8.4 (2012)

by Peter Hernon

  They were on their way to their last stop—an abandoned coal mine. They wanted to set up one of the portable seismometers underground. This would eliminate the possibility that the instrument would pick up any “background” noise such as automobile traffic. Jacobs had already arranged the trip with the company that owned the mine. The Golden Orient plunged two thousand feet into the ground, one of the deepest mines in the state.

  Atkins kept returning to the foreshock-aftershock issue. Were all of these recent miniquakes the gradual winding down of the magnitude 7.1 event? Or were they building to an even bigger earthquake?

  He’d been arguing it with himself ever since his meeting the night before with Elizabeth Holleran. He had major doubts about the foreshock theory. He’d already talked it over with Jacobs that morning. It didn’t fit with the historical record, which seemed to mitigate against another big quake any time soon on the New Madrid Fault. The recent pattern there was clear. One moderately big quake seemed to occur every ninety years or so.

  But Atkins couldn’t quite forget the glaring exception: the three quakes of 1811-1812, each of them a monster.

  Jacobs had calculated that up to fifty percent of the elastic strain energy remained stored in the rocks after the first quake in the famous New Madrid sequence—enough to trigger two more huge quakes. It was a sobering statistic, one that Atkins couldn’t overlook.

  As he sat in the Explorer’s passenger seat working over all this, Atkins also realized he wanted to see Elizabeth Holleran again.

  It was a surprisingly strong feeling, and it explained why he hadn’t gotten much sleep that night, less than four hours, the first time in a long time anything like that had happened.

  Ever since he’d lost Sara, he’d found it hard to relax with another woman, to spend time and make the emotional commitment to get to know someone better. He knew what the problem was; a doctor he’d seen had explained it to him: He was still grieving over Sara’s death. The powerful feeling had lasted for years. This desire to see Elizabeth Holleran was totally unexpected.

  Jacobs turned off the toll road and drove north about ten miles. They were near the small town of Kaler about fifteen miles northeast of Mayfield. The mine had been closed for more than twenty years, Jacobs explained. There’d been a fire. Some miners had been killed.

  “I don’t know the details,” Jacobs said. “But it must have been pretty bad. They reopened it a couple years later, but then air pollution regs closed them down again. Too much sulfur in the coal. Most of the mines in this part of the country had to shut down for the same reason.”

  “How far down do you want to set up the seismometer?” Atkins asked. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

  “A couple hundred feet,” Jacobs said. “That ought to filter out all the surface noise. You don’t gain anything by going much deeper.”

  A gate blocked the private road to the mine. The facility covered five miles of forested hill country. One of the arms of Kentucky Lake was twenty miles due east.

  Jacobs called the mine’s security office with his cell phone. Ten minutes later an elderly guard arrived in an aging pickup. He wore a holstered pistol and red suspenders. His cheeks and chin were covered with white stubble.

  “I been expectin’ you all morning,” he said curtly, getting out of the truck to unlock the gate. “Follow me.”

  “Friendly guy,” Atkins said softly.

  “They warned me about him,” Jacobs said. “He’s been here forty years. Lost his job when the mine shut down. Stayed on as a guard.”

  They drove up a gravel road that dead-ended at a parking lot. The mine entrance was inside a corrugated metal building with massive doors. A ten-story derrick that operated the elevator cables towered over it.

  With each of them gripping the seismograph’s metal carrying case, Jacobs and Atkins followed the guard through a side door. The old man flipped a breaker switch. Overhead lights flashed on. Atkins heard heavy machinery groan to life somewhere above them, high up on the derrick tower.

  The elevator was a metal cage large enough to accommodate fifty men.

  The guard handed each of them a scuffed miner’s helmet.

  “The levels are marked on the wall in red numbers,” he said. “Just push the buttons to go up or down.”

  “Are you going with us?” Atkins asked.

  “No, sir,” the guard said. He hesitated. His tone softened. “I don’t think you boys ought to be going down there.”

