The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  “Get that crap!“ shouted one of the boys. “You could help,” he barked to the girls.

  They could, but they were ninth-grade girls; bigger than average titties, short skirts and they all wanted to get naked with seniors. The girls were about to pee in their panties.

  Ummmph. Andy felt his face slammed into the back of the metal locker, his tongue tasted the residue of gym clothes. A metal ear-shaped hanger jammed the left side of his face.

  “Stuff it!” shouted one of the boys.

  “Let’s get out of here before someone comes!” squealed one of the above average titties.

  “Get him in there!” said one of the boys as they stuffed his legs in behind his torso, twisting his knee as they did so. The door slammed behind him. In his subconscious Andy heard them run back down the hallway, tittering and laughing. In the distance a door closed.

  He’d been stuffed into a second floor locker, probably outside of 11th grade English on the last day before Christmas break. Immediately, he started to struggle to free an arm; but, he was jammed, his arms behind him, encased in a two-foot by two-foot by five-foot locker. He was bent over, face against the back of the locker, his head hard against the upper storage area of the locker, his arms stuffed wall-to-wall. His fingers were free behind him, but there was nothing else he could move.

  The noise in the hallway was gone, silly stuff clattering down the steps to the first floor.

  Andy’s chest heaved with the exertion; in-out-in-out, in-and-out, heavy breathing.

  Oh God I’m trapped I can’t get out I’m in a coffin please let me out.

  His legs had never cramped before in his 15 years but both calf muscles ripped at the same time, sending two shots of pain through his body, enough to make him cry out loud, a long low angry cry. Holding his breath the pain rippled through him please stop please stop please stop; then gradually his calf muscles began to relax, to a point where it only felt like someone was poking him with a hot stick in both legs.

  Then anger, twisting and turning, he began to rock in violent motions inside the confined space. He could feel the entire row of locker move slightly. Dude, no! You’ll pull the whole set down onto the floor, then the door will be on the floor and no air can get inside. Relax. Try to relax.

  But, he couldn’t. His breath came in spurts. He was about to pass out. The confinement hurt his every muscle. A second long cry, this time less in anger but more in abject horror of what would happen to him. He felt the walls of the locker getting tighter, like he was the trash in a compactor.

  “Let me out let me out let me out help help heeeeellllpppppppp!” his cry now a sob.

  How long would it be before someone would come? Would the titties come back?

  Andy’s tears of anger changed to tears of desperation, his voice croaking out please help me please help me please help me.

  Mercifully, Andy passed out.

  Eighteen hours later LeRoy Atkins, maintenance custodian, was polishing the second floor hallway; guiding the large polisher back and forth in a practiced sweep, one to guarantee an even finish to be proud of. The familiar white in-ear-headphones dangled to the iPod in his pocket; the selection of music made any day a better day. Fifty-eight years old and balding, LeRoy rocked with his polisher like he was jamming on Saturday night.

  What’s that smell? “Oh, man!” The odor got worse the further down the hallway he went. Reluctantly, LeRoy triggered the polisher off before it had a chance to dance by itself. The smell was terrible. A groan came from locker 248. Some kid had been stuffed inside.

  Using his universal locker key, LeRoy opened the lock, then the door. A small boy was jammed face first into the locker. He’d shit and wet his pants; stuck in the locker for eighteen hours.

  To his credit, even at urging of his parents, the police and school administrators; Andy didn’t give up the names of the three football players and two ninth grade titties that had nearly killed him. When he came to in the emergency room he was still counting; “Sixty-four thousand eight hundred…sixty four thousand eight hundred and five.”

  Bonneville Power Administration

  Portland, Oregon

  Early travelers in Portland on the I-405 and I-5 bridges, many being commuters from Washington State cities north of town, were unpleasantly surprised as the foundations of the Freemont and Marquam bridges crossing the Willamette River failed as if choreographed by a maestro.

