Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 7
Farther north, the Seattle Faultline epicenter rocked the Central and North Sound areas with similar results. The southern end of Russell Island dissolved into the epicenter in a massive landslide never before seen in scale. The landslide and epicenter both combined to cause an eighteen-inch tsunami—massive for an inlet. The only thing that kept the tsunami from growing taller was the extreme depth of the inlets and Puget Sound. The shores were very steep. However, water began to pull away from piers and docks, which were starting to crumble from the violent shaking. The tsunami wasn’t very tall, but it was wide and long. Feeding it caused large tidal swings.
Jet fuel is relatively stable, which normally makes it ideal for large-volume storage. It has a relatively small explosive limit range, which to the average person means nothing. To a firefighter, it means that the vapors have to be between .6% and 4.7% of the airspace they’re in to be explosive. In general, if a person can smell the jet fuel, then it is too rich to explode, even with an open flame in the area. There is another property of fuels called the “auto-ignition” point. This is the temperature a fuel must reach in order to explode, even without the presence of an ignition source. For JP-8 jet fuel, that temperature is 410 degrees-Fahrenheit.
East of Port View in Slaughter County, the military housed their largest fuel storage facility in the continental U.S. at the Manford Fuel Depot. The 990-foot-long pier had split into two major pieces, ripping open several large-bore fuel pipes in the process. About midway down the pier was a small building used for a variety of maintenance tasks and—ironically— firefighting gear storage. The breaker panel began to spark as the pier ripped open from under the facility. A flammable materials storage locker flipped over, spilling several cans of gasoline staged to run the firefighting pumps. The sparking and spilt-gasoline eventually combined to catch the little structure on fire.
The little building’s fire continued to grow, warming up the jet-fuel pipes just outside. Those very pipes that were spilling their fuel onto Puget Sound in another location. They were well over 1,200 degrees in temperature when the vapor level inside them dipped below 4.7% due to the fuel being absent.
The chain reaction was staggering…
As if the ecological disaster wasn’t bad enough, the fire chased its way through the pipes to the transfer and pumping station at the head of the pier. It exploded in the first of over thirty fireballs that combined to look similar to the effects of a small, tactical nuclear weapon—sans the radiation.
The shipyard’s 250-foot-tall Hammerhead Crane—the icon that often represents the entire peninsula in postcards and promotion videos—started to sink on its eastern pilings. At the Bartlett Ferry Dock, the tide suddenly lowered almost twenty feet as the water fed the mini-tsunami. The mooring lines that had been holding the ferries in place during terminal inspections stretched beyond their capability. The water rushed out to fill the void, caused by the splitting faultline and the variety of mudslides filling the Sound. The Captain of the ferry Kaleetan floored his engines, which are always running forward a bit to hold the ferry firmly to the pier. As the water rushed out, the aft end of the ferry sunk down into the muck below, forcing him to disengage his props.
As the water began to rush back in towards the ferry terminal, the Kaleetan’s captain watched and waited. At about the time he thought his props were covered again he jammed the throttles into full-reverse. As the stern started to lift out of the muck, the propellers cavitated, shaking the end of the ship. Ultimately, the reverse thrust took enough strain off the front of the ship that the ship stabilized and rode out the ensuring wave action relatively unscathed.
The captain of the Chimacum had tried a different approach. He had ordered the crew to stage themselves with axes by the mooring lines until the terminals had been deemed safe again. When the second earthquake struck, he had his crew cut the lines and began to back off the terminal. He had managed to get about four hundred feet off the terminal, out over much deeper water, and his ship was still afloat.
What had seemed like a solid plan to the captain and crew of the Chimacum suddenly felt like a horrible idea. Even though he had her in reverse-thrust, the lumbering ship was no match for the rushing tide. Knowing things were about to end badly, the captain ordered for a hard-to-starboard steer, hoping to avoid colliding with the pilings and Kaleetan to the port. It worked. The port forward bow plowed through the piling packs farthest to the north, and the wave drove the big ferry into the smaller passenger-only ferry that was already taking her own beating on the next pier. Both vessels eventually broke loose of the carnage and began smashing into the smaller private vessels and piers to the north at the Bartlett Marina.
