Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  “Linkage, you mean?”

  “We’ll probably never prove the offshore quakes are triggering this, but can I have a show of hands of who thinks this is a disconnected, spontaneous event?”

  “No hands up in this corner,” Doug replied quietly. He felt his neck muscles tightening, his pen already out and gyrating unconsciously between his fingers, the frequency increasing.

  This is like drinking from a fire hose, he thought. We can’t even analyze one phenomenon before we’re hip deep in the next.

  The decision to call Bill Harper was a no-brainer, the result predictable.

  “So, what do you want us to do now, Doug? Evacuate the western side of the state?”

  “Cute. I’m trying to tell you we need the governor to engage the population and tell them this is potentially very serious.”

  The sigh from the other end was pathetic, Doug thought, and he actually felt sorry for the man.

  “This is Frank O’Brien we’re talking about, Doug. He could be airborne in the middle of a tornado and he’d deny it was windy. This won’t impress him at all.”

  “How about if the mountain erupts, or if there’s a real lahar coming?”

  “Then he’ll respond like he always does, too little, too late. Remember, this guy is all about emergency response, not preparation or mitigation.”

  “Bill, damnit, I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “As I said earlier, be my guest. Here’s his cell phone number.” Harper read the restricted number and paused. “Prepare yourself for an explosion, though. Frank thinks he understands this subject well enough to know that we’re all wrong. We’re all alarmists. I mean he truly thinks that. And so he gets really angry if I call him and no one’s dead.”

  “Someone already is. In Bellingham,” Doug snapped, aware of the terminating click on the other end.

  Chapter 15

  CASCADIA ISLAND 11:45 A.M.

  Robert Nelms was relieved to be back on the ground, even if facing Mick Walker was the price.

  Walker was waiting for him at the heliport, his stern expression speaking volumes. Once the handshakes and apology for canceling out on the first flight were out of the way, Nelms let himself be ushered into the back of a brand-new limousine for the ridiculously short drive to the main resort complex. When they got there Mick made no move to open the door of the limo.

  “Before we go any further, I’ve got some serious questions to ask.”

  Nelms looked at him with a poker face. “Yes?”

  “I know you’re aware of the series of earthquakes along the subduction zone, and you probably know I’ve been getting my teeth rattled out here since they started, and I’ve had to spend some time calming my staff.”

  “That’s understandable—”

  Mick stopped him. “Yeah… but I had a conversation a while ago with our favorite naysaying seismologist, Dr. Lam, and right or wrong, the man brings up some very serious questions.”

  “And you need some engineering reassurance?”

  “You bet your ass I do. We’ll have just under 450 people on this rock tonight, employees and guests included, and while I invoked the Wally Hickel defense, part of me was wondering if there was any chink in my armor.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That my island and every damn thing on it is built well enough so that if we get the worst-case scenario, all the people aboard will survive uninjured. That’s what you told me. But what happens if we get the following things tonight: First, a monstrous subduction zone earthquake lasting up to five minutes and registering more than 9.5 on the Moment Magnitude Scale; second, the subsidence of my island by as much as five feet within minutes during the main quake; and third, a backwash tsunami—my term, not his—which could give us a massive thirty-foot wall of water over this place within five minutes of the quake.”

  “You can’t be serious?” Nelms replied, working hard to keep his eyes from popping out at the scope of the potential seismic disaster just outlined.

  “Well, if Lam’s serious, then I’m serious.”

  “Good heavens, man, is someone predicting all that?”

  “Not yet, but don’t you dare beat around the bush. I’ve paid you and your firm a king’s ransom to make sure I didn’t have to lose any sleep on this very issue, and now I’m losing sleep. Are we okay?”

  Robert Nelms smiled and shifted around in the spacious backseat. “Mick, God himself couldn’t build a structure to withstand virtually all you described with any degree of certainty.”

  “To heck with what God can build. What did you build?”

  Nelms paused. “All your structures have been built to meet and exceed a zone-four seismic standard, as you should remember. That means that yes, everyone inside should be safe in even the monstrous quake you described, even with ground accelerations in excess of one gravity. Neither the building code we followed nor logic would guarantee that any of the buildings will be salvageable or capable of occupancy afterwards, but they won’t collapse from the shaking.”

  “All right.”

  “As for the subsidence question, even if your foundation drops ten feet and has seawater running around the main floor, same answer. Occupants 100 percent, buildings may be a loss.”

  “And the tsunami? I told Lam we were designed to withstand a tsunami.”

  Robert Nelms stared at Mick Walker for an uncomfortable delay before taking an inordinately loud breath and answering.

  “Where, Mick, did you get the idea that we were designing tsunami resistance into this complex?”

  “What? How about when I said to study every damn geologic and seismic hazard and make sure we were covered?”

  “The buildings are all very strong, but they have windows and walls, and the pressure of a tsunami, especially a major tsunami, involves gargantuan forces of nature. I could have built you a concrete fortress for six times the price which would have been aesthetically revolting but tsunami-survivable, but what we did build… well, it’s vulnerable if something like that hits.”

  “It’s vulnerable?”

  “Yes.”

