by John Randall
Karen had a question on the tip of her tongue but Denny cut it off in mid-thought. “Gas stations need electricity to pump gas. The only gas stations running now are the ones with backup generators. Your typical gas station owner isn’t going to spend fifteen-to-twenty grand on an industrial generator for the oft chance of a power outage. There’s no payback.” Denny saw some mist clearing from Karen’s eyes, replaced with dark fear; then reached for his wallet as Fawad pulled up to the corner of E. John and Broadway E. He wasn’t carrying much cash. He gave him a twenty and waived the change. The pair got out into the misty overcast morning. Denny motioned to the west, downhill toward Seattle proper.
Denny turned to Fawad and shook his hand. “Good luck, my friend.”
“Praise Allah. We’re all going to need His blessing and your God’s luck,” Fawad replied, then slowly edged away from the intersection on his way to West Seattle.
Denny and Karen slowly walked downhill on John Street, crossed the I-5 jam-up, eight lanes of parked cars. Nobody could move backwards or forwards. The exit ramps were packed. Traffic lights were out. Street lights were out.
Karen stopped. Her brown hair, disheveled, belied what could be handsome looks, well hidden beneath two layers of comfortable clothes. At five-foot six she was no more than four inches shorter than her older companion. She swatted away hair that fell over her forehead. For the first time, real fear was a vapor layer behind her eyes.
“Are we going to be OK?” she asked. Beneath her she could hear the conversations between various drivers on I-5, stopped cold in their tracks. She was in the middle of Serious Shit. Momma and Step-Daddy weren’t going to be able to whisk her away to ComfortLand. She was 22, an “adult” and was with a man her father’s age who seemed to know more than she thought possible.
Denny’s eyes looked over her left shoulder, then her right, before settling in on a straight on look.
“I’m not sure,” he replied honestly. “This,” He motioned with his left hand. “Is out of my league,” he took a deep breath and clearly felt the pain in his right shoulder. He looked older than he did in the elevator, with vertical lines on his cheeks, some age spots on his hands.
“However, I believe my instincts are correct, although not shown,” he started, too professorially; then shook his head. She was in her early 20s and had saved his life. She may not know it, but they were linked. Don’t fuck it up. He thought.
“We’re in the middle of a catastrophic disaster,” Denny started. “When hurricane Katrina crossed through New Orleans in 2005,” Denny resumed the story line from campus. Standing as they were, they shouldn’t have been able to hear each other’s words from the noise of the traffic. Instead, they could hear people below them on I-5 trying to use cell phones and yelling back and forth to each other with news updates.
“When hurricane Katrina rolled over New Orleans it took less than 24 hours before civilized human beings dropped back to the stone ages. People from all over the city made their way to the SuperDome for shelter. As the hours went on, with no bathroom facilities, no food, no police; some everyday human beings turned into animals; looting, raping, murdering; as if the shell of being a human being was gone, replaced by; shit, I don’t know, primal ooze. There was no more God, no more law; only those who wanted to take and those who needed help. The takers were the bad people; the people who needed help were on their own.
“Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” Denny asked.
Karen nodded yes.
“When I say bad, I mean bad, very bad, do-anything-bad, no-morals-bad. The storm had pulled back the very fabric of what we humans are. I don’t know if I believe in God; but the storm had pulled back what God has, or had, given us; and left us with the primal beings we once were, before morality or laws or a conscience.”
Karen’s mouth was dry and she had to pee in the worst way.
“The net of this is; I really believe we’re on our own. You were there to help me out of the elevator. You were there to pop my shoulder back. I don’t think you have anybody else on your side, and I know I don’t.”
The words sank in; tears dripped from Karen’s eyes. Her nose and cheeks were red from the raw morning’s air.
“OK. So, we’re going to walk five blocks from here to the REI building. We’re going to get as fully equipped as we can, and then we’re going to,” Denny shrugged. “Walk out of here.”
The words rolled around inside Karen’s brain and the marble came out “Oh, sure”. Off they went.
