by Peter Hernon
“Those are cypress trees, what’s left of them,” he said. “The quake snapped them off like matchsticks.” Each tree was broken off cleanly at approximately the same place.
“Reelfoot was the name of a Shawnee chief,” Jacobs said. “The Indian name for this country is Wakukeegu, ‘land that shakes.’”
“How did the lake form?” Atkins asked.
“The fault throw during the last big quake was twelve to fifteen feet, high enough to dam a creek and cause the land to subside,” Jacobs said. “The water just started backing up. We’ve got maps from the early part of the nineteenth century. This lake isn’t even on them.”
It was difficult for Atkins even to imagine that kind of uplift, which illustrated the earthquake’s tremendous force. He knew that all three quakes had blown geysers of muck and other debris into the sky and turned the ground into a gumbo of mud and water.
Jacobs explained that the New Madrid quakes actually formed six lakes, all of them huge. The Army Corps of Engineers drained four of them back at the turn of the century for farm land.
“How far is St. Louis from here?” Atkins asked.
“About 150 miles.”
“And Memphis?”
Jacobs knew what he was driving at, and smiled. “About 120. You’ve also got Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Little Rock, Cairo, Illinois. All within a three-or four-hour drive. Then there’s Paducah, Kentucky, Cape Girardeau in Missouri, and a couple hundred smaller towns that are a lot closer.”
The two headed back toward their cars, rubbing their arms to keep warm in the cold air. The wind had dropped off. Jacobs smiled and said, “Depending on whether the New Madrid system connects with two or three other faults, you might want to throw Chicago into the mix.”
Atkins tried to let all that register. How many people were affected? Several million at a minimum. The San Andreas Fault simply didn’t compare. A large expanse of Southern California west of the San Bernardino Mountains was sparsely populated. If a bad one hit, the quake would affect only one city at a time. Seismic waves triggered by earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault just didn’t travel that far. The rock out there was too soft, too fractured.
The great San Francisco quake of 1906 was a good example. It was only a little less powerful than the largest of the New Madrid quakes, but the damage was limited almost exclusively to a 200-mile radius around San Francisco.
It was a different story out here in the Mississippi River Valley, where seismic waves traveled much farther and where cities and towns were more numerous. The shock waves from the famous quakes rang church bells in Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Windows had broken in Philadelphia. It was felt as far away as Montreal. The deep rock in this part of the country was older and harder, which meant the shock waves traveled farther. A big one could send perceptible seismic waves radiating for more than a thousand miles.
Jacobs handed him another map. He’d seen this before, but it was still a shocker. It showed how midwestern quakes dramatically differed from those on the West Coast. Earthquakes of similar magnitude were far more damaging in the heartland and their destructive range far greater.
“How many tremors did you say you get on average every week?” Atkins asked, studying the map.
“Of a magnitude 1 or better, at least three or four. Sometimes they come in clusters of five or six. Lately, the intensities are getting higher. Fact is, I’m getting a little worried.”
Jacobs wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing in sharing his concerns with his friend. When it came to trying to predict an earthquake, candor was risky and usually best avoided. But after meeting Atkins, sizing him up, he decided to get it all out in the open.
“I’ve been here going on twenty years, and I’ve never seen so many things pile up,” Jacobs said. He was carefully watching Atkins, trying to read him.
“You mean precursors?”
Jacobs nodded. “I wouldn’t be so concerned if it was just one or two events. But, hell, we’ve got a swarm. For starters dilatant strain levels are way, way up.”
“How much?”
Dilatancy was a measure of increased pressure on rocks as they swelled or dilated with water. Specifically, it was found that water-saturated rocks placed under strain increased in volume during deformation. There was evidence that as the pressure on the rock increased, cracks began to develop and multiply within the rock, the fractures increasing in number as the pressure built toward the breaking point. Laboratory tests were done, squeezing rocks to high pressure using special hydraulic presses. It hadn’t been understood until fairly recently that this microcracking occurred in wet, saturated rocks before they’d break under stress. Delicate instruments could measure the expansion or “volumetric strain” of the cracks. There was some evidence that dilatancy increased before a quake.