  “Why not?” Atkins asked. The man was staring at them, wide-eyed, not blinking.

  “Something ain’t right.” He looked like he wanted to say more but changed his mind. “You get in any trouble, hit the big yellow button on the elevator control panel. It’ll sound an alarm.”

  “What happens then?” Jacobs asked.

  “I’ll call for help,” the guard said. “You’ll have to wait ‘til it gets here. That could take a while.”

  He slammed shut the elevator’s metal grill. Jacobs pressed the red button for Level 2. The cage started down with a rust-grinding lurch. There were twenty levels, descending two thousand feet. A single light bulb burned over their heads.

  “I wonder what he wanted to tell us,” Atkins said.

  “I’m kinda glad I didn’t find out,” Jacobs said. “Mines spook me enough as it is. I never could have worked in one.”

  As they slowly descended, it occurred to Atkins that this was the deepest he’d ever gone into the earth. A geologist for more than twenty years, he’d spent his entire life on the surface. The profession hadn’t taken advantage of these man-made deep spots in the earth.

  Reaching Level 2, they carried the seismograph about twenty feet into the coal tunnel. They could see only as far as the lights on their helmets penetrated the darkness. It was cool, almost cold, the only sound being the steady dripping of water from the rocks.

  They got the battery-driven seismograph up and running in about ten minutes. Jacobs plugged a small laptop computer into the unit. It was an analogue machine. The seismic activity appeared digitally on the computer screen.

  “Jesus Christ, John! Look at this,” Jacobs said, playing a flashlight on the screen. “This ground’s alive.”

  The readouts startled Atkins. He’d never seen such intense seismic activity. All of it was way under magnitude 2. The waves were too weak to be felt, but they were coming in ten- to twenty-second intervals.

  “I can’t wait to get a directional reading on this,” Jacobs said. They’d need to let the seismometer run awhile to harvest enough data to get a precise fix on the source of the waves and their direction.

  Atkins felt something brush his cheek. He looked up and saw coal dust falling from the ceiling of the shaft.

  “Do you smell that?” Jacobs asked.

  Atkins straightened up. He smelled the faint, unmistakable odor of rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide. The foul gas that made the air around Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano so tough to breathe. Atkins had been to the volcano several times. He’d recognize that distinctive odor anywhere.

  Hydrogen sulfide was usually associated with volcanoes. Pockets of the gas formed deep underground and were released like champagne bubbles during eruptions. There’d been reports of strange odors seeping from the ground. He remembered how the farmer, Ben Harvey, had complained that his well water smelled bad.

  “We must be getting some venting,” Jacobs said, referring to a natural vent or crack that allowed the odors to escape from the ground. But that didn’t explain what was causing the smell.

  “Hold on, listen!” Atkins said.

  A faint rumbling came from the depths of the mine. It was hard to pinpoint the exact source, like trying to locate a sound underwater. It seemed to be coming from all directions at once, the sound rising up from the deep earth—distant, strange, unreal.

  Atkins had never heard anything like it. He had an overpowering urge to get out of there fast. He felt trapped.

  A loud groan reverberated in the tunnels, the sound echoin
g back off the walls, building like thunder. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the rumbling stopped. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The silence was total.

  Atkins felt his heart pounding in his chest. He was pouring sweat. It stung his eyes. He’d kept waiting for a tremor, tensing for it.

  “Maybe we ought to go a little deeper,” Jacobs said.

  Atkins looked at his friend for a moment. Neither spoke.

  “All right,” Atkins said. “Let’s do it.”

  They picked up the seismometer and computer and got back into the elevator cage. Jacobs pushed the button for Level 10, halfway to the bottom of the shaft. The big car started to descend. They were going down another eight hundred feet.

  The farther they descended, the stronger the smell became. By the time they reached Level 8, both of them had pressed handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. The odor was almost overpowering.

  Jacobs waved his hands to indicate they’d gone far enough. He was coughing.