  Marquam Bridge I-5, Jason “cacophony”

  (2007) Wikipedia

  Freemont Bridge I-405, by Jason “cacophony”

  Wikipedia (10/23/07)

  The Marquam Bridge carried traffic across the Willamette River in South Portland on I-5. It was a double-decked bridge, carrying 135,900 vehicles a day, the busiest in the state. The concrete and steel pilings wobbled this way and that, and collapsed, sending five hundred eighty-two cars into the river. Further north, the newer Freemont Bridge allowed I-405 traffic to enter North Portland after crossing the river. It was the second longest tied-arch bridge in the world after the Caiyuanba Bridge spanning the Yangtze River in China. While the bridge withstood the double quake, the elevated dual-deck concrete run-up lanes on both the east and west sides of the bridge collapsed into the industrial areas below, blocking all train traffic on the west side and access to the shipping ports on the east.

  “Andy!” shouted Jake Beatty. “Answer! Hello!” No answer. The phone line was dead. Jake smacked the plastic phone hard on the receiver. Nothing, dead line. He punched out #3 on his phone.

  beep beep beep

  Then repeated:

  beep beep beep.

  No cell phone. No land line. No land line, no Federal telephone system. He tried the 88 prefix to see if he could get out through the FTS. No luck.

  fucking beep beep beep.

  “God damn it!” Jake shouted, turning to his Power Control Panel, a supersized wall map of the power grid in the Northwest US and Canada. “Paul, what do we have?” he asked his fellow senior Power Administrator Paul Griswold, who slid across the paneled floor of the computer room to a console on the left side of the room. Griswold banged a keyboard, which in response simply went blank.

  In front of the men the lights of Clackamas and Washington counties, Multnomah County and surrounding counties across the Columbia in Washington State; King (Seattle), Cowlitz, Clark, Wahkiakum, Skamania, Lewis, Thurston all began to blink rapidly, each red light indicating a substation that was in trouble due to overloading and/or transmission tower failure.

  Located one hundred miles upstream on the Columbia River was the Columbia Generating Plant just north of Richland, Washington; where 29-year old Andy Everett and 42-year old Leon Holt were breathing heavily inside a locked room, inside a nuclear plant shutting itself down without their help. The CGP had a larger red light on the big map than did the other facilities. It was blinking.

  “Hanford’s going off line in minutes,” Jake said plainly, belying the fact that his heart was in his throat.

  To the east along the Snake River the lights representing dams at Jackson Lake, Wyoming and the Idaho dams at Pallisades, Ririe, Blackfoot, American Falls, Minidoka, Millner, C.J. Strike, Swan Falls, Brownlee, and Oxbow were all blinking; all were located within three hundred miles of Yellowstone.

  “Oh, man! No!” pleaded Paul Griswold. Both Paul and Jake were senior control specialists, both in their early 50s; Paul having a scruffy grey beard, Paul having a full mane of grey hair, with intentions to eventually turn it into a ponytail.

  “Jackson Lake is off line!” Both power control specialist knew that either the dam had failed or God was playing a really nasty trick with light bulbs on the large map.

  “So are Henry’s Lake and Island Park,” both dams were on the Henry’s Fork branch of the Snake River, closest to the epicenter.

  Island Park Henry’s Lake Dam

  Jackson Dam, Wyoming

  All 30 miles from the epicenter of the Yellowstone eruption. Photos. Public domain pictures from governm
ent employees.

  Western Area Power Administration

  Upper Great Plains Region

  Watertown, South Dakota

  “Jake! Jake!” shouted Leslie Joe Abrams. As all hell was breaking loose in Portland, Leslie and his partner Jerry Stockton had felt the massive Yellowstone earthquake, even though it was 850 miles away.

  Connecting WAPA Upper Great Plains and the Bonneville Power Administration were two sets of 500kw transmission ties, dedicated solely to connecting the Northwest with Midwest. One set of transmission ties was located near the town of Townsend just east of Helena and connected to the western portal near Lookout Pass on the Montana-Idaho border. The other set of towers connected Townsend to the eastern portal of Colstrip, a little berg in the middle of nowhere Montana. Although owned by different power companies, the pair of lines was generally referred to as the Montana Intertie; they allowed the transfer of electricity from the Pacific Northwest, through the upper mid-west plains states, and delivered to eastern utility companies.