In the distance downhill from their location Karen could see the devastation from the morning’s tsunami. Nobody was walking uphill toward 4th from the piers. The beautiful city that was Seattle had been devastated. While skyscrapers hadn’t fallen, several facings had, scattering tons of concrete and debris below. Five city blocks of downtown had been destroyed; the piers, the shipping companies, the ferries, the restaurants, and the Alaskan Viaduct. In the misty near distance to the NW the Space Needle had snapped three-quarters to the top, with the circular restaurant space now dangling toward the ground, like a heavy ball on a string.
The cars on the uphill side from Elliott Bay—Broad, Wall, Vine, Bell, had been picked up and smashed up the concrete canyons and deposited like a glacial moraine between Second and Third Avenues. Unlike the terrible 2011 Japanese tsunami, most of the buildings survived structurally, although first- and second-floor businesses were destroyed. Debris was everywhere.
It took another fifteen minutes of straight-line walking, enough to raise perspiration on both of them, to get to the REI HQ building at 222 Yale Street at the corner of John Street. The REI building was a six-story building of glass and imagination, with a six-story glass exposure inclosing The Climbing Dude, a muscular three-story athlete in full gear climbing the inside wall of the structure, his shorts indicating power beneath. Inside the store was a replica of the storefront, a reservations-only climbing wall for youngsters and oldsters who wanted the no-fault experience of climbing a wall—something many dream of.
Denny and Karen stood gawking at the building. The glass storefront had collapsed, with exception of the top two stories, which had my God’s grace not fallen to the street. However, God was getting tired. A billion-zillion pieces of glass covered the corner of John and Yale. Above were guillotines of to-be-fallen-glass.
Lights were on via generator, after all—can’t miss a sale at REI. The electronic doors were open; electricians were working on getting them closed. Inside was The Supermarket of Stuff You Have to Buy. The cash registers were working off of generators although the phone lines for the credit cards were down. Inside, managers knew they shouldn’t be open—but like Denny’s, REI was Always Open. Two blocks down the street there was a frothy moraine of cars, dead bodies, storefront crap, building crap and just plain crap occupying the center of the uphill streets. Yet inside REI, it was another business day; thanks to the generators.
Denny guided Karen into the store.
“Ever been here before?” he asked.
“Can’t afford it,” she replied. “This is like Nordstrom’s for yuppies.”
Denny laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. “So true, so true, my dear; so true; for fucking yuppies; that’s a good one,” he continued to laugh as he appeared to be searching for something. Then he spotted him; a tall young man with blue eyes, athletic, earnest and scared to death. Denny went to him.
“Wow, incredible,” Denny shook his hand. “We need help. Is your credit card system up?”
The young man looked this way and that, not quite like Beaker on the Muppets, but nodded no, but then yes. “We can process cards,” he said with assurance.
“Excellent,” Denny nodded. “I’m going to give you a five thousand dollar order in the next twenty minutes. I don’t care what credit card it goes on, OK? Just come with me, write it up. Here’s the card—go get it approved—either one, I don’t care,” Denny handed the clerk two cards.
“This building has electricity because
of generators,” Denny spoke in a very quiet voice to Karen. “Somebody at REI is going to cut off sales because the cards can’t be processed. By the end of the day this store is going to be in shambles; nothing, I mean nothing will be left. The Wooblies will rip it apart. These people don’t get it. They’re just marketers.”
He turned stone serious.
“Karen, can you ride a bike and carry a backpack?”
Karen replied dumbfounded at the question. “I’m not sure.”
“Maybe not here in Seattle where it’s so hilly,” he added, firmly.
“OK, yes, I can,” she contradicted.
Denny nodded, then grabbed the salesman and steered him to the bicycle section of the first floor. “This one,” Denny pointed to $554 Electra Rat Rod cruiser bike. “And that one,” pointing to a pink Electra Daisy model women’s bike.
“Dude,” Denny confronted the salesman up close and personal. “I’m not going out of here with boxes. “This bike and that bike,” he pointed. “Follow me,” he indicated.
