The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  “OK. OK. When can we expect some relief here?” Andy asked, already fearful of the answer.

  There was a pregnant pause on the phone as Jake Beatty sought to phrase the right answer.

  “Andy. I can call you Andy?”

  “Yes, sir,” Everett responded, ready to poop in his pants.

  “There’s been a lot of damage in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle has been devastated, as has the greater Portland area where I am. The Space Needle is gone; bridges over the Willamette in Portland are down in the water. There is no power anywhere; not a single God-damned amp. We’re on a Federal tie-line. I have no idea how long it will stay up. Andy, you can’t plug a fucking Mr. Coffee in anywhere from California to St. Louis, as far as I know.”

  “You don’t mean it,” Andy started; Leon Holt listening to him in the darkness.

  “As far as I know, downtown Richland is destroyed. I have no idea about the tank fields; I have no telephone connection to the DOE.” There was another pause. “I think the water containment sub-system at your facility has been breached. Whatever has happened has caused you to go off line, meaning you aren’t connected any longer to my grid. That should mean that there are transmission ties down outside your plant. With no power to the plant and your coolant sub-system malfunctioning--”

  Beatty left the thought hang in mid-sentence.

  “Where? Where are our. . .where are our people?” Andy asked.

  “Your plant is run on minimum shift. There probably aren’t thirty people there now, if that. They don’t have a fucking clue, Andy,” Beatty began to ramp up the problem to Everett. “They’re scared out of their minds. Have you heard any explosions?”

  “Yes, several,” Andy replied.

  “That’s just crap blowing up, stuff reaching some unmanageable boiling point. There’s no power to help the button-pushers push the buttons.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” answered Beatty truthfully. “I’ll stay on the line as long as I can, or as long as the tie-line stays up. In the meantime, you guys had better get out of there. There’s nothing you can do right now until you get power back to the plant. And there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

  Andy Everett began to cry. In the quiet of the Columbia Generating Station control room, the sounds were magnified; as was the effect.

  “Oh, man,” said Jake Beatty in Portland. “Dude! Andy!”

  The line went dead.

  The light went out.

  Andy Everett was jammed in a closet again.

  Geologic Hazards Science Center

  Golden, Colorado

  “Are you all right?” Nancy shouted across the third floor bullpen, which was now a wind tunnel. Nancy stumbled in the direction of the “glass house”, which now was Shard City, her progress hampered by the debris; chairs, waste cans, books tossed this way and that, desktop computers bounced onto the floor, acoustical ceiling tiles dangling from their metal frames, A/C ducts ripped, old category 2 cabling exposed. Reaching the main I/T room, which was an incredibly sophisticated operation filled with custom-designed computers that ran custom-designed programs, designed by the brightest of the brightest minds; all was in shambles; racks of computers, UPS units, seismographs; it was as if God had gotten sick and barfed up an I/T room.

  It’s not like you can just go into your local BestBuy store and order up a rack of computers that can measure the Earth’s surface for seismic activity, or compare prehistoric seismic activity with current events, or create maps of any activity, alert the public, all for the equivalent of a buck fifty-one budget-wise. And, oh yeah, I’d like some software to make all the programs work.

  “I’d say about fifteen-to-twenty million, Nancy,” Herb Probst, 49, long-term I/T for the agency; Herb lived in nearby Lakewood, single and unhappy with himself. Balding, and a bit paunchy, he was a “lifer” to his job, which today was a train wreck. “The software can be restored, but I have no idea on the hardware. Computers don’t react well to falling from five feet.” He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. “I just don’t know.”

  “Herb,” Nancy reached her hand out to him. “It’s OK. We’ll figure it out. I need help figuring out if anyone here is hurt. There’s no power to the building so we don’t need to worry about the computers right now. Later we can worry. Is there anyone else you saw come in this morning?”

  “Yeah,” Herb focused. “Amy and Albert came in just behind me, so did Alma. There may have been others, and there may be more to come; you know, people coming to work who were on their way.”