  The elevator cage was open on the sides. Atkins touched the rock wall. The rough stone was almost hot. Then he noticed that his feet were getting warm. The cage’s steel floor was heating up. Warm air was blasting up from the bottom of the mineshaft.

  MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY

  JANUARY 12

  7:30 P.M.

  LAUREN MITCHELL WAS THE FIRST TO SPEAK AT THE public meeting, which was held that evening in the overheated gymnasium at Mayfield Senior High School. With a population of ten thousand or so, Mayfield was one of the larger towns in extreme southwestern Kentucky. Memphis was about 120 miles to the southwest. Approximately three hundred people were jammed into the high school’s small auditorium—men, women, children, all of them sitting nervously on bleacher seats or folding chairs, or leaning against the walls.

  Lauren had organized the meeting virtually single-handedly. She’d talked to everyone she could think of about what she’d seen at Kentucky Dam. It hadn’t taken long to spread the word, and she’d gotten some help from the local radio station.

  Lauren wasn’t the only one who’d heard the water blasting through the dam’s big gates. A lot of people who lived along the Tennessee River—some as far as five miles from the dam—had been awakened by the pounding roar. Many of them were in the gym. So were about a dozen sheriffs deputies and state troopers, who stood in the back.

  Paul Weston and two other members of the Seismic Safety Commission sat at a table at the head of the basketball key. Weston, as usual, was formally dressed—suit, crisp blue shirt, paisley bow tie. Governor Tad Parker had ordered Weston to hold the meeting that evening. Parker, who was in the state capital at Frankfort, expected a full report.

  Television crews from Memphis, tipped off about the session, had their cameras and lights on as Lauren walked to the stand-up microphone in front of the table. She wore jeans and a brown leather jacket and was holding a legal pad.

  “I want to know, we all do, what’s going on,” she said. She described what she’d seen and how Tom Davis, the hydrologist in charge, had told her they’d almost lost the dam.

  “We’ve spoken to Mister Davis,” Weston said. “He tells us he doesn’t recall making such a comment.”

  “That’s not true,” Lauren said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “I know what I heard. What I don’t know is why someone would want to make Tom change his story. And where is Tom? I asked him to come tonight, and he told me he would. Have you already gotten to him?”

  “That dam’s never been safer,” Weston said in a warm, friendly voice. “We’ve had four engineers go over it from top to bottom. We made another inspection just this morning. There are several minor cracks on an interior wall that need some patching. Those repairs are now being made. Everything else looks in fine shape.”

  “If they were just minor cracks, why did Tom open those gates?” Lauren persisted.

  Weston nodded understandingly and said, “I know some of you must have wondered what was going on up there during the draw off. Well, the fact is that Mister Davis was perfectly justified in opening the locks. He thought he had a … problem after that last quake. We may have some disagreement over what exactly he said to Ms. Mitchell here, but the bottom line is he did the right thing. Maybe he overreacted a little. In hindsight, we could have handled all this better. Let people know what we were doing and why. That’s why the governor was so eager to arrange this meeting tonight. He wants everyone here to know he understands how inconvenient it is for you folks to have 641 closed. We’ll get it open as soon as those repairs are made. Shouldn’t take more than a few more days, but we want to do it right.”

  “What if there’s another earthquake?” Lauren said. “We’ve been getting shakes out here every day. Is that dam going to hold if we get another good one?” She got a round of loud applause. Many of those in attendance were farmers or people who owned small businesses along the Tennessee River. Marina operators like her, grocery store and gas station owners, who depended on tourists. Men and women alike, they favored flannel shirts, work boots, and quilted parkas.

  “I can speak to that question,” Weston said. “I know you’re all concerned with the series of aftershocks we’ve been experiencing. That’s normal after a strong earthquake. The seismic activity could keep up for weeks or even months. But there’s no evidence we’ll get another big quake in the magnitude 7 or greater range any time soon. I’d stop worrying about that. It’s not going to happen.”

  JOHN Atkins and Walter Jacobs had arrived at the gym just after Lauren Mitchell walked to the microphone. They’d driven to Mayfield straight from the mine after Jacobs got a cell phone call from Weston’s office, asking them to attend the meeting.

