It was almost as if the government knew that would be impossible for many of the veterans. For many of their medical records were completely destroyed in a fire at the National Archives in 1973.
For many of the veterans the only way they had proof positive they were indeed Atomic veterans was in their death records. For it was there the noted cause of death were various cancers only contracted by radiation exposure.
And for those heroes it was a bit too late.
The federal government is a steady and reliable force, in that certain truths remain pretty much constant.
Congressmen and senators will always be in the profession mostly for themselves, no matter how much they claim they’re “serving their country.”
Congressmen and senators will always take care of their political cronies and serve their political parties first. Even at the detriment of the constituents who elected them.
And nobody in the federal government ever learns from their past mistakes.
Just as military leaders sent the Atomic veterans into mortal danger with false promises, knowing or ignoring the possibility most would eventually die from the damage their bodies were to incur, the National Park Service did the very same thing to its park rangers.
Chapter 3
Oh, and it wasn’t just the park rangers, either.
The Department of the Interior, which owns the National Park Service, made a command decision to downplay the dangers involved in overseeing the closing and evacuation of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
“You’ll have plenty of time to get everyone out, then to button everything up and get yourselves out. You’ll be in no danger at all.”
Deputy Dave was in the ranger station that day, trying to decide whether to volunteer for the evacuation and closure effort, and asked exactly what they expected the eruption to look like.
The ranger lieutenant, a man named Hockley, anticipated the question, because he’d been briefed ahead of time by a Department of the Interior scientist.
“There’ll be a bright flash of light, followed by a shock wave that might be pretty intense,” the lieutenant said.
That didn’t sound so bad to Deputy Dave. He’d been in earthquakes before that were pretty intense. And he’d ridden out a hurricane on the Florida coast when he was in college.
He was sure he could survive something as easy as a bright light and a shock wave.
Deputy Dave, just as Julianna Cervelli would be when she signed up later the same day, was naïve and a bit too trusting.
Now, it was possible that Ranger Lieutenant Hockley wasn’t given the rest of the story.
Perhaps it was his own naiveté which caused him to send Dave and Julianna into the jaws of the dragon, to almost certain death.
Or maybe not.
Perhaps he knew that the brilliant flash of light and the shock wave would come a fraction of a second apart.
Maybe he knew that the light would be so bright it would cause instantaneous and permanent blindness. And that the roar of the shock wave would render its victims instantly and permanently deaf.
Hopefully he wasn’t told by the scientist that it wouldn’t matter about the blindness and the deafening affects. Because anyone who experienced them would be vaporized a fraction of a second later anyway.
Hopefully he didn’t also know that the blast wasn’t coming months or years in the future, as most reputable scientists were now saying.
He probably shouldn’t have listened to a government scientist, who each week cashed a paycheck with the Department of the Interior’s logo printed across the top.
It should have occurred to him that such a scientist might have a rather skewed interpretation of the facts; he might view them in a way favorable to the DI’s agenda.
In any event, he had absolutely no qualms about sending his rangers into harm’s way.
And it didn’t bother him in any way that doing so would have a domino affect.
The fact the rangers were still there, still in the park, helping find people and getting them to safety, made it easier for others to convince themselves it was safe.
Policemen and sheriff’s deputies, once their own families were out of the area and safe, stayed behind to volunteer to help total strangers.
They rationalized to themselves and their families, “Well, the rangers are the experts, and they’re still here helping out. So it must be safe. I’ll leave when the rangers do.”
And so it was with the volunteer firefighters. The National Guard’s weekend warriors. Even church groups and hospital staff.
Just as in March 1947 the United States War Department ordered ships full of men to steam toward the Bikini Atoll to witness atomic bomb testing, the DI cared little about sending its people into the belly of the beast.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
On the day Yellowstone finally blew, Julianna joined more than two hundred fellow rangers who were vaporized instantly.
Ranger Lieutenant Hockley wasn’t among them, though.
He’d already been transferred to Big Bend National Park in south Texas and was busy getting settled in to his new assignment.
Two hundred ranger souls lost their lives in the service of their country while the fat cats at the Interior Department, sitting in their oversized stuffed chairs in Washington, D.C. never shed a tear for them.
Deputy Dave, who just the night before finally consummated his relationship with Julianna and was making plans to ask her to marry him?
He was one of forty seven volunteers from the Teton County Sheriff’s Department who went to heaven that day.
Park County, to the north, lost just over a hundred volunteers.
Fremont County, to the east, more than twice that.
The volunteer first responders, of course, knew they were taking a risk.
That didn’t mean they wanted to die.
Or expected to.