“Eight, ten percent. We’ve also got increases in the magnetic fields.” Rocks cracking under pressure and then closing again just before a quake sometimes altered magnetic fields.
Atkins asked about radon emissions. The odorless, radioactive gas was trapped within all rocks. When they started to fracture under stress, as just before an earthquake, greater quantities of gas were sometimes released.
“We’ve got gauges on ten deep wells scattered along the fault line,” Jacobs said. “The readings are all up. A few are way up.”
“What about P velocities?” Atkins asked.
The idea behind P, or primary, wave velocities was deceptively simple. Earthquake damage is usually caused by three different kinds of elastic waves. Two of them move within the rock itself: the fast-moving primary, or P, wave and the slower-moving secondary, or S, wave. S waves resemble ripples of water moving near the ground surface, ripples that can hit harder the farther out they travel.
The P wave resembles a sound wave and can penetrate both liquid and solids—volcanic magma, mountain granite, or the ocean. When they reach the atmosphere, P waves become sound waves that can be heard by humans and animals, especially dogs. The sound is often likened to a loud, long crack of thunder.
As an earthquake indicator, P waves were important. If rock properties changed before a quake, then the speed or velocity of the seismic waves passing through them also changes. Measurements from previous quakes suggested that P velocities changed by about ten to fifteen percent before a quake.
“The fluctuations are in the twenty percent range,” Jacobs said matter-of-factly.
“What kind of uplift are you getting?”
“Over the last three years, four to five centimeters in places. We’re running another GPS survey right now.” The Global Positioning System was a complex satellite network operated by the Department of Defense. It allowed precise measurements of the earth’s topography. By comparing how the ground had changed over time, where it had risen or shifted, geologists could calculate whether stress was building along a fault. An uplift of four or five centimeters was significant.
“Is this what you brought me out here to talk about?” Atkins asked.
“I didn’t want to be too direct,” Jacobs admitted. “I thought I’d just show you the data, tell you what we’ve got. Keep the rockets to a minimum.”
Atkins understood perfectly. Any talk about earthquake precursors tended to make seismologists nervous in a hurry. It was professionally risky even to bring up the subject. And yet he had to admit that all of these indicators pointed to something going on.
They climbed into the Jimmy, the stiff wind off the lake pushing hard at their backs.
“So what do we do about the animals?” Atkins asked.
Carefully weighing his words, Jacobs said, “I’m just as skeptical about that as you are, John. But there’s been so much of it lately. A lot of animals seem to be doing weird things.”
“What about that sheriff you mentioned?” Atkins said. “The guy back in Kentucky who had the friend who raised cattle.” The sheriff had called Jacobs two days earlier and described the man’s problems
with his herd. They’d been going on for nearly two weeks.
“He just said they were acting crazy as hell,” Jacobs said. “It sounds like more of the same. Your rats and frogs. His cows.”
“I wouldn’t mind visiting him and trying to hit a couple of the others on that list you gave me,” Atkins said. He grinned. “Who knows, there might be a paper we can write about it later.”
“Only if there’s an earthquake,” Jacobs said. “And I’m not sure about that.”
“Right, you’re just worried as hell,” Atkins said.
His friend nodded slowly and pulled his snap-brimmed cap lower on his head. “You’ve got that right, John. I don’t like any of this. I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to rely on facts and nothing but the facts. But I don’t like the way this feels.”
Before they left the lake, Jacobs said he’d check out some of the names on the list himself. They’d meet back in Memphis late the next day and compare notes.
NEAR MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 9
4:20 A.M.