  Photos by James Chalmers

  Outside Leslie Joe’s office it was ten degrees above zero and a bright morning sun. Inside, it was raining sweat.

  “What happened to the Intertie?” shouted Abrams.

  His partner Jerry Stockton pointed to the map.

  “Shit,” Leslie Joe said simply. On the big map the transmission ties connecting to Bonneville Power were two long red lines of lights, at first blinking slowly, and now blinking quickly, meaning eminent damage. In fact, the damage had already been done by the massive earthquake.

  “I can’t see it!” shouted Jake Beatty on the BPA line.

  “The Intertie is out!”

  Unbeknownst to both Jake Beatty and Leslie Joe Abrams, a 185-foot “self-supporting” transmission tower in the desert east of Townsend, Montana had reacted to the violent shaking of the earth and, like the Space Center in Seattle, had snapped the top third of its tower smack off, effectively shutting down the transmission of electricity across the Rocky Mountains.

  “Leslie, I’m shutting it down! Immediately! Good bye, my friend.”

  In Portland Jake Beatty pushed the buttons that closed the Montana Intertie. Neither Jake nor Leslie was out of the woods.

  Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

  111 North Hope Street

  Los Angeles, California

  The 12-story pancake-like building that housed the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was busy as usual. The first shift people were already starting to gather in the cafeteria, ready to replace the third shift zombies, who would leave the darkness of the building and enter the ethereal world of morning in LA.

  Unlike other Power Control Centers, the map on the wall consisted of LA County, with long distance lines to the outside; Mohave, Phoenix, Hoover, PG&E (the enemy) and San Diego. It was assumed that everyone in the outside world knew it to be a fact that the entire power grid in the Western United States was designed to feed electricity into the blenders and laptops of Los Angeles and Orange Counties in California.

  At 6:40 PST, with the first-shift folk still lounging in the cafeteria, the shit hit the fan.

  A very tired Sharon Evans, hating every minute of her third-shift “promotion” to shift supervisor along with its complete degradation of life-style, impossible rush-hour drive home at 7:30am, noticed a double-blinking of the Oregon-California Intertie light at the upper right-hand corner of her large map of LA and Orange Counties. Unlike “white lights lead to red lights” blinking lights on the electrical grid panel meant nothing but bad news.

  Sharon, 48, built; no, stacked like a brick shithouse, and made the most of it, made a phone connection to BPA, only to hear the equivalent of the scene where the Enterprise comes out of warp and into the attack on Vulcan; people were yelling, equipment beeping, other sounds in the background.

  “Jake, what the fuck is going on!” she shouted, drawing attention near her workstation from others, including her shift-mate Dave Higgins, 38, balding, on his second marriage, from Encino.

  “Earthquake! The Montana Intertie is down! Seattle and Portland are fucked!”

  ‘Fucked’ wasn’t normally a word used on the day-to-day circuits because all conversations were taped “for performance reasons.”

  “Richland is off-line; dams on the Snake River are out.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Jake?” asked Sharon.

  “I’m going to have to cut the Mohave Intertie,“ the Power Control Specialist from Portland replied.

  “You can’t do that, Jake! You know that.”

  Sharon began snapping her fingers and waving her hands to the crew that was getting ready to leave for the morning.

  “Call Phoenix! Now! Hurry! God! We’re going to go down!” which was directed to her mate Dave Higgins, who was instantly alert.

  “Ben or Jeremy; now, quickly!” urged Sharon.

  Western Area Power Administration

  Desert Southwest Region

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Ben Whitehorse picked up Sharon’s line on the first ring, just as he noticed unusual activity between Colorado and points north on his big map. Then the double red lines between Hoover to Mohave began to blink, indicating automatic re-routing was taking place; Hoover’s dick being sucked while Mohave was taking a break.

  “Wait a minute. What’s happening here?” Ben slapped his desk hard enough for his partner Jeremy Dickson to wake up.