  Herb Probst took a lot of good-natured Dilbert kidding, but as an I/T manager he was relentless in getting the machines to pump out the data the scientists and analysts needed; persistent in de-bugging and improving the persnickety software that dove into measuring the Earth we live on.

  “I need to find out who is here,” she said simply. “Can you start with the first floor? And, I’ll go upstairs.”

  “Will do,” Herb replied, glad not to be in charge.

  Nancy’s trip to the fourth floor took longer than she expected. While the third floor bullpen, ragged and eerie in the dark as it was, didn’t compare to schlepping up the stairwell which was can’t—see—your—hand—in—front—of—your—face dark. She felt glass crunch beneath her feet, most likely from the exit signs and overhead bulbs; none of which worked. She wasn’t thrilled about being in the dark all alone; she was always brought back to the climactic scene of the 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs that she’d seen at the theater in Palo Alto, when creepy Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill character, wearing night-vision glasses, slowly reaches out for young, Clarice played by Jodie Foster; and the sleepless nights in the 10th grade in High School when she’d read the Thomas Harris book in 1988.

  Her hand found the fourth floor door, which opened toward her; she staggered backward as the wind rushed into the stairwell. Whoa. Bracing herself, she stepped inside.

  “Anybody here?” she shouted, louder than she expected; nothing but the cold morning wind; then she heard a combination of voices.

  “In the lab!” The female voice sounded tiny and afraid.

  “In the bathroom!” a male voice shouted, less frightened but not at all happy. It was Albert Frohling, 46, a research geophysicist who uses probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) tools, including time-dependent earthquake probabilities, ground-motion prediction equations and earthquake clustering primarily in the intra-plate regions of the eastern and Midwest United States.

  A man born without a humor bone, Dr. Frohling naturally found no humor in being on the throne in the men’s room, probably the safest room in the building, when the earthquake struck and the lights went out; and, of course, maintenance hadn’t been around to refill the toilet paper rolls.

  “Are you all right, Dr. Frohling?” Nancy shouted, smiling to herself to his grumbling, response. “Do you need help?”

  “No!” he shouted.

  “OK, I’m looking around to see who is here. Holler if you need help,” smiling, Nancy moved down the dimly-lit hallway to a bullpen area with multiple cubicles, which looked like a giant had tried to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded; desks, cubicle sets, filing cabinets, books, stationary computers, all moved as if the entire fourth floor had been dropped from thirty feet.

  “Hello!” Nancy shouted again. She heard a whimpering noise from the inside corner of the large room, where out from underneath a large desk came bird-like Amy Bridges, 34, five-seven, perhaps 115 pounds; her height accentuated by the tube-style dress she was accustomed to wearing.

  “Are you all right?” Nancy hurried to help the leggy scientist to her feet. Amy had been at the Center for five years, her studies primarily in developing tools to resolve three-dimensional crustal structure and properties with receiver functions at medium-resolution seismic networks, while using straightforward approaches to extract the velocity ratio properties of the upper crust, especially as related to high-resolution plate motions and rotations
.

  The women embraced; to Nancy, Amy felt like a shaking bag of bones; the younger woman couldn’t stop crying.

  “Albert got stuck in the bathroom,” Nancy smiled, to which the taller woman stopped in mid-cry and smiled.

  “Doesn’t look like our Earth wants us to study it,” added Nancy. “Do you think anybody else is on the floor?”

  “I came in right after Albert and Mr. Probst. I saw Alma Bevins get off the number 2 bus. She was headed our way. Janet Diamond should be here.”

  “I don’t know her yet,” Nancy replied.

  “Second floor, landslide research,” Amy added.

  Albert Frohming followed the female voices.

  “Is there anyone else here, Dr. Frohming?” Nancy asked, receiving a quick negative reply.

  Nancy looked around. Several of the fourth floor outside panels were missing, shaken to the ground forty feet below.