AT WALTER JACOBS’ SUGGESTION, JOHN ATKINS drove up to meet the Graves County sheriff in Mayfield, Kentucky. It was a short trip from Reelfoot Lake, about thirty miles. The sheriff—his name was Lou Hessel—had called the USGS in Memphis a few days earlier to report that he was taking a lot of calls from farmers about strange animal behavior.
Hessel had lived in the New Madrid Fault Zone his entire life and read whatever he could about earthquakes. It was a hobby with him. He’d read about Chinese studies on the subject and thought Jacobs ought to know about all the calls.
Atkins met Hessel late in the afternoon at the ornate, Victorian-era courthouse in Mayfield.
“Why don’t we run on up and see Ben Harvey,” the sheriff said. “He’s been calling me almost every day for a week, telling me his herd of Black Angus are acting crazy. At first it was happening mainly after dark, and Ben thought someone was trying to rustle them. So he spent a couple nights sitting out in the field in his pickup with a shotgun and a cell phone. Then the cows started bellowing in the daytime, too. The old boy’s on edge.”
“How many calls have you gotten like his?” Atkins asked. After what he’d already seen, he was more than curious.
The sheriff paused as he filled his pipe with a strong-smelling cherry blend. “In my county, maybe twenty-five. You’d think everybody around here was hittin’ the bottle. But this is the Bible Belt. Most of these farmers don’t drink anything stronger than Coca-Cola.”
Atkins followed the sheriff’s car ten miles into the country. The low, gray skies had given way to sleet and rain. The wiper blades trapped the icy slush at the edge of the windshield. The air was heavy with the smell of wet hay and grass. It was hilly country broken by pastures and cleared fields. The farms were small and well kept. The barns rough-sided and black with age. Turning off the blacktop, they drove up a long gravel road that ended at a cluster of barns, blue grain silos, and other outbuildings. The farmhouse, a two-story clapboard home with green trim, was set back in a grove of oak trees. A pretty place.
The sheriff tapped the horn a couple times. Atkins got out to stretch. He walked over to talk to the sheriff, who’d stayed in his car.
“Ben’s got close to ten thousand acres,” Hessel said. “He’s not hurting, not by a mile, but you’d never know it to look at him. He’s using a twenty-year-old combine and drives a beat-up station wagon with a couple hundred thousand miles on the odometer. But don’t let his appearance fool you. Ben’s pretty sharp.”
The sheriff laid on his horn again. The front door opened. A stout, middle-aged woman wearing a blue-and-white University of Kentucky sweatshirt stepped out on the porch.
“He’s out behind the pond, Lou,” she said. “Bull gored one of his good heifers.”
The woman sounded upset.
“When did it happen, Barbara?” the sheriff asked.
“About an hour ago. The vet’s out there with him.”
“Get in with me. We’ll go have a look,” the sheriff told Atkins. “That’s big trouble.” Atkins climbed into the front seat. The sheriff accelerated up a rutted road barely wide enough for the car. “That bull’s probably worth close to a hundred thousand dollars. Prime breeding stock.”
They crested a hill. A station wagon was pulled over to the side of the road. A gate opened to a fenced pasture. Just inside the gate, two men were standing over a prone animal.
“Al Barden’s with him. One of the best vets in the county.” The sheriff put on his gray Stetson and snapped shut his raincoat. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wear this today in the rain. It’s brand-new. Hundred fifty bucks.”
Atkins got out of the car and followed the sheriff into the pasture.
A man with a broad ruddy face and thick neck raised his hand in greeting. The cow that lay at his feet was a big animal with white and black coloring. Blood was oozing from a fist-sized hole in its chest.
“Lord almighty, Ben, what’s goin’ on?” the sheriff said.
Ben Harvey stared down at his dead cow. He wiped the rain from his eyes. “One of my bulls just laid into this heifer,” he said slowly. “I’ve got five or six cows down out in the fields. My whole herd’s gone crazy. I thought maybe it was anthrax, but Al here tells me no.”
For the first time, Atkins noticed the rifle the farmer carried. He held it close to his side against his rain slicker.