  “And specifically that would mean?”

  Nelms shrugged, liking this conversation less and less and fervently wishing he was taping it for future protection. There was nothing as infuriating as a “he said, she said” contest after the fact.

  “But if we had a thirty- or forty-footer inbound and we rushed everyone into the main buildings?”

  The feeling of perspiration popping out on Nelms’s brow was an indication he was beginning to panic. So much for the poker face, he thought.

  “No one can guarantee whether the buildings would survive, or the people in them.”

  “Shit! Robert, screw you and your fancy firm! I told you to build me a fortress, and now, on the very day I have a boatload of people coming out here trusting nothing bad can happen to them, you tell me I hired the Kmart of engineering firms?”

  “I… Mick, this is gross overreaction.”

  “The hell it is! I’ve got Lam out there and God knows who else saying we ought to cancel this inaugural and get everyone off this island just in case, and now I find out from you they may be right? Hell, I’m even starting to wonder if his theory is right.”

  “His theory?” Robert Nelms looked genuinely puzzled, then broke into derisive laughter. “You’re talking about his resonant vibration thing?”

  “Yeah, that’s it… I think.”

  “It’s fantasy! It’s stupid. I’m supposed to believe there are three specific points above the subduction zone capable of transmitting, and amplifying the vibrations from something as geophysically puny as a pile driver, and that such vibrations might somehow trigger a release of three hundred years of stored seismic energy? Might as well blame it on space aliens. Hell, Mick, find out what the man was drinking when he thought that one up and order me a case.”

  “You’re dead sure it’s a loony theory?”

  “Yes, but now’s a hell of a time to ask,” Nel
ms laughed.

  “Isn’t it. The man predicts that if we bang around enough out here on the island we’ll set off movement in an area locked for three hundred years. So, we banged around for two and a half years, and guess what?”

  Mick glanced out of the limo’s privacy glass, feeling his heart accelerating along with his breathing. A doorman was waiting respectfully for the limo’s occupants, and somehow that tiny added amount of pressure seemed unbearable. He struggled to control the rising tide of panic and looked back as Nelms broke the silence.

  “Mick, even if the whole subduction zone goes at once, you didn’t cause it. Remember the testimony of one of his supervisors from Menlo Park? He said even a 150-megaton nuclear weapon set off inside the locked part of the zone would be between two to four orders of magnitude too puny to get anything moving.”

  “I remember. I’m just a bit nervous right now, and one theory sounds as plausible as the next. You know, does it take a nuclear bomb or a ballpeen hammer?”

  Nelms snorted. “You’re nervous? Mister Ice-Water-For-Blood Mick Walker? Mick, you don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Now—on the other issue—I’ve studied these types of threats, and there is no certainty that even if there was a great quake, a tsunami would follow.”

  “Lam says it is a certainty. He’s done research on that very issue. So have some other USGS scientists, chief among them the geologist who kind of discovered the threat to begin with.”

  “You mean Dr. Atwater?”

  “Yes. He found layers of sand in meadows around here that couldn’t have come in without a tsunami!”

  “Oh for cripes sake. Then why didn’t you hire Lam and Atwater instead of me?”

  “Lam came too cheap, and he wouldn’t have let me build here.”

  A cloud passed over Robert Nelms’s face. “I… we did not ‘let’ you build on this island, Mick. We gave you the data and you made your own decisions.”

  Mick waved it off. “Of course. Bad phraseology.”

  “And remember it may well be three hundred years before the next great quake-and-tsunami combination happens.”

  A silence grew between them, and Nelms’s uneasiness was showing. “Mick, if you’re that panicked, then cancel the weekend.”

  “Are you volunteering to fund my losses?”

  “What? Good heavens, no! We did our job very well. And I thought I was here as a guest to celebrate, not get berated.”

  “Wait… just a minute. A minute ago you said the buildings wouldn’t collapse from shaking. What would collapse them?”

  “Well, we established that a big enough tsunami would mean that all survivability bets are off.”

  “And?”

  Robert shrugged. “All the engineering studies were predicated on our profile of this island and its characteristics, and there are always assumptions made about bedrock, and locality of shaking, et cetera. You’ve seen every scrap of data that I’ve seen.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Mick said, looking away. “So what does all that mean, Robert?”

  Nelms sighed and shifted forward. “It means, Mick, that you, and we, have done everything science and engineering can do at this juncture for an affordable price to uphold the public trust.”

  “Okay.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Monitor the situation closely, and if these rumblings get any more ominous, maybe we’ll load everyone back on the ferry this evening and abandon ship.”

  “Get part of the gala in, in other words?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Sure wish I had some idea when great earthquakes like to strike.”

  “If I knew that, Mick, I’d be a very wealthy man.”

  “You are a very wealthy man, Robert,” Mick Walker said, forcing a socially acceptable smile as he stepped out of the car.

  UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SEISMOLOGY LAB

  Doug Lam was running out of options in his quest to do the right thing.

