The Tsunami Countdown Page 4

  “I was just telling it like it is.”

  “But did you have to show those pictures from Sri Lanka? I think ten-year-olds are a little young to see photos of dead bodies.”

  “Hey, if it keeps them from running down to the shore during the next tsunami warning, I’ve done my job.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll do the next few tours. Where’s the bulletin?”

  Reggie handed Kai a sheet of paper. On it was the date followed by a standard tsunami information message:

  TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001

  PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS

  ISSUED AT 1858Z

  THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE PACIFIC

  BASIN EXCEPT

  ALASKA—BRITISH COLUMBIA—WASHINGTON—

  OREGON—CALIFORNIA.

  … TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN …

  THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.

  THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING.

  OR WATCH IN EFFECT.

  AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE

  PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

  ORIGIN TIME—1858Z

  COORDINATES—7.1 NORTH 166.4 WEST

  LOCATION—NORTHWEST OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND,

  KIRIBATI ISLANDS

  MAGNITUDE—6.6

  EVALUATION

  A DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI WAS NOT GENERATED

  BASED ON EARTHQUAKE AND

  HISTORICAL TSUNAMI DATA.

  THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR

  THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

  BECOMES AVAILABLE.

  THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING

  CENTER WILL ISSUE BULLETINS

  FOR ALASKA—BRITISH COLUMBIA—

  WASHINGTON—OREGON—CALIFORNIA.

  Kai looked at Reggie. “It doesn’t seem like anything to be concerned about.”

  Normally Kai would consult with Harry, but today Reggie and Kai were on their own. Although Kai was growing more comfortable with his responsibilities, he was still fairly new. This was the first bulletin issued while he was in charge.

  The previous assistant director had left for NOAA headquarters in Washington to coordinate the development of a worldwide tsunami warning system. Kai’s position at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research put him on the short list of replacement candidates. From Kai’s perspective, the job had seemed perfect. He could move his career forward while still doing interesting research. Rachel had plenty of job opportunities at Honolulu hotels. And Kai could finally get out of Seattle’s rainy climate and back to warm, sunny Hawaii.

  “No, it shouldn’t be anything to worry about,” said Reggie. “But it is pretty exciting.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. But the threat of a tsunami is almost negligible because the event was not tsunamigenic.” The statement was made as a fact, not an opinion.

  “You seem pretty confident.”

  Reggie smiled. He always smiled when he was about to explain something that was perfectly obvious to him. “It barely triggered the alarms. The reading was just 6.6. A couple of ticks down, and we wouldn’t have even sent the bulletin.”

  “Remember the Asia tsunami?” Kai said. “The initial readings on that were 8.0. It ended up being a 9.0.” Because the moment magnitude scale for earthquakes—a successor to the Richter scale—is nonlinear, the power of an earthquake goes up exponentially the higher it is on the scale: an earthquake measuring 9.0 releases over thirty times more energy than an 8.0 earthquake.

  “I’m just checking with NEIC now, but I don’t see it going up much.” The seismic equipment at the National Earthquake Information Center monitored data readings from stations around the world, allowing them to determine the location of an earthquake to within a hundred meters.

  “And,” Reggie continued, “the seismic wave patterns suggest a strike-slip event.” Strike-slip faults move sideways instead of vertically. Vertical displacements of the ocean floor cause most tsunamis, like the one that had struck South Asia in 2004.

  “Besides, it’s in an area that has never generated a tsunami. That’s actually why I called you,” said Reggie. “Look at this.” He pointed at the computer monitor.

  The screen showed a map of the central Pacific with a blue dot pinpointing a position five hundred miles northwest of Christmas Island, southwest of the Palmyra Atoll. The color blue meant that the quake was located near the earth’s surface.

  “What’s the distance from here?”

  “About two thousand kilometers,” said Reggie. A little more than twelve hundred miles.

  Kai did the quick mental calculation in his head that was second nature to all tsunami scientists. Since all tsunamis traveled at approximately five hundred miles per hour in open ocean—about the speed of a jet airliner—it was easy math. But before Kai could speak, Reggie handed him a printout.

  “Already got it.”

  The printout showed a list of station names and codes of all of the tide gauges in the Pacific Ocean. Next to each station name was its latitude, longitude, and the estimated arrival time for the potential tsunami.

  “Looks like that gives us between two and two and a half hours.”

  “I’m predicting we’ll barely see a tide change,” said Reggie. “The tide sensor at Christmas Island will tell us for sure.”

  Kai looked back at the printout. Any wave generated by the event would reach Christmas Island in thirty-five minutes.

  He checked the tide gauge schedule. Most of the tide gauges would transmit their readings to a satellite, which then got relayed to the PTWC. Although the gauges were cheap to produce and monitored tide levels twenty-four hours a day, their main drawback was that they sent the tide-level data only once an hour.

  Kai scanned the list to find Christmas Island. The next transmission would be only five minutes after the wave was supposed to arrive there.

  “Show me the earthquake map.”