The vet, a young-looking man wearing a hooded poncho, shook his head. “It’s not just the cattle herds,” he said. “I spent the morning with Ralph Bierce. Couple of his big hogs killed each other before Ralph could get out to the pen. I can’t find anything physically wrong with any of these animals. I want to get some blood samples, maybe start calling—”
“Gentlemen, we’ve got company,” the sheriff said.
Atkins looked up and saw a massive animal with curved, jutting horns, standing on the hillcrest, a dark silhouette against the sky. The bull pawed at the muddy earth then slammed its head down as if trying to drive one of the horns deep into the ground.
“Ben, I think he’s gonna make a run for us,” the sheriff said. The vet had already started moving slowly for the gate. Atkins was about to follow him when the bull charged. It came at a gallop, half sliding down the hill, head down, bellowing in rage.
Atkins figured he’d never make it to the car. There wasn’t time. The animal was only thirty yards away and coming hard.
The sheriff stepped away from the dead cow and drew his revolver, a long-barreled Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.
“No, I’ll do it!” Ben Harvey said sharply.
In one fluid motion, he brought the rifle to his shoulder, sighted quickly down the barrel, and fired. The bull pitched backward as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. It fell over on its side and struggled to get up, its thick hind legs pushing into the soggy ground for traction. Another shot rang out, the sound cracking back from the hills. The bull went down hard and didn’t move.
Atkins took a couple slow, deep breaths. His legs were wobbly. The sheriff nodded. He felt the same way himself.
“I sent four kids to college for a lot less than what that bull cost me,” Ben Harvey said quietly. “I’ve been around animals all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t get worked up too easily, but I want to tell you I’m a little scared.”
SANTA MONICA
JANUARY 9
8:40 P.M.
IT WAS LATE IN THE EVENING WHEN ELIZABETH Holleran arrived at her condominium in Santa Monica. The private patio and small garden were what had sold her on the place, that and the fact that the masonry walls were reinforced and tied to steel footings. Not completely earthquake proof. No building was, but it was as good as you could do.
The big yellow envelope was propped against the front door. She’d half expected it. She put it on the dining room table and poured herself a glass of white wine. She sat there, staring at the package, afraid to open it. Her name and address were care fully printe
d in black ink in Prable’s distinctive handwriting.
Elizabeth checked her voice mail. One of her graduate students had called twice, a kid from New York who was sweating through his dissertation. He was working on an analysis of fault slippage during the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The port city in Japan had taken a bad hit, a magnitude 7.2. Along with the Northridge quake, it was a frightening example of what could happen if a moderately big quake struck near a large city. The damage in Kobe was far worse than what had happened in Los Angeles.
Elizabeth took another sip of wine and sat down at the table. She opened the envelope and took out a videocassette, two high-density computer disks, and a single sheet of white paper folded in half.
A key was taped to the paper, on which Prable had written:
Elizabeth, please watch the enclosed video. Joanne operated the camcorder so forgive the occasional lack of focus. All of this, I hope, will be self-explanatory. If you wish to pursue the matter, my papers and the computer system on which I based my analysis are in my office. The key opens the door.
I only recently completed these calculations. If I hadn’t been so sick, I would have sounded the alarm myself, done whatever was in my power to bring this information to the right people. It wouldn‘t have been easy. The USGS, as you know, can be incredibly obtuse. But I would have tried. The cancer has changed everything. I’m too tired.
I’m sorry to draw you into this, Elizabeth. If you find my analysis accurate and choose to do something, it will be incredibly risky. You will be attacked in ways you can’t imagine. If I’m correct in my risk assessments, you don’t have much time. Good luck and a thousand blessings.
Prable
Elizabeth slipped the video into her cassette player and sat down. When it started, Otto Prable was slumped in a chair. He wore a dark suit and tie, the same suit he’d worn when he took his life. His face was ghastly. Hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes that peered out from the sockets. His skull showed through his skin.