“How do you know so much?” Karen asked, trailing behind.
“When I was younger I spent a good portion of my disposable income at REI in Bellevue. I may not look like it, captured by Middle Age as I am, but I did a lot of hiking earlier on,” Denny stopped, and then looked around. He saw that REI personnel were trying to close the store. “We need to get what we want and get the fuck out of this store, quickly.”
Five minutes later the clerk had rung up two Lookout lightweight backpacks, a $400 Big Agnes tent, two lightweight sleeping pads, two four-season sleeping bags, an old-fashioned Whisperlite stove, fuel and canisters and whatever handfuls of handy things he saw that could be tucked away; a pair of water bottles, a Swiss Army knife combo.
“We’re just going to have to figure food out as we go,” Denny said, anxiously. “Here, let me sign,” Denny ordered the clerk, who ran the sale up as fast as he could, nearly totaling $4,500.
Bing, the sale went through; then there was chaos inside the store as store people began to yell back and forth. Like a knife falling from a sheath with a silent whoosh, the sidewalk exploded as four ten-by-twenty pieces of glass fell from the sixth floor façade down to the street.
Denny squeezed Karen’s hand to tell her thank God no one was underneath. The sound of the glass crashing was like a thousand little wrong-way scratches on a blackboard by long-nailed fingers; enough to send forever memories to the brain.
Then the store managers went into shut-down mode.
Denny nodded to Karen, who quickly stuffed her packs with the items they’d purchased, or perhaps purchased; after all, who knew what was going to happen in Big Computer Land. All Denny cared was that they were going to get out of the store with enough gear to take care of themselves; wherever they landed.
The pair wobbled a bit on their bikes, packs in place, then carried their bikes over the massive expanse of fallen glass in front of the store, not wanting to risk a flat in the first five minutes.
“I’m not sure I’m up for this, Denny,” Karen huffed.
“It’s OK. I really don’t care if we walk to Oregon or California,” he didn’t try to hide his breathing issue, either. Behind them REI’s HQ store was closing down.
The pair walked their bikes across the I-5. Beneath them the same people were trying to use the same phones to call the same people.
We’re going to Oregon? She thought.
“Karen, I’m really tired. I’m hurtin’ and I really need to crash for a while. Can we find a place?”
Denny was beyond tired. Age doesn’t creep up on you. It staggers out of the corner, knocks you down and says you just thought you could walk straight, try getting down on your knees and back up again. Go ahead, you just try. Eight blocks away, out of breath and out of shape, they stopped at the corner of 11th Ave E. and E. Howell at the edge of Cal Anderson Park, named for the well-known legislator and activist. The park and ball fields spoke to the pair come on in! The beautiful park, a green gem in the Capitol Hill neighborhood provided added value to city living.
It had been a tough morning. The cold mist had turned to a light, cold rain; a perfect morning for sleep. Denny hurt all over. It was a perfect time to test out their newly-acquired equipment.
“It’s OK,” he said. “We’re going to camp here. Nobody has electricity and the police are WAY too busy to evict us. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this beautiful little park wasn’t packed to the gills with homeless by tonight.”
Yellowstone National Park
What was soon to be the Great Yellowstone Volcano was in the infancy of its eruption, the caldera’s hymen now ripped nearly around to the top of the figure 8 of the park’s highways, soon descending to the upper and lower falls of the Yellowstone River. Enormous, virtually immeasurable, amounts of debris spewed into the atmosphere.
Eighty miles to the south the Jackson Lake Dam had split right down the middle and was fighting an inexorable losing cause. The waters captured from the snowmelt of the short but spectacular Teton Range were pouring—gushing—through, soon to cascade toward the Pacific Ocean.
Feeling like he’d been beaten with an ugly stick, BLM Undersecretary Robert O’Brien turned one last time to the sight of the Fort Peck Dam completing its death spiral as piece-by-piece the earthen dam succumbed to the inexorable forces of nature. Soon a half-mile stretch of the dam had collapsed. From the distance he could hear Missouri River roar with new power. His fingers and toes cold, he turned and started walking south as fast as he could on McCone County Road 24.