  Reggie clicked on the appropriate icon, and colored dots bloomed on the map around the blue marker. The circles showed the seismic events around the Pacific Rim, with the different colors representing the depths of the events. A few red stars punctuated the map, showing where tsunamis had started. None of the stars was located within five hundred miles of the blue dot.

  “That area has never even had an earthquake,” Kai said.

  “Weird, huh?” Reggie said. “I’d guess one of two things.

  First, it could be a fault that we’ve never detected before.”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  “Right. But second—and this is the exciting part—it could be a new seamount. That would explain why it’s so shallow.”

  Now Kai understood Reggie’s excitement. A new seamount was a rare phenomenon, essentially the birth of a new island. An underwater volcano erupted over a magma hot spot on the ocean floor, building a mountain around itself and regularly unleashing earthquakes in the process. If the seamount got high enough, it broke through the surface of the water, which is exactly how the Hawaiian Islands were formed and were still forming, as the continual eruption of Kilauea on the Big Island spectacularly demonstrated.

  If this event did turn out to be a seamount, Reggie would get the credit for discovering it. For a geophysicist, it was analogous to an astronomer finding a new comet.

  “Congratulations,” Kai said. “If it turns out to be a new seamount, you’ll get journal articles out of it for the next five years.”

  “Damn straight.” Reggie winked. “If you’re good to me, I might have room to put you as second author.”

  “Your generosity is overwhelming.” Reggie let out a huge belly laugh at that. “But before we start celebrating,” Kai continued, “let’s make sure that we’re not dealing with a tsunami here. You’re doing the usual?”

  “Other than figuring out a name for my seamount,” Reggie said, “I’m working with the NEIC to pinpoint the quake more precisely. I’m also scanning the ANSS database to check our readings against theirs.” They h
ad a direct feed from the Advanced National Seismic System, the data source for the NEIC estimations.

  Kai nodded in appreciation for how fast Reggie moved. “Good work. After Christmas Island, our next tide reading won’t be until the wave reaches Johnston Island.”

  Then Kai remembered something.

  “Hey, isn’t the Miller Freeman testing a new DART buoy about a thousand kilometers southeast of here?” The NOAA research vessel was responsible for maintaining all of PTWC’s oceangoing equipment.

  Reggie tapped on his computer. “Yeah, they started setting it up two days ago. They should be there for another week.” He overlaid the ship’s location on the earthquake map. Before the Asian tsunami, there were only six operational DART buoys, but now new ones were coming online every few months, one of the few positive outcomes of the Southeast Asian disaster. The buoy they were currently testing was intended for the coastline of Russia.

  “Is the buoy active? This might be a good test for them. At their location, they should be getting a wave reading just about the same time Johnston Island does.”

  “I’ll call NOAA and have them radio the ship to be ready.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  The buzzer for the front gate sounded.

  “You need to handle the tour group,” Reggie said, pointing toward the reception area.

  “Looks like it’s showtime. Come find me when we get the tide readings from Christmas Island.”

  Kai pressed the button to open the gate, then quickly assembled his presentation materials. It looked like it was going to be a busy day after all.

  SEVEN

  9:23 a.m.

  Harold Franklin seethed quietly as the catamaran cruised through the water three miles west of Christmas Island. He had been looking forward to this vacation for months, primarily because of the island’s world-renowned bonefishing. Standing in the surf, casting a line, and hauling in some bonefish—that was why he was here. Not to sit on some boat with seven other people he didn’t know. Besides, he hated snorkeling. “How long are we going to be out here?” Harold said.

  His wife, Gina, who was sunning on the canvas stretched between the catamaran’s hulls and nursing a piña colada, narrowed her eyes at him. “Listen, buddy, I let you plan this trip because you said we could spend some time doing things other than fishing. I’m not sitting in the hotel room every day by myself while you’re down at the beach. I should have talked you into going to Hawaii. At least there they have shopping and a decent cup of coffee.”

  “But come on. Snorkeling? Do you really need me here for this?”

  “At the hotel, they said this is the best reef in the area. And I don’t know anyone else here, so I don’t want to hear another word about it. You’ll get to fish plenty this week.”

  “If we’re going snorkeling, then I wish we’d get it over with.”

  “The captain said he got a report of some whales out here. Don’t you want to see them?”

  “Whales live underwater. We won’t see anything.” It had taken Harold and Gina six hours to get from Sacramento to Honolulu, then another three hours on the one weekly flight that traveled the thirteen hundred miles due south to Christmas Island. He didn’t come all that way to watch a bump in the ocean. Harold looked up at the azure sky.

  “At least it’s not raining,” he said. Just as they had set sail, they had heard a huge boom, like a gigantic thunderclap. But there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky, so the cruise left as scheduled.

  “Have a drink,” Gina said. “Get comfortable like everyone else.”

  Harold put his hand on her shoulder and stood up, looking back toward Christmas Island.

  “What’s the matter?” Gina said.

  “I don’t know. Something’s going on with the birds.”