A similar tidal drop occurred at the Washington State Naval Shipyard, only to the lesser extent of twelve feet. Complicated by the fact that the area was already at low-tide, Navy-owned barges and vessels began to break free of their moorings. The shipyard employees had not yet fully inspected the outside of all the dry-dock’s caissons and seating surfaces. If they had, they might not have let people back into the docks quite yet.
The dry-dock’s caissons were essentially vessels designed to sink into very specific spots and act like bathtub stoppers. They sat in a groove, and even if every drop of water were removed from the outside, they would stay put—in theory. They were essentially sitting in a big notch, and their seating surface was what could be called a rubber gasket. The caissons were filled with many thousands of gallons of seawater, essentially turning them into giant weights. The first earthquake had churned up rocks, logs, and other debris that had slowly collected in the inlet throughout the years. Concrete and granite had broken off the almost 100-year-old quay walls outside a few of the caissons during the first quake.
When Cascadia fell and the ensuing intraplate earthquakes arose, the caissons were subjected to the same bouncing and shaking as everything else. The dry-docks were, too. Cracks and gouges had started to form. Caisson seats were broken, and water began to leak into the docks. Four-and-a-half total minutes of shaking might as well have been an eon as the churned-up rocks, logs, and broken pieces of granite and concrete found their way into some of the caisson seats.
A large merchant marine vessel—staged at WSNS for transporting army troops from Tacoma to a war zone—broke off its mooring at Pier 5. The big vessel was largely automated, running on a crew of barely twenty people. The vessel’s master had not anticipated the second earthquake. Even with the backup diesels running for on-board power, there was no time to light boilers. Hoses and power cables snapped first, pulling out of their fittings and manifolds. Next to go were the mooring lines and bollards on the pier, which were not designed to contain a 60,000-ton vessel that had suddenly become dead weight. When the water came rushing back in, the vessel was aimed directly at the caisson of Dry-dock A. Every dry-dock was subject to incoming “torpedoes” made of boats, piers, rocks, and pieces of houses, but not so much as Dry-dock A’s caisson. The structure managed to hold up well, all things considered. The big ship smashed into the west end of it, at about twenty-eight feet in height, causing interior frames to buckle and bulkheads to rip at the welds. The entire upper third of the west side of the caisson was open to the air. Inspectors in the dry-dock, operating under the rally speech by their Commanding Officer, had not been able to flee during the shaking.
Looks of sheer terror crossed their faces as they glanced up and saw daylight and a huge, listing ship where they shouldn’t be. As the tide started to creep into the new seam, it looked like a small, trickling fountain for a moment. This quickly evolved into a massive gush. Approximately fifty people started scrambling for the dry-dock stairs, screaming to anyone that they could. People above the dock were watching in horror, screaming and waving at those below. It was useless, as anyone who rode out Cascadia and Tahoma in a dry-dock knew to leave as fast as humanly possible. Amazingly, nobody had been caught in the ensuing torrent. But the Navy’s nuclear-powered nightmare had just taken a massive turn for the worse.
6
Shock.
By the time Tahoma dropped its hammer on the Northwest, the clouds had started to thin for the afternoon. There was something to be said about the magnitude of trillions of cubic yards of earth shooting more than twice as high as jets fly. It created its own weather. Particles ionized, causing lightning and thunder. The particulates were attracted to water vapor in the atmosphere, which aided in the formation of dark clouds. The sight was ominous, as the sheer volume of it was enough to be seen through and above the thinning overcast layer. The plume slowly decreased, and by the next morning it had dissipated into a smaller column of steam.