Watertown, South Dakota
Dry-mouthed, Leslie Joe Abrams and Jerry Stockton at WAPA’s Upper Great Plains Power Control Center in Watertown, South Dakota looked at the multiple screens in front of them. Outside it was still colder than a witch’s tit, which should be the South Dakota state phrase. Visit Pierre, it’s colder than a witch’s tit. The pair had heard screams—not conversations—from the Fort Peck Dam.
“The dam’s going! Christ almighty! It’s going!” To which was added the punctuation of Klaxon alarms in the background, like the WWII movies where the sub had to dive to avoid the depth charge explosions. The conversations were one-way; nobody was listening to anything, only reacting to what was happening. People were going to die. “Look! Jesus! Look!” shouted someone from Fort Peck. “It can’t! Shit, get out of here! Run! Run!...Ru…” and the line went dead. Before the line went dead the sound was eerily like water rushing.
What was beyond scary was the immediate loss of electrical generating capacity to the grid.
“Did you see what just happened? Fort Peck dropped off!” shouted Leslie Joe, whacking the best he could at his terminal, then rolling across the floor to the marketing terminal where red lights (led to white lights which led to power outage).
“Oh, man,” groaned Jerry, his eyes on the large map in front of him. Fort Peck Lake was 135 miles long—roughly the distance between Washington DC to New York City. Further downstream was Lake Sakakawea, named for the Lewis & Clark babe. This lake is contained at Garrison Dam in Pick City, North Dakota; or as it is referred to by experts, the middle of fucking nowhere. Lake Sakakawea is one of the biggest impounded by man in the entire world; downstream was something bigger.
Like Fort Peck Dam, Garrison Dam is an earthen dam.
Downstream from Lake Sakakawea is Lake Oahe, the largest impoundment along the Missouri River in Pierre, South Dakota; a dam that provides most of the power for the central United States. Like Fort Peck and Garrison dams, Oahe dam is an earthen dam, as are the other dams along the Missouri River.
“I’ve got a problem, Bubba,” Leslie Joe Abrams said, not exactly sure what to do. There were so many options. Nobody had put a scenario in the training manual where the Missouri River dams were collapsing, and YOU, Leslie Joe Abrams, 53 of Watertown, South Dakota, come on down! Leslie Joe Abrams had to decide which part of the United States was going to see the groundhog’s shadow and get six more weeks of winter. Leslie Joe g
lanced at his control panel which was wigging out; Kansas City Power & Light, Minnkota Power Cooperative, Nebraska Power, Interstate Power and Electric, Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, Tri-County Electric and more.
“Do something Joe!” Jerry shouted.
But, it was too late. Like the ending in a computer game, all the lights went out. All of the electrical circuits had come home to momma. The panels went dark; the lights went out in Watertown, South Dakota. The lights also went out in Minneapolis, Topeka, and Omaha.
Inside the pitch dark Power Control Center Leslie Joe Abrams had four words to say.
“Oh, man. This bites.”
The White House
The Situation Room is located in the basement of the West Wing of the White House; renovated in 2006-7 to provide military, intelligence and civilian management access to modern communications systems to gather and analyze information during a crisis. Run by the National Security Council, after the renovation and post 9/11 emergencies, the Situation Room now also included the Homeland Security Council and the White House Chief of Staff.
“Water from the Jackson Dam is moving downstream at approximately 3 miles an hour, which is the only saving grace we have at the moment. It’s moving over relatively flat ground,” stated DOE secretary Abe Liebowitz. “I have no information on the dams in eastern Idaho on the Henry’s River.”
Others seated around the table were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Homeland Security the civilian Secretaries of Energy, Interior, and Homeland Security, the Director of FEMA; and the President.
On the partitioned screens at the front of the room were large Google Earth maps of northwest Wyoming with overlays of roads and city names. On the screens to the right were two Air Force satellite pictures, streaming video from space, the pictures clear enough to distinguish buildings and automobiles.