  The island was small and sparsely populated, its 3,200 residents surviving primarily as subsistence farmers and on whatever tourist dollars they could bring in. But it was so expensive and inconvenient that few tourists—mostly Americans like Harold and Gina—vacationed there. The island, an expanse of crushed coral sand only twelve feet above sea level at its highest point, provided a home for hundreds of bird species and colorful underwater life.

  Because Harold was an avid hunter as well as a fisherman, the birds had caught his attention. It seemed like every bird on the island, thousands of them, had suddenly taken flight.

  “What do you make of that?” Harold said to no one in particular.

  By this time everyone on board was looking at the island, including the dive master and captain. Both of them were Americans who had moved to Christmas Island to start their small dive business. Captain Pete and Dive Master Dave, they called themselves, which Harold had thought a bit corny. Pete cut the motor to a crawl.

  “Hey, Pete,” Dave said, “you see any smoke?”

  “Nope,” Pete said. “Looks like they got spooked by something, though.”

  “What about an earthquake?” Harold said. He knew from his lifetime in California that dogs and other animals could detect natural disasters before people could.

  “Nope,” Pete said again. “This isn’t an earthquake zone. No volcanoes, either.”

  Harold pulled out the binoculars he kept in his bag.

  “We better radio in and see what’s going on,” Dave said.

  As Pete called in to the shop, Harold got a closer look at the island. From this distance, even with the binoculars, the birds looked like a swarm of bees circling the island. But something else grabbed his attention.

  “That’s weird,” he said.

  “What?” said Gina.

  “The beach is getting bigger.”

  “What do you mean the beach is getting bigger?” Gina said, her voice rising in volume. Dave must have heard her.

  “What about the beach?” Dave said to Harold.

  Harold described what he could see. The beach, which had extended about a hundred yards from the ocean to the trees only a minute before, was growing by what seemed like the same amount every few seconds. After another moment he could see exposed reef around the entire island. Several beachgoers ran down to the newly uncovered sand, while others simply stood and watched.

  “Oh, no!” said Dave. He ran over to Pete, who had just reached the dive base on the radio and asked what was happening there. Before they could reply, Dave yanked the transmitter out of Pete’s hand.

  “Get the boat as far away from the island as fast as you can! Right now!” he yelled at Pete. Confused and not used to taking orders on his own boat, Pete nevertheless saw the alarm in Dave’s eyes and told everyone to hang on. He gunned the engine until they were doing twenty knots.

  Dave clicked on the transmitter. “Base, this is Seabiscuit, do you read?”

  A woman on the other end answered. Harold remembered her as Tasha, the girl who had checked them in for the dive. Before they’d left on the trip, Dave and Tasha’s canoodling in the shop had been practically pornographic.

  “I read you, Seabiscuit,” she said. “I just looked out the window. The tide is going way out.”

  “Tasha, that’s not the tide! A tsunami is coming! Get out of there!”

  “Oh my God! What should I do?”

  “Get to the highest point you can.”

  “What about you?”

  “We’re okay. We’re in deep water. Tsunamis only get big in shallow water.”

  Tasha’s panicked voice came back. “But there’s nowhere to go!”

  Harold knew she was right. Not only was the highest point on the island only twelve feet above sea level, there was only a smattering of two-story buildings on the island, and none near the dive shop.

  “Then climb a tree!”

  “It’s too late!” Harold said and pointed.

  Gina screamed. “Look!”

  Even faster than it had rushed out, the water began pouring back toward the beach. The small figures Harold could see with the binoculars ran back toward the island. Some of them were caught by the incom
ing wave even before they reached the trees.

  But the image between him and the island grew more terrifying. The water rose until it completely obscured even the tallest tree. Harold realized it would be only seconds before the mammoth wave covered the island.

  A hiss of static issued from the radio. Tasha was gone.

  Harold, wide-eyed, could only shake his head and mutter to himself.

  “I guess we should have gone to Hawaii.”

  EIGHT

  9:31 a.m.

  The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was tiny, so the walking portion of the Japanese school tour went quickly. Kai took them into the conference room where the children could sit. The sixth graders had been listening quietly, the teacher translating while Kai spoke. Kai knew the Japanese language of his father’s ancestry about as well as he knew the Italian language of his mother’s, which meant that he could order sushi or rigatoni and that was about it. Japan had always been particularly susceptible to tsunamis, and the videos from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand showing the tsunami carrying away people, buildings, and cars had only added to the students’ curiosity. Kai capitalized on their interest by telling stories about tsunamis that had hit Hawaii in the past.

  “Do you remember me telling you about the tsunami that struck Hilo in 1946?” he said.

  A couple of kids nodded. Kai always started the tour off by telling them how the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was founded. On April 1, 1946, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale was generated in the Aleutian Islands. No one in Hawaii knew that it had happened, except for a few seismologists. Five hours later, the first of a series of waves hit the northern shore of the Big Island. Hilo, on the northeast side of the island, was the only large city facing that direction. Even when people got word that a tsunami had struck, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day prank. But it wasn’t a joke. More than 150 Hawaiians perished that day.