The autumn jet-stream over the Northwest travelled into lower British Columbia before turning south and crossing most of the United States in a south-easterly direction. It then banked left toward the middle-eastern seaboard somewhere over Georgia and South Carolina. Swipes of Tahoma ash were able to be sampled in the eastern states by the following afternoon. The ash took about two weeks to completely travel the globe.
That was only the beginning of the trickle-down effects to the rest of the nation and world. Within moments, power surges shot through the national electric grid. Rolling blackouts started occurring in the entire western half of America. The sudden loss of hydro-generated electricity affected California the most. Power wasn’t the only utility affected.
Microsoft was deeply impacted by the devastation, as were their supporting cloud servers. Power and server cooling-water had become non-existent within hours. The world’s leading creator of computer software quit issuing their hourly and daily security patches and software updates. Entire segments of cloud memory were suddenly inaccessible by individuals and corporations alike.
Amazon’s Seattle HQ—literally several blocks of downtown Seattle—was reeling after sinking several feet into the soft fill the city was famously built-on. Fiber optic internet cables were crushed, which caused a domino effect of communications issues for the internet’s largest retailer and the rest of America.
Death and destruction abounded. The hundreds of thousands who’d suffocated in the mud lahars was just a starting point. As bridges and overpasses collapsed, everybody was fair game—grandfathers, mothers, infants—nobody was safe. In areas where cars had begun to drive after the first earthquake, people drove right off the roads as they split open into crevasses. Signs and buildings collapsed, killing thousands instantly. Thousands more were trapped, condemned to die slowly of dehydration and trauma. Fires abounded as gas lines erupted. The hospitals that remained standing merely became large morgues as the critically wounded and sick started to die off. Over the next several days, everybody learned what death smells like. Nobody was exempt. It was everywhere.
Locally, the nefarious effects of the combined disasters weren’t just limited to fallen buildings, bridges, and billboards—the sharpest of criminals were instantly aware of the golden opportunity. They began planning and cutting deals with each other for territory as they realized that there were people out there not ready to defend their goods and the cops would soon be out of the picture. Most people had scoffed at the modern preparedness movement—not ready to even walk home just a few miles let alone be ready to fight off armed attackers.
Tahoma may have hammered the Northwest, but her blow was delivered to the entire country in ways people had not yet realized.
Tahoma’s Hammer + 1 Minute.
Phil came to with Dakota barking and trying to lick his face. She was actually on the ground under his driver’s window, standing in the gap caused by his truck laying on its side at an off angle across the shoulder’s ditch. Phil knew he’d probably only had a momentary “red-out” from taking a beating on his head. His truck had wedged itself in such a way that it just rode out the remainder of quake by rocking, not bouncing. He reached out through the broken window and rubbed Dakota’s face. “It’s okay. Shh-shhh…” Calm down, girl.
He braced his left arm against the cab’s frame and tried the seatbelt’s buckle. Click. He half expected his shift in body weight to rock the truck. Nothing. He shot a glance up at the passenger window, which looked intact. No need to break it if it isn’t broken yet, he thought. The windshield was spiderwebbed. He rocked back and forth, finally deciding the truck was fairly stable. The airbags had deployed. He used his pocket knife to cut them out of the way. Out the driver’s window he went, low crawling down the ditch until he came out near the rear quarter panel. He dragged himself over to the high side of the ditch and fell flat onto his back, sighing and closing his eyes for a moment. Dakota was still barking and pacing nervously around him. He threw his arm around her and pulled her to him. Just another moment or two.
It was eerily silent. No breeze…no birds… Phil slowly sat up, testing his head for steadiness. Another moment built the confidence that he could stand… slowly. First—left knee to ground. Wait! Is the leg there? Yes.
He placed his hands on his head, doing a whole body check for bleeding. He found minor cuts on his left side scalp. Wait—where’s my glasses. He looked around for a bit, deciding they must still be in the truck.