  “As best we can, let’s cut the outside from being on the inside. Then secure your area and your research. I’m going to jump to the conclusion that the building isn’t going to fall down, but we need to search the floor to see if anyone else is here, and is hurt. I need to see the other floors. I’ll be back,” Nancy exchanged eyes with the two scientists, who nodded in agreement.

  It’s going to be a long day.

  The White House

  A brilliant orator and a mind to match, the President had the innate ability to absorb information and process it quickly; traits unusual in position that over the years had been populated with flesh over substance.

  One of his favorite movies was the Mel Gibson portrayal of General Hal Moore in We Were Soldiers Once and Young, about the first armed conflict battle between America’s 1st Cavalry and the People’s Army of Vietnam, a battle that survivors agreed no one won; both sides retreating from La Drang Valley when the three-day fight was concluded.

  The one scene that stuck with the President was the one where the Vietnamese launched a full-scale assault on the American forces in an attempt to wipe the Americans out completely. Using a new technique, later implemented in films like The Matrix, the filmmakers showed Moore absorbing all four sides of the battle and then making command decisions in the face of certain death.

  “Sergeant Major!” The President wanted to shout. Instead, he turned to his Chief of Staff Chuck Leonard. In the time it had taken Jimmy James and Penny to get dressed, break camp and start skiing toward Beartooth Pass, the electrical delivery system in the United States had split down the center, a jagged line from the Canadian border down to the Fort Peck dam in eastern Montana, then down and around Colorado and slicing through New Mexico to the Mexican border. Broken from both the eastern and western segments was the Texas Interconnection, a separate system that included most of the state except for the panhandle and customers served by El Paso Gas and Electric.

  “Chuck,” the President almost smiled. “You know that I’m going to be blamed for this earthquake, don’t you?”

  “Sir?” Then he paused. “Oh, yes, sir,” his COS answered. “It’s your entire fault. It’s your fault God split the ground open and brought forth fire and brimstone. It’s all because we’re democrats, sir; and God’s getting back at us. It’s payback. We democrats believe in free speech, gun control, condoms for fourth graders, and free abortions on demand. We believe in raising taxes and printing money, soaking the rich while encouraging welfare babies.”

  “Fourth graders? Are we that perverse?” The pair laughed, the kind of laugh you do when walking down a dark alley in the wrong side of town, a laugh that simply—but effectively—released tension. The President and his Chief of Staff entered the Situation Room.

  “What’s the score?”

  The Chief of Staff went to his notes.

  “We have no idea on casualties in the direct quake area in northwest Wyoming. We have no practical way to get relief to them, assuming anyone is alive, because it’s too dangerous to fly in the area. Towns and villages within 300 miles are destroyed; Jackson, West Yellowstone, Cody, Idaho Falls, and along I-90 in Montana, especially Bozeman. Further south, there is extensive damage in Cheyenne.”

  Then he winced as he heard more bad news. “Crap!” Charles tapped his telephone headset and regurgitated sound bytes to the President. “The Mormon temple in Salt Lake City has collapsed, the Olympic Plaza ruined, the Salt Palace; Jesus.” It was too much to bear. “Widespread damage in downtown Denver, Stapleton airport collapsed,” The President could picture the modern airport, whimsically looking like Indian teepees on the high planes.”

  “Power?” The President asked, now without his familiar jacket and tie.

  “You almost don’t want to know, Mr. President,” DOE Secretary Abe Liebowitz interjected. “Reports that we’ve received indicate the electrical grid in the western states as collapsed with widespread damage to tie-lines and equipment. Four dams along the Snake River are damaged or breeched. Emergency power only is being distributed to Oregon and Washington and western Idaho, the mountain west and upper plains are dark. Denver is without power. Texas is OK. San Francisco is OK. Los Angeles is--” Charles shook his head. “Los Angeles is not OK. Phoenix has service.”