  Atkins remembered Lauren from his visit a few days earlier to her boat dock and hadn’t forgotten the unnerving sight of all those frogs and snakes crawling out of the frozen ground near the lake. Surprised to see her, he was interested in what she was saying, but his mind was preoccupied.

  Jacobs and he hadn’t had a chance yet to discuss with anyone what had happened in the Golden Orient. They wanted to return first thing in the morning with additional instruments to measure the heat and magnetic fields that were being generated in the mine. There were examples of such phenomena in the literature, but they were extremely rare. The ground was highly unstable.

  At the very least, Atkins wanted to install a strain meter to see if he could get any readings that might help them analyze how much energy remained stored in the crust.

  Standing there in the back of the gym, he remembered the heat, the strange, overpowering smell, and the sound welling up from the deep rock. Mainly he remembered how scared he was in that open elevator cage during the agonizingly slow ride up to the surface. They’d gotten the call to head back to Mayfield just about the time they’d climbed into the Explorer.

  Distracted by his thoughts, he watched Lauren standing at the mike. She obviously wasn’t buying what Weston was telling her. Neither was anyone else in the gym. They all looked skeptical, worried. The children had picked up on the current of fear in the room. Some of the littlest ones were crying.

  Atkins noticed a woman in an olive-green trench coat get up from a seat in the back of the gym and approach the microphone. She had dark blond hair.

  Elizabeth Holleran.

  She walked up to Lauren Mitchell, who was still standing at the mike. Paul Weston’s sudden anger was clear to see. It could be felt, measured.

  Holleran smiled at Lauren and introduced herself. She nodded to the men seated at the table. Some of the same faces she’d addressed yesterday.

  “You’re doing very well,” Holleran told Lauren, smiling at her. “Would you mind if I ask a few questions?”

  “Not at all,” said Lauren, who looked pleased to get the help. “Be my guest.”

  “This is starting to get interesting,” Jacobs whispered to Atkins. He was struck by Holleran’s poise as she approached Weston and the others. She was cool, steady under pressure.

  “Doctor
Weston, there’s a simple way of determining how serious the damage was to the dam. Then we can assess what’s been done to repair that damage. Could you tell us if there was any sideways movement or settling?”

  “You have no standing before this panel,” Weston exploded. His earlier warmth completely gone, he looked like he wanted to come up out of his chair. “I promise you that I’m going to lodge a formal complaint with the head of your department at Cal Tech.”

  “It’s an easy question, really,” Holleran said, ignoring the threat.

  “Why don’t you answer the lady’s question instead of barkin’ her down,” someone shouted from the back of the auditorium.

  “Damn right! Answer her question!” shouted another.

  Atkins enjoyed watching Holleran in action and found himself wanting to cheer. It was a simple, albeit crucial question. She deserved an answer.

  Holleran said, “For the benefit of anyone here who might not know this, the shock waves from a big earthquake like the one three days ago can cause large structures such as dams to sway or settle. A sideways movement greater than, say, seven or eight centimeters could cause serious damage. You’d need to do major repairs, provided repairs could even be made. It’s the same thing with settling. If the dam settled only a few centimeters, there’s no real harm. But if it was greater than seven, eight, or nine centimeters, you could have major, possibly fatal damage.”

  Weston’s reddening cheeks looked wind-burned. He was leaning forward in his chair, arms folded, trying to appear patient, under control.

  “This woman isn’t qualified to make …”

  He was shouted down.

  “Answer her question! Did that dam move sideways or settle?”

  Several other loud voices were yelling for answers.

  “We don’t have any information on that,” Weston said, changing his tone, trying to become more conciliatory. “The engineers who did the inspection are still working on their report.”

  You better be right about that, Atkins thought. The one duty a seismologist owed the public at a time like this was absolute honesty, even, in his opinion, at the risk of starting a panic. He doubted Weston was telling these people everything he knew.