The Yellowstone Conundrum by John Randall Read Free Book Online

making him tumble into a couple reading the morning Times in sections; the man holding the sports page and memorizing useless basketball statistics; the woman fantasizing over designer shoes in the lifestyles section; then they were all on the cold steel floor along with the newspaper, laptop, coffee, cinnamon buns and a majority of the other passengers. The shock sounded like a freight train; it was God’s short right hook smack on the kisser.
      Down goes Frazier down goes Frazier down goes Frazier!
      Scrambling to his knees, wide-eyed, oblivious to the high-pitched screaming all around him, Ray saw the event in slow-motion, like watching a rockslide. In the distance off the port side of the Wenatchee a thin white line seemingly hovered above the water line. Through the morning’s mist the line stretched from the northern tip of Bainbridge across the Puget Sound to North Seattle.
      Tsunami.
      The quake occurred on the eastern edge of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, at a point where the Juan de Fuca plate continues its relentless and ultimately futile eastward attempt to go underneath the North American plate, like an under bite grind. The water north of Bainbridge Island between the village of Indianola and Jefferson Point is the deepest in all of Puget Sound at 905 feet; and was the epicenter of the massive quake. Whether triggered by the Yellowstone explosion 600 miles to the east would be playtime for geologists to figure out. To Ray Spaulding and six hundred other passengers on the WSDOT ferry Wenatchee, cause was irrelevant; it is what it was, or as Popeye would say I yam what I yam .
      In the pilothouse, located in the center of the boat above the top passenger desk, 18-year veteran Captain Joseph Duvall knew he was in deep shit. Ferries were designed to go in one direction, forward. You don’t go forward from Bainbridge Island to Seattle then slip her into reverse to go back to Bainbridge, nor do you approach Seattle and maneuver a slick willy U-turn to dock it.  There were two sets of “forwards”, depending on which end of the boat was going to which port.
      There was no way to stop or turn the ferry and head directly into the wall of water, which would have been the best solution. The WSDOT Disaster Preparedness Manual had no pages for the chapter “What to do when dealing with an oncoming tsunami”; which was very similar to the NYC Emergency Preparedness manual on what to do when multiple airlines crash into city skyscrapers.  
      Hmmm, page 367, Appendix C—two jet aircraft, loaded with fuel crash into your city’s tallest skyscrapers. Action plan—this page intentionally left blank .
      “Sweet mother,” Duvall muttered as he sounded the emergency alarm while swinging the wheel to go with the flow of the oncoming water instead of broadside, which if there was an option for the Wenatchee to capsize, would have been the worst possible position.
      Klaxon horns sounded on the Wenatchee as it recovered from the initial shockwave from the earthquake. If the passengers weren’t awake, they were now. Hands grabbed the edge of the steel tables and bolted chairs.
      “Look!” shouted someone in Ray’s section of the second floor lounge. “The lights are gone!”
      Mother Mary thought Ray.  The lights of Seattle were gone, power out.  Seattle had been invaded by aliens. Ray staggered to a port side window and looked across Elliott Bay.  Something wasn’t right. Although it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t snowing, wasn’t anything else but a normal day—something wasn’t right. 
      There it was. The restaurant at the top of the Space Needle was gone. It can’t be! Yes, gone. The twin forces of the Yellowstone Super Volcano eruption along with the second earthquake at Suquamish had acted like Zorro’s whip, with the thin iconic tower snapping one way, then as quickly snapping back in the opposite direction. The Space Needle snapped two-thirds of the way up, approximately 400