by Ray Hammond
Every Manhattan resident was officially issued with a survival pack and the necessary basic equipment to help them cope in such a crisis. All around the main island, evacuation zones were clearly lettered, colour-coded and numbered, the street signs painted accordingly. Theoretically, there was not one adult living in the city who did not know where he or she should report to once an order to leave was given.
But none of these disaster plans, nor the emergency-response drills staged regularly by police, firefighters and medical teams could have anticipated that one day the whole of Manhattan would have to be evacuated simultaneously.
At the start of the process, the carefully devised procedures worked remarkably well. The island’s six million residents quickly began reporting to their designated evacuation areas wearing warm clothes and sneakers, carrying water, communicators and ready cash. Many carried concealed firearms.
But those on the eastern side quickly realized that their designated escape routes would only take them closer to the oncoming threat. First in small groups, then in larger packs, they began to run the three miles westwards across Manhattan.
On the western flank of the island, tens of thousands were already driving or walking through the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, or to the north, over the George Washington bridge. But only a comparatively small percentage of Manhattanites owned cars. During the first twenty minutes of the evacuation, all 18,000 licensed taxis and 6,000 municipal buses had been commandeered by individuals brandishing either fistfuls of cash or handguns.
All available ferries were packed within minutes. For fear of overloading, some skippers cast off before all the desperately clambering passengers were safely aboard, leaving many still clinging to the boarding rails as the vessels pulled away. As they watched the overladen ferries depart from the Battery terminus and from various quays, jetties and piers along the shoreline of the Hudson River, the crowds still waiting on the island realized that few, if any, of these ships were likely to return.
Meanwhile, skippers of larger boats and commercial vessels prepared to put to sea with the intention of riding out the tsunami in open water, where the wave would do less harm.
Thousands of citizens stuck in midtown’s Westside broke down the turnstiles at Pier 86 and streamed up the gangways onto USS Intrepid, the Second World War aircraft carrier that had served the city as a floating museum for over half a century. Most of them realized that the old carrier was no longer seaworthy but they hoped such a huge vessel might be able to ride out the onrushing deluge.
From rooftops and landing zones all over the city, hundreds of helicopters rose into the air, carrying those rich enough to possess or command such expensive forms of transport. Seventeen seaplanes managed to take off successfully from the East River Skyport, but six others were sunk by clambering, panicking hordes who fought each other to cling on to the plane’s pontoons even while their pilots were trying frantically to get them into the air.
Hundreds of hopelessly overloaded small boats set off from the Manhattan Yacht Club and from the dozen other super-expensive marinas dotted around the island. Some of their skippers headed towards Richmond County or Jersey; others headed out to sea in the hope that they too could ride out the approaching surge.
Below ground, subway stations were so densely packed by people hoping to catch trains leaving the island that those standing on the edges of the platform found themselves remorselessly pressed forward until they fell onto the tracks, like coins on the ledge of a funfair slot machine. Though PA announcements kept repeating the message that all train services had been suspended, these could not be heard above the desperate screaming.
The 30,000 homeless people who lived on the city’s streets didn’t care much either way. They were simply pleased that there was so much alcohol and food available to them in all the abandoned restaurants, bars, hotels and stores.
*
‘I know climate management has brought many benefits to our planet,’ continued Michael Fairfax hurriedly. ‘But what I have to say now is of the gravest importance to all of our futures.’
In the gallery, Narinda Damle was watching an off-line image of a group of presidential aides now gathered in a close huddle to one side of the main platform.
‘It looks like they’re going to have another word with him,’ Perdy observed, over his shoulder. ‘But go closer in on the lawyer – he’s just coming to the important bit.’
Damle nodded to the vision mixer and returned his own attention to the current speaker.
‘Some of the most distinguished experts in the world are now concluding that unbridled use of reflected solar energy could disrupt the Earth’s magnetic fields. This . . .’
‘He is coming back,’ hissed Damle as the presidential aide jumped back onto the stage. ‘Six, follow him.’
The aide ran at a crouch behind the row of speakers’ chairs. When he reached his boss, he stopped and spoke in the American leader’s ear again.
Though Michael’s words were still being broadcast, the viewers were now once more watching Underwood’s face as he reacted to what his administrative assistant was saying.
After a moment, the President rose abruptly to his feet and walked quickly off stage.
‘Follow him,’ Damle shouted to his various camera operators.
‘Narinda, we’re losing our client networks,’ announced production assistant, Liam Burns. ‘Eighteen of them have dropped our feed just in the last thirty seconds.’
*
The Azores had been thrust up in the middle of the Atlantic sometime between the Cretaceous and Cenozoic periods, making them among the most recent outcrops of land to emerge on the surface of the Earth. These nine islands sat precisely on the intersection of the European, African and American tectonic plates, and were home to 260,000 people.
Two hours after the Cumbre Vieja eruption and landslide, Giorgio Zaoskoufis and his entire staff braced themselves to observe the moment of impact as the mega-tsunami raced towards its first landfall at almost 500 miles per hour. Now their instruments and cameras would be able to measure the real force propelling the series of giant waves.