  The automated system was working without human intervention. Power was sapping out of the Oregon Intertie. Why? His map didn’t show the other regions; otherwise he would have seen what was happening in Montana. Because of computer programming, LA was to get power from Hoover Dam directly and from Glen Canyon Dam via Phoenix.

  The inmates were in charge of the prison.

  “No! You’re going to suck us dry. Can’t do it!” shouted Ben Whitehorse.

  “Have to have it, Ben!” answered Sharon, shouting. “We’re going to go down like dominos. We have buys from BPA. Jake is shutting us down! Those cocksuckers at PG&E won’t budge!” which referred to the competing Pacific Gas and Electric Company in nearby San Francisco.

  Ben and Jeremy looked at the cascading map. It would take hours for Glen Canyon to ramp up. Meanwhile the system was being drawn dry from the north (Colorado) and from the west (California).

  No way was he going to let Phoenix be plundered by juicers in Orange County.

  “I see what’s happening, Sharon. BPA is trying to save what it can. The Montana Intertie is down; WAPA Upper Plains is shutting off the NW in order to protect itself. Colorado appears to be fucked, but we’re not going to be in the same condition,” replied Ben Whitehorse.

  “What do you mean, Ben?” Sharon’s voice was shrill.

  “You need to shed load, Sharon! I mean, you need to shed load starting NOW!”

  “Ben, you can’t—“

  “In ten..nine..eight..goodbye, Sharon—“

  Goodbye, California.

  Glasgow, Montana

  At 6:40 MST Robert O’Brien, 52, Undersecretary of the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior, stepped out of the Campbell Lodge in Glasgow, Montana, clean, comfortable and connected their motto, and into the -5 degree early morning. On the road after a McDonald’s breakfast, complete with piping hot coffee, now not so hot to burn the roof of your mouth, your esophagus and your fucking left nut, but close.

  The two-day update session in the regional office in Billings concluded yesterday afternoon and had gone well. Changing his plans, Robert decided that since there was good weather in the forecast that he’d “do the circuit”, visit the six hydroelectric facilities along the Missouri River; talk to the workers, hear their gripes, their concerns, talk to management; in other words, to do what upper management was supposed to be doing.

  He’d start with the Fort Peck Dam in Montana, then east to Garrison Dam in North Dakota, the Oahe Dam near Pierre, South Dakota, nearby Big Bend Dam, the Fort Randall Dam on the S
outh Dakota/Nebraska border and the Gavins Point Dam, further downstream; then take a flight back to Washington from Omaha. Fort Peck Dam had been “his” dam ten years ago, before he’d been promoted to Regional Administrator in Billings, then to DOI in Washington, finally to Undersecretary of the Bureau two years ago. It was life on the fast track. If the current administration won another term, Robert was in line to be Secretary of the Interior.

  From Glasgow he drove ten minutes into the relentless morning sun to an intersection with a county road that led straight south from nowhere, then further into the middle of nowhere. He turned right and followed the single sign that read “Fort Peck Dam, 35 miles”. The 35 miles to the lake crossed some of the most desolate miles in the lower US.

  At 7:20 the two-lane road began to vibrate, first up-and-down, then left-and-right.

  “Whoa!” he shouted, snapping to attention as his rental Ford Explorer started to do the boogie. This was immediately followed by shit shit shit shit as the earthquake refused to stop. Robert could do nothing but steer, like he was in a dodge-em at the county fair.

  Holy shit! Jesus buddy! The Explorer spin off the road did a neat 360 and somehow ended up sort-of headed in the same direction he was originally heading. The GPS lady on his car sounded like she had a corncob up her ass, changing directions so fast that she sounded more like Daffy Duck.

  “Recalculating.”

  Shut up.

  Robert turned the ignition off and opened the door. What should have been no noise but the wind whistling across the sagebrush, instead was a deep rumble. It was hard to tell from where or where it was headed. In the distance he saw a herd of elk, terrified and headed anyplace but where they were. The sunlight from the east lit a cottonwood bunch that hadn’t surrendered its leaves from the previous season; with the violent shaking of the ground, the cottonwoods seemed to explode.