  “He’s blocking my calls, Sanjay,” Doug said as he replaced the receiver with an exhausted sigh. A stack of hand calculations on a legal pad sat next to his laptop, the detritus of hours of number crunching of the continuous tremors, all of which had resulted in a feeling somewhere between sick and exhilarated. The so-called big one seemed inevitable. The small quakes were getting larger, and eventually the main rupture would occur, releasing more than three hundred years of seismic energy.

  “You were trying to reach Bill Harper again?”

  “No. The governor. Harper’s gone to Cascadia Island after him. He’s finally convinced we could be as close as hours away from the main event. I mean, what does it take to convince O’Brien how many thousands of people are going to die if the whole subduction zone breaks at once?”

  “It’s too outlandish, Doug. People don’t want to believe such things can happen. Figures like 9.5 magnitude are just numbers.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve got to get out there.”

  “Where? Cascadia?”

  “Yes. Governor O’Brien’s on the way, Walker’s already there, and he invited me, so why not?”

  “How? It’s a long drive.”

  Doug had already thought through the method for getting to Cascadia, and it was inevitably going to involve Jennifer and her company’s airlift services. He startled himself by reaching for the phone and punching in her cell number without any further consideration.

  Her voice-mail message came up instead, and he punched it off quickly, consulting his PDA for the Nightingale Dispatch number. A dispatcher he’d met answered.

  “Jennifer is probably leaving Cascadia Island right now, Dr. Lam.”

  “But she is going back out? Right? You’re running shuttles all day?”

  “Yes, sir, but they’re all… ah… VIP-type flights, you know.”

  “Mick Walker invited me and said I should call you to make arrangements.”

  “In that case, hang on.” There was brief pause with papers being shuffled and computer keys being punched in the background. “Well, can you get out here in the next twenty minutes?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Then I’ve got a single spare seat. We’ll have to make other arrangements to get you back.”

  “No problem. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll let Jennifer know.”

  “No, don’t,” Doug heard himself say, not knowing why. “I’d like to surprise her.”

  “Understood.”

  PLEASANTON, CALIFORNIA

  “Ralph, she’s on an Amtrak train headed north to Portland right now, and to the best of my research, if anyone’s looking for her, they’re not professionals.”

  “What does that mean, Bill?” Ralph Lacombe asked.

  “What it means is that no one’s got a contract out on her, the Company’s not looking for her, there are no wants or warrants anywhere in the U.S., including Homeland Security, and why she’s running I have absolutely no idea.”

  “She was seriously spooked, Bill.”

  “No doubt. But it wasn’t by any of our spooks, if you understand what I mean. She’s off the radar of anything serious, Ralph, and my hunch is that this is something involving Chadwick and Noble internally. I mean, this guy Jerry Schultz who called you and she reacted to in one of your conversations is a low-level supervisor, wholly unable to mount any sort of sophisticated pursuit of your daughter.”

  “Bill, she’s a double cum laude Stanford grad. Diane is no idiot. If she says someone’s chasing her, someone’s chasing her.”

  “Well, whoever it is, I can’t turn it up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ralph, the bottom line is, relax. This isn’t something super serious. In fact, she may have inflated the seriousness in her own mind.”

  Ralph Lacombe rubbed his forehead and sighed, remembering the last few years of warning signs that not all was right with his precious daughter’s view of the world.

  “That’s exactly
what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter 16

  QUAALATCH LANDING, OLYMPIC PENINSULA 3:45 P.M.

  The master of the Motor Vessel Quaalatch was frightened.

  There was no use kidding himself, Reilly Shelton concluded. With the winds above fifteen knots and rising, and the seas between the peninsula and Cascadia Island now roiled by waves as high as ten feet, docking on both sides was going to be dicey, and it was scaring him. Worse, he had five more scheduled runs before he was supposed to tie up the new ferry for the night. By then, the winds were predicted to be near forty, and much too high for safe operation.

  And then there was the rising feeling in his gut that something was very wrong, a feeling that had gnawed at him from the first moment he heard about—and then felt—the swarm of little earthquakes, and what they might mean. Several scientists interviewed on television had used the word tsunami, and he knew exactly what a tsunami was.

  Yet Mick Walker had made it very clear the schedule was to be followed.

  Reilly took a long pull at the Diet Coke he’d been nursing and watched the passengers coming aboard. He preferred passengers to cargo or fish, and now that he looked the part of a senior ship captain with an expanding belly to match, it was fun to take his four-stripe shoulder boards downstairs and show himself off as if he were the master of a thousand-foot cruise ship.

  He’d made a career of tugboats, launches, and work boats for thirty years, and now he was commanding a very special, very expensive ferry. Exercising his sixth sense about when to back off was part of his responsibility, and that sixth sense was currently yelling at him.

  Yet, this was the opening day of the resort whose presence made the ferry, and his job, necessary. Somehow he’d have to make the schedule work, but if the winds really did get above thirty-five, he’d have to suck it up and talk to Mr. Walker and ask permission to cut out the last runs, and he knew what the reaction would be. The prospect of a job-threatening confrontation was already messing with his stomach and giving him a hearty headache.

  An unruly forelock of silver hair migrated in front of his eyes again and he pawed it back, regretting the lack of a hat. The wind had done a number on his hair, and he hated that.