He checked Dakota—she seemed fine. It was this moment that he finally took in the scene around him. The truck lying in the ditch on its side almost seemed an afterthought. The asphalt was covered in cracks, some as wide as four inches, and there were trees down as far as he could look in any direction. The power lines on the other side of the road were down as were some of the poles that used to hold them. He looked west and saw the same all the way up to the curve he was steering towards five minutes earlier. He looked east. Well…dang. This is going to take a while.
He did a walk-around scan of the vehicle. Fuel isn’t leaking… Then he noticed the left front wheel assembly at the bottom of the wreck. From this vantage point it appeared to have taken enough damage to be undrivable. Damn it! He stared at it for close to two minutes, thinking. Have to at least try, he thought sullenly.
Phil perked up a small bit when he remembered that he had tooling riding around in his bed. There were things that he may be able to rig himself back onto the road with. He pried open the cover on his bed and a bunch of stuff fell into the ditch. He spent the next several minutes rigging up his one tow strap, his come-along, some rope, and eventually the truck’s jack. He utilized the standing trees as anchors and the fallen branches as dunnage to shore up the truck as he rigged it back onto all four tires.
After an hour of effort, he had the truck upright once again. The left front wheel and tire assembly were leaning horribly outward and the fender was mangled around it. The stupid thing’ll fall off the instant I try to roll. Phil stared at it dejectedly for a minute and decided he needed to quit moping.
He spent another thirty minutes cleaning up the variety of things that had fallen into the ditch and breaking down the tooling he’d set up. He performed a search for his glasses and found them in front of the brake pedal. One arm was completely broken. Well, now… He dug into his shooting bag in the back seat and pulled out his prescription shooting glasses. These’ll have to do until I find my back-ups at home…
Phil packed up anything of value from the cab and put it under his locking bed cover. He put on his backpack and locked the bed-cover. He grabbed his chainsaw, pruning saw, and the ammo can that he kept in his truck to protect his emergency food from mice. Sorry, Hope. You’re going to have to wait a while, he thought as he and Dakota started to hike to his nearest resource—the gun range.
For the second time that day, Crane Walker and Billy Soren sprinted out of Dry-dock F. This time it took them four minutes to even get started. They were paralyzed by the shaking, as if they’d just stepped onto the world’s largest amusement ride. There was definitely water coming into the dock from the caisson. Crane turned to get Billy to catch up, but the fifty-seven-year-old smoker just waved him away, as if to say, “Go, I’ll get there.”
Like the other shipwrights and riggers who had been performing scaffold and dock inspections, Crane was sprinting north to report the flooding. The normal alarm panels for reporting fire or flooding issues were stationed down in the dry-dock and at strategic locations near the ship’s topside accesses. Crane wasn’t sure they’d be working anyhow. He ran at full-throttle until he found Max McPaul, one of the shipwright general foremen who had a radio. He was at the far north end of the area east of the dry-dock. As he approached the others, he could see terrified looks on their faces. Nobody was laughing this time.
“Floo…floo…” Crane gasped.
“Slow down, Walker,” Max urged with his hands up, only making partial eye contact. He was staring southeast, dazed.
“Flooding! Flooding in the dock,” Crane half-yelled, still scared out of his mind and panting for breath.
This snapped Max out of his daze. “What? What!! Where??” he demanded.
“West end of the caisson, up high, like forty feet up,” Crane was able to compose himself enough to say. About this time Billy jogged up, wheezing.
As Max began to call it in, Billy tugged on Crane’s coat sleeve, still out of breath.
“What! What?” he asked his mentor. Billy just pointed east with the one hand that wasn’t bearing his bodyweight on a knee as he hunched over.
Crane’s eyes traced Billy’s arm down to his finger and kept going. To the due east he could see black smoke filling the sky—close, probably in the nearby city of Port View. Farther south he could just make out a vertical column of gray ash and dark clouds growing towards the heavens.