Via their geostationary satellites, the monitoring team in Athens had a clear view of the cloud-free mid-Atlantic. Although no large rift in the surface of the ocean was visible to the naked eye, their computers tracked the eleven crests of the tsunamis in dotted red outline as they advanced on the archipelago.
By now the 24-hour rolling-news channels had got themselves organized, and all were broadcasting live feeds from video cameras dotted around the islands.
‘Looks like most of the inhabitants got to high ground,’ Zaoskoufis sighed with relief as he gazed up at a monitoring screen. The TV director cut quickly between locations around the stricken islands, before returning to a camera left behind on a beach to record the precise moment of impact.
Suddenly the Geohazard team could see the previously level ocean rear up, as the giant bulge of fast-travelling water hit the undersea flank of Santa Maria – the most easterly island of the Azores. They could clearly hear a low roaring as the giant wave began to break.
‘That thing must be at least twenty metres high already,’ Zaoskoufis murmured to Yoyo Kanii.
‘Twenty-three point six,’ she confirmed, monitoring the incoming data flow.
As the first of the multiple tsunamis hit, the CNN director cut quickly between the cameras capturing images of boats being flung ashore, buildings being swept away, and the ocean seeming to change the entire scale of its surroundings – as if viewers were now observing a storm being simulated with models in a movie-studio tank.
‘It’s now fifty-three metres at its highest point,’ announced Yoyo.
Zaoskoufis leaned in to the control panel and turned up the sound as CNN cut to an eyewitness account.
‘I think we got almost everybody safely up to higher ground,’ an American air-force sergeant shouted into a hand-held mike. In the background could be heard a continuous dull roar, lik
e a stream of supersonic aircraft taking off one after the other. A high wind tugged at the sergeant’s uniform as he spoke. ‘But most of the town itself seems to have disappeared.’
All along the eastern seaboard of the United States, those residents who were monitoring the news channels understood for the first time the scale of the phenomenon that was now heading for their own shores.
*
In a small ante-room beside the LunaSun meeting hall, President James Underwood was issuing a direct order to his Vice-President back in Washington.
‘Get out of the White House now, Boyne. Fly to Cheyenne Mountain immediately.’
‘With respect, sir, I’d like to make sure DC is fully evacuated before I leave myself,’ insisted Boyne Leander firmly.
Underwood glanced across at his group of aides; all were busy on communicators speaking to various parts of the Washington administration.
‘How long before we’ve got the population out of DC?’ Underwood demanded.
‘Another three to four hours, Mister President,’ said Carson Jonas, senior home affairs adviser.
‘And how long until this giant wave hits?’
‘About six hours, sir, allowing for the time it takes to come inland.’
‘OK, Boyne,’ said the President. ‘Stay on for another hour, but get yourself out in good time. We need you in a safe place.’
‘It seems as if you’re in the safest place, Mister President,’ said his deputy.
‘Sir?’ intervened Carson Jonas as his boss closed the connection with the White House. ‘This is Dr Emilia Knight. She’s with Geohazard.’
Even under such highly stressful circumstances Underwood still managed to deliver one of his famously warm smiles as he shook her hand.
‘I’m sorry we have to meet in this way, Doctor Knight,’ he began, ‘but I need your help. I have to commandeer that TV set-up outside within the next few minutes and tell the American people what’s really going to happen with this tsunami. It’s a terrible time for me to be away from my office.’
‘Well, I don’t know too much myself yet,’ Emilia told him. ‘But once a tsunami starts rolling the only thing that will stop it is when it comes ashore on dry land.’
‘You mean there’s no solution to it – I mean, dropping bombs or using energy beams wouldn’t slow it down or anything?’
‘Not if it’s as big as I’ve just been informed, sir. In itself, it’s thousands of times more powerful than any nuclear weapon.’
The President nodded grimly and sank slowly into a chair, the moon’s low gravity making his slow movement seem almost balletic. ‘How bad is it going to get when it comes ashore?’
‘If you can give me just ten minutes, I’ll provide you with a full assessment, sir,’ Emilia told him. ‘I just need to confer with my colleagues down on Earth.’
‘Couldn’t we slow down this wave by directing high winds against it?’ suggested the President.
*
Michael Fairfax was now coming to the end of his cut-down opening statement.
Up in the gallery, an assistant producer was hissing at his boss, ‘Narinda . . . Narinda.’
Damle turned away from the main monitors. ‘What?’ he demanded irritably.
‘I’ve got London on the line for you.’
As the AP patched through the call from BBC headquarters, Damle listened intently, shook his head, barked ‘When?’, then nodded. He slipped off his headphones and stood up slowly.
‘We’re off the air,’ he announced to everybody in the gallery. ‘There’s some tidal wave crossing the Atlantic. It’s so big that nobody wants to take our feed any more.’
Behind him, monitors showed Michael Fairfax still making his closing remarks.
Damle pressed a button on the console that allowed him to talk to all his technical staff. ‘We’re off the air, people. Another volcanic eruption or something back on Earth. Thank you, everyone.’
One by one the monitors went black.
‘Have we still got a broadcast feed from London?’ asked Perdy, turning to an assistant.
