to the opposite side. Then, like an E-ride at Disneyland, the Wenatchee snapped upwards just has hard, as the wave passed underneath. Several cars at the tail end of the ferry popped into the air and were dislodged into the Puget Sound.

  The passenger lounge areas on decks 1 and 2 were in complete chaos; one hundred twenty-eight people already killed by blunt force contact with something made of steel. Ray had managed to wrap his arms around the post of three-seat snack table, the seats of which whipped this way and that as the boat managed to survive the tsunami’s first wave.

  In a tsunami you’re always safer at sea.

  Yeah, right; except when the wave is carrying you to downtown Seattle at 15 knots instead of 4.

  From the captain’s chair Joseph Duvall saw the advancing harbor approaching at warp speed. There was no way he was going to be able to control the huge craft’s speed or location.

  As it approached land the wave grew in size, doubling its height to nearly 20 feet, beca
use the mass of water was reaching shallow draft. Ray peeked forward. There was dust and smoke in the distance, the unlit city behind dark as midnight. The earthquake had demolished the state route 99, the Alaskan Viaduct, a USA top ten most driven highway which connected West Seattle with downtown Seattle. The old road, scheduled for demolition and removal when the city’s visionary replacement and Harbor Renewal project was completed, had been destroyed ahead of schedule.

  The Wenatchee body-surfed the tsunami, totally out of control; inside, passengers inside were terrified. Nobody could stand up; the Wenatchee pitched and rolled, saved only by Captain Duvall’s instinct. The American flag above the pilothouse alertly spread its wings in the morning breeze as the craft was swept toward shore, as if leading a Pickett charge.

  The tsunami, created when the floor of Puget Sound was pushed upwards with incredible force, rushed out in all directions across some of the deepest parts of the Sound; the waves taking no more than two minutes from side-to-side. As the wall of water approached Elliott Bay on the eastern side of the Sound, the average depth of the water at rest was less than seventy feet. With no place to go, water began piling up on itself the closer it reached shore, forcing the water into a 20-foot high wave of destruction.

  Unseen to the left, the shoreline of Seattle to the north of downtown had been scoured including West Point and the Shilshole Bay Marina and its 900 slips, nearly at 100% capacity; the seawall doing nothing to protect the millions of dollars in boating assets.

  Further south a ten-foot wave of water rushed toward the Chittenden Locks in the community of Ballard where Save the Salmon activists first protested the feeding frenzy of sea lions who had figured out it was dinner time all the time at the locally-named Ballard Locks. The locks made it very difficult for the salmon to swim upstream; trapping the fish at the bottom of a ladder where one-by-one they could struggle to get through. Later the protesters would turn on the Fish and Game officers for shooting the sea lions with rubber bullets, demanding that the bulky critters be airlifted to Puget Sound, away from the locks.