  “OK. Since this is my fault, I’ll just do the best I can. We’re an hour behind the event. We’re going to set up Command and Control here in the White House. I need your best staff. I don’t need prickly people like Allan”, Leonard was surprised at the mention of his Assistant Chief of Staff, former congressman from Michigan, Allan Firestone. “Don’t get me wrong, Allan gets things done but he’s such an asshole with people, which I guess just makes him a good contact for Congress. I don’t need prickly people. I need four of your best. Tell them to find a staging area to work—I don’t care if it’s in the fucking kitchen. Let them choose the staff they feel comfortable working.”

  The President paused, grimly determined. “What I want is that if the governor of Wyoming calls the White House, he gets to talk to a person; me if possible. I don’t care that Ralph Peterson is the biggest horse’s patoot I’ve ever met. I want his needs identified and organized one-to-one thousand.” The President’s hands were waving in an organizational chorus, pointing in five quadrants. “Northwest, Midwest, Southwest, South, Northeast. You’re going to need a secure phone network, tons of phones and computers. Go, my friend.” The President waved to his long time friend and ally.

  “Miss Rose,” he shouted.

  “You don’t need to shout, Mr. President, I’m right here.” Miss Rose was ten feet to his left, near the executive washroom.

  “First, I want to talk to the President of IBM and the President of whatever company runs the phones. I need linked computers, telephones and bandwidth for whatever number of people are going to be working here—which means security is going to get in a wad. Fix it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the 62-year old former everything accountant, Dispatch Manager for a trucking company, and school teacher had been with him since he’d run into her while campaigning in Iowa.

  The weather had been typical dreary and cold—miserable by anyone’s standards. He’d been out stomping the caucuses, either shaking hands or kissing babies for 72 hours straight. His election committee consisted of Chuck Leonard and his wife Leona. It had been this stern, determined woman who had waited, rain hat covering her head, and had stuck out her hand and said. “I want to work for you, Mr. President.” The President had stopped, no more hands to shake, his election committee standing in front of a Denny’s going through their pockets trying to see if they had enough cash for breakfast.

  The incongruity of a Yale graduate cum laude, Congressman, debate winner, now a common man standing in an Iowa rain puddle was not lost on him. Neither was the moment.

  “First of all, I’m not the President. That’s the other guy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rosie replied patiently.

  “You look like a tough cookie,” he replied, tired.

  “I am. Are you?” She replied, no joke in her eyes.

&nb
sp; Am I a tough cookie? Rain dripped off his tightly cut hair while it dripped in rivulets off her rain hat. She was no more than 5-foot nothing, he a skinny 6-4.

  “I can’t pay much,” he replied.

  “I’ve already had jobs that paid decent money, Mr. President,” Rosie replied. “I’ve heard you speak. If it’s bullshit, I’ll see it before they do and I’ll be long gone.”

  “It’s not bullshit.”

  “Rosie. Rosalyn Hyatt, like the hotel—don’t I wish,” she laughed for the first time.

  “Rosie, let me introduce you to my staff,” the President nodded as he walked toward the two adults trying to figure out breakfast.

  “We’ve had a national disaster, perhaps the worst in recorded history,” the President spoke to the secretaries of Energy, Transportation, Interior, Homeland Security and the Director of FEMA. Along the opposite side of the table were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I need the best of your staff to pack up, bring their laptops and come over to the White House. It’s a big house; I’m sure we’ll have space someplace,” the President tried to lighten up. “Tell them to bring their jammies and a toothbrush; it’s going to be a while. Your staff needs to work with my staff—now organized into four new departments; Northwest, Mountain, Southwest and Northeast.”

  The President paused. “People will be calling; governors, Congressmen, mayors, businesses. They’re going to be asking questions and demanding support. We’re going to do our best to help. If we can’t help, then it’s not going to matter much anyway. We’re all going to be in deep do-dwa,” the President paused again to let some of the words sink in. “I need for these people to be arriving at the White House within two hours. I need for them to have proper credentials. The employees you send must be “people-people”. I’d rather have someone say he doesn’t know the answer but will get back with the right answer than someone who thinks they know the answer to a question and just wing it. Thank you,” the President concluded.