As all of the screens relit with the signal currently being transmitted from the Earth by BBC World, they saw a view of Manhattan taken from a helicopter. Then the transmission cut to a female reporter on board the chopper.
‘This is Aurora Templeton of MSN New York,’ the blonde woman shouted into a microphone over the din of the helicopter blades. ‘So far it is estimated that over two million people have managed to escape from the city.’ A camera beneath the aircraft then zoomed in on the broad spans of the George Washington Bridge, revealing a solid mass of vehicles and pedestrians heading westwards.
As the helicopter circled to head south down the Hudson River, the water seemed strewn with small craft making for the Jersey shore. With a long, slow movement the camera telescoped in on one small speck in the middle of the river. As the image enlarged it was possible to make out three men using planks of wood to paddle a large industrial-waste bin westwards in a crooked line. The camera swept on downriver to focus on a half-filled dumpster that a dozen men were also attempting to propel across the choppy water.
All along the length of the wide river that separated Manhattan from the mainland it seemed that fleeing residents were using bathtubs, doors, packing crates and wooden pallets as makeshift rafts. The camera even found a flotilla of six coffins being paddled hard towards the western bank as the staff from a funeral home desperately made their escape.
‘Our pilot is now going to drop me off in Central Park,’ announced Aurora Templeton, ‘so that I can report on the evacuation at ground level.’
Suddenly the transmission from New York was replaced with an aerial view of Washington DC, the Capitol and the long Mall looking peaceful yet imposing in the early afternoon sun. But as the helicopter’s camera panned down onto Pennsylvania Avenue, it became clear that every highway was blocked by vehicles.
‘Although the nation’s capital lies one hundred miles inland, Washington is bracing itself for serious flooding,’ said an unseen male commentator. ‘The Potomac surge is expected to cause incursions up to twenty feet deep.’
Meanwhile, in the LunaSun meeting hall, the debate was clearly at an end. The TV lamps had been switched off and normal lighting restored. Michael Fairfax and Steve Bardini stood together, watching the BBC World pictures that were now patched to monitors suspended around the room.
‘They can’t possibly get everyone evacuated in time,’ Michael commented sadly as the news cut from location to location along America’s East Coast.
‘No one ever sees seismic activity as a real threat until it happens,’ Steve murmured. ‘Fifty years ago scientists warned that one day the Canary Islands might collapse, but nobody gave it any real thought.’
Just like San Francisco, Michael reflected. He had been brought up knowing that he was living in one of the world’s most unstable areas, but what had he personally done about it? He’d brought a wife to that city and started raising children there. Humans couldn’t quite relate to the vagaries of an impersonal planet, it seemed.
‘How’re you doing, guys?’ asked Emilia, arriving by their side. ‘I’ve just had a discussion with Giorgio in Athens – then I had to brief the President, would you believe?’
‘What’s the forecast?’ asked Steve.
‘It will hit the Caribbean in about three hours and the East Coast ten minutes later,’ said Emilia, shaking her head. ‘Main crest is predicted to be fifty-three metres high, followed by ten secondary crests each between eight and twelve metres. Explosive force for the first five miles inland, then total submerge for another twenty. Serious flooding up to one hundred miles inland, depending on land elevation.’
‘And that’s what you told the President?’ asked Michael.
Emilia nodded, then shook her head again at the thought. Michael reached out and put an arm round her shoulders.
‘Negromonte’s just switched the moon reflectors up to full power,’ she added, shooting a wor
ried glance at her companions. ‘He’s also directing everything else they have down onto the Western Atlantic. They’re trying to create a hurricane to slow this tsunami down.’
*
All resources in Geohazard’s monitoring centres in Athens, Oakland and Tokyo were now tasked to track the Atlantic tsunami. Over 600 sensors scattered across the Atlantic seabed, on dry land and in space constantly measured the force, depth, height and length of the mighty surge as it raced westwards towards North America. Estimates about its time, point and force of impact were being updated in real-time, while over 200 Geohazard staff fielded media enquiries and provided data to governments and local emergency services.
In Athens, the responsibility for public pronouncements had just been handed over to Oakland, allowing Giorgio Zaoskoufis finally to find time for a cup of coffee.
‘Time for you to take a break now, Yoyo.’ Zaoskoufis laid a hand on the trainee’s shoulder. Like himself, she had been working in front of the monitoring screens without respite for over four hours.
As Yoyo rose to her feet, a shrill alarm sounded. Zaoskoufis frowned, then leaned in to kill the alert. Taking Yoyo’s chair, he patched the source of the alarm to the central screen.
Another volcano in the Javanese chain was rapidly building up pressure. As Zaoskoufis enlarged the data, the alarm shrilled yet again and a second red circle appeared – around another volcano sixty miles to the east.
Zaoskoufis checked that Tokyo was aware of the alarms, but no sooner had he finished speaking to the local officer on duty than a third volcano in the Javanese chain – which totalled a string of over eighty volcanic peaks – triggered a further warning.
‘It looks like the whole plate abutment is splitting open,’ Zaoskoufis told Yoyo. ‘It’s like a chain reaction.’