Every policeman or fireman, when going into a dangerous situation, says a little prayer that he’ll come back out alive.
Generally they do.
Every once in awhile, though, their luck runs out.
They know the risk ahead of time and accept it.
They always know, because a little voice in the back of their head reminds them, that this is the day they might die.
But they go in anyway.
That’s why they’re heroes.
Chapter 4
It would take several days for scientists to identify ground zero. It would go down in the history books as being on the Snake River, a few miles east of the tiny town of Wilson.
Part of the difficulty in identifying ground zero was the fact that most of western Wyoming was turned to dust.
It was now, in essence, a big smoking hole in the ground.
The new crater extended four hundred miles east to Gillette. Its southern tip was one hundred twenty miles away in Logan, Utah.
Westward it extended to Mountain Home, Idaho, three hundred twenty miles from ground zero.
It had been pretty much taken for granted that Yellowstone was primarily the problem of the United States, and that all the direct damage from the eruption would be contained there.
It didn’t work out that way, though.
The northern tip of the new crater extended to Medicine Hat, Calgary.
It was a Canadian problem as well.
Of course, most of the casualties north of the border were caribou, moose and beavers.
But those are all revered creatures for our Canadian friends.
So Canadians would be mourning as well.
The ash cloud still rising from the eruption site disrupted air traffic all over North America immediately.
As it hit the earth’s atmosphere and spread, every other continent, every other nation, would have to cancel or reschedule flights.
Americans had focused pretty much all their attention on the pending eruption, despite scientists like Wayne Hamlin telling them there would be
other, perhaps very significant problems, after the eruption was done.
The problems were too many to count, and most were significant.
Most would cause additional loss of life in the months and years ahead.
Those which didn’t directly kill people would do so indirectly, or would cause other kinds of misery.
In coming years new kinds of cancer, new kinds of respiratory diseases, would spring up.
Some would be caused by the breathing of the ash, for though people would wear masks and wrap scarves over their faces for many months, there was no way to avoid it completely.
For it would be everywhere.
The media would describe it as a dirty gray snow.
But snow eventually melted away.
Snow was fun. One could play in it. One could even eat it if they wanted to.
Snow wasn’t forever.
And snow didn’t make people sick. It didn’t clog the roads and choke out cars.
Or people either, for that matter.
Snow rarely accumulated on roofs and collapsed them from their weight.
For snow was relatively light.
Ash was very heavy.
Snow never waited past late spring to melt, then to wash away down streams and washes and rivers to the ocean.
The ash would eventually wash away, but since it didn’t melt and stuck stubbornly to the ground it covered it would take many years to do so.
In the meantime, the ash would be poisonous for any ground it came into contact with. It would first cover, then kill the grass beneath it.
The same would be true of any crop. Any plant which bore fruit or vegetable or grain would die beneath it.
Most livestock would die within days, either from inhaling the nasty stuff or by starvation or poisoning.
Cattle grazing in the field would use their snouts to brush aside the ash, at the same time sucking much of it into their lungs.
Still, they’d find the dying grass beneath it and eat it, not understanding that it and the ash which covered it were both poison.
Wild game in the forest and on the nation’s vast prairies would fare no better. Those which ate leaves from trees would ingest the ash and poison dust which covered them.
And the trees would all die within a year or two. Any game lucky enough to survive that long would starve to death.
Most family pets would die too, unless they were kept indoors and belonged to fastidious owners who swept and vacuumed several times a day.
Everyone, without exception, knew someone who didn’t make it out of the evacuation zone.
Everyone, without exception, knew someone or several someones who would die in the coming months.
Unbelievably, though, no one seemed to have time to mourn. They were too busy trying to survive themselves.
Most people wouldn’t know for weeks how bad the explosion was. Because the power grids were mostly down, and a blackout covered two thirds of the country.
A communications blackout covered even more than that.
Nearly all those fortunate enough to have power were still in the dark figuratively. There was no television. Precious little radio. Virtually no cell phone service either.
Most of it was because infrastructure had been blasted all to hell. Radio and television antennas were flattened or damaged for a thousand miles. Same with cell towers, power plants and sub-stations. In some cases entire buildings housing television or radio stations were themselves flattened.
Then there was the added problem of the ash plume. Millions of metric tons of thick gray ash were being thrown into the atmosphere each and every hour and would be for days after the eruption.
Satellite television signals were severely disrupted.
The stations which were still operational were spotty at best and were looping the same twelve minutes continually.
They were only reaching a small portion of the population, and the sound was off more than it was on.
It wasn’t a good time to be alive.
Chapter 5
Naturally, the farther away one was from ground zero the better off he was.
Those on the Pacific coast still had to breathe the dirty gray air, for the ash cloud pretty much covered the entire U.S. mainland.
But aided by Pacific coast winds which tended to blow everything eastward they’d get only a small amount of the ash cover. Typically just a dusting to half an inch or so.
Sure, it made a mess of everything, but it was manageable.
Cities and towns all along the Pacific coast declared states of emergency.
Most declared that residents were responsible for sweeping the sidewalks and the streets in front of their homes, and to place the ash into plastic bags. The bags in turn were placed on the curbs and picked up by city crews and would eventually wind up on barges and dumped into the Pacific fifty two miles from shore.
For the next ten years it would poison millions of marine creatures, but it was thought to be far enough away to avoid impacting Americans’ food supply.
Phoenix was nowhere near the California coastline and got considerably more of the ash cover, but at half an inch to an inch and a half still fared much better than most of the country.
Word was getting around that cars were drivable, as long as one was very careful to keep ash out of the fuel tank.
Any ash which made its way into the fuel dissolved into sludge, you see. A sludge which quickly gunked up the fuel filter and stopped the flow of fuel to the fuel injectors or carburetor.
One had to be very careful not only to wipe ash from the gas pump’s nozzle, but also the area around the car’s fill spout as well.
The air filter was another story.
In some parts of the country the air filter was clogged with ash almost as soon as it was cleaned and placed inside the air intake.
In Phoenix, though, the ash in the air wasn’t as thick.
As Gwen and Melvyn drove around town with Tony and Hannah, they only had to stop every twenty minutes of running time to take the filter out and beat it against the car’s fender.
That didn’t knock all the ash out of it, of course.
But it cleaned it enough to allow the car to run for another twenty minutes or so.
Both couples were working hard to finalize their plans to leave Phoenix once and for all; to relocate to Alaska. And in all likelihood, never to return.
Although none of them lived in either of the evacuation zones, they qualified for relocation because they agreed to sign over the equity in their homes to the federal government.
The government would pay off the balances of their mortgages and keep their properties in exchange for their relocation expenses, and for the twenty-six foot Class C recreational vehicles they’d drive to Anchorage and live in until their log cabins were built.
The government would then give their homes to a volcano evacuee from the inner or outer evacuation zones who, for whatever reason, wanted to stay in the lower forty eight instead of moving to Alaska themselves.
The Greater Alaskan Land Act was the most expensive endeavor ever taken by the United States of America. Larger even than the New Deal. More expensive than both world wars combined.
The Act would saddle American taxpayers with monumental debt for at least three generations to come.
But it would save hundreds of thousands of lives.
As with any other federal government program, though, it was full of red tape and stupid rules and procedures. Most of the people running the program were competent and capable, but brand new regulations more than two thousand pages thick took a bit of time to learn and even longer to implement.
The Lupsons and the Carsons made no less than seven visits to the regional Land Act Processing Center before their paperwork was deemed complete and they were handed the keys to their RVs.
By that time they were more than ready to go.
It would be just the four of them.
Gwen’s children were well established in south F
lorida and had no desire to exchange year-round sunshine for harsh winters.
“After everything gets back to normal we’ll bring the grandkids up to visit, and of course you’re welcome to come visit anytime,” she and Melvyn were told.
It wasn’t the best of situations, but it was the hand they were dealt and they’d make the most of it.
Hannah and Tony had only one child, and he wasn’t even talking yet. So he had no choice but to go along with them.
Gwen and Melvyn packed their most valuable possessions and mementos into their Winnebago and into the trailer they towed behind it.
They left most of their furniture behind for the next owner of the house they’d occupied for almost twenty years.
They had far too many things to stuff into the six hundred square foot log cabin they were promised on the other end, so perhaps it was better this way.
They’d been talking for years anyway about downsizing as they got older.
This most assuredly wasn’t the way they’d envisioned doing it, but it was what it was.
The Carsons hadn’t been married long enough to gather as many mementos, but they trusted their friend Jeff to gather their photo albums and digital memories and keep them in a safe place until they could meet up with him later.
He’d stay in their home back in Little Rock until the home’s new owners came calling. Then he’d likely follow his friends’ lead and move up to Alaska himself.
There was really no way to discuss the situation with Jeff at this point, for long distance communication by any means was impossible and would be for a very long time.
Chapter 6
By the fifth day after the blast television reception was getting better but still spotty.
Citizens of Philadelphia had been without power since they felt the fading remnants of the blast wave and heard what sounded like distant thunder.
Most instantly knew what happened, and those who didn’t know immediately figured it out as soon as the ash started raining down upon them.
The Yellowstone Event: Book 6: The Aftermath Page 2