Rogue Wave

Chapter 5

"When did it go out?" Kai said into the cell phone.

"Just a minute ago. I thought you would have been here by now, so I didn't call when we got the first readings."

Since Reggie was officially the scientist on active duty, Kai's pager hadn't gone off when the earthquake readings came in. Before the Asia tsunami, whoever was on active duty would have been alerted immediately by pager that an earthquake had been detected, even if that person was at home. They didn't have to be in the Center to be on call, but they did have to be on the grounds. Once the pager went off, they would hurry over to the building from wherever they were.

But after the deaths of more than 250,000 people, the US government saw the devastation a tsunami could wreak and finally decided to grant the increased funding requests that the PTWC had previously made without success. The center had just hired three new geophysicists, and the increased coverage now allowed at least one person to man the equipment round the clock.

"OK, I'll be over in a minute." Kai closed the cell phone and started walking. "Come on, Bilbo." The terrier trotted alongside.

Kai wasn't worried about the information bulletin. It was a standard message issued whenever they got readings of seismic activity in the Pacific basin that might be powerful enough to generate a tsunami. Since it was just a bulletin and not a tsunami warning, it must have been an event between 6.5 and 7.5 on the magnitude scale. Fairly common stuff that rarely resulted in a tsunami. Below 6.5, they didn't even issue the bulletin.

The bulletin was sent to all of the other monitoring stations in the Pacific, as well as the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, which served as the warning center for Alaska, British Columbia, and the west coast of the US. The PTWC covered the rest of the Pacific. The bulletin also went out to all of the emergency and civil defense organizations in the Pacific Rim, NOAA headquarters, and the US military, which had extensive bases in the Pacific.

None of these organizations had to take any action because of the bulletin; it was strictly to inform them of a seismic event and its potential to generate a tsunami. Already that year, Kai's team had issued over 40 bulletins. None had actually resulted in a tsunami.

It took 15 minutes from the initial sensor readings to the issuance of the bulletin to allow time to triangulate the position of the event and to verify that it was in an area that could produce a tsunami. Inland earthquakes couldn't generate tsunamis, so they dismissed those immediately.

Once the bulletin was issued, the real work started. They had to analyze the data to determine how likely it was that a destructive tsunami was heading for a populated coastline. If the event had happened off the coast of Alaska, the closest tsunamigenic zone to Hawaii, remotely-operated buoys called Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis buoys-commonly called DART buoys-would be able to tell the speed, magnitude, and size of a tsunami headed across the Pacific. While much of the work was automated with computers now, it still took a lot of sweat to get the answers needed, especially because of the time pressure. It only took about five hours for a tsunami to reach Hawaii from Alaska, which was barely enough time to mount a coordinated mass evacuation.

After less than a minute at a brisk pace, Kai reached the main building, a low squat structure typical of the government cinder block construction from the 1940s. It had a generic appearance but was a model of neatness, with its fresh coat of whitewash and neatly manicured hedges. The words "Richard H. Hagemeyer Pacific Tsunami Warning Center" were emblazoned on the front of the building in large letters, honoring a longstanding director of the National Weather Service.

The interior was just as neat and functional as the exterior. A reception area greeted visitors, and next to it was a small conference room.

The receptionist, Julie, had the day off, as did most of the rest of the staff. Kai picked up a sheet of paper lying on the front desk to look at the specifics of the school group that would be touring the facility that morning. They were scheduled for 9 AM but hadn't arrived yet.

Since the Southeast Asia tsunami disaster, tours had become much more in demand. Most people had even stopped using the words "tidal wave." The term annoyed scientists because tsunamis had nothing to do with tides. The word "tsunami" meant "harbor wave" in Japanese, but tsunamis didn't have much to do with harbors either, so Kai didn't know why other scientists got ticked off about calling them tidal waves. But tsunami was the accepted scientific term, and Kai was grateful that it had become part of the lexicon because it meant that he didn't have to spend as much time correcting visitors.

When Julie had scheduled the tour for Memorial Day, Kai was a bit surprised that a school would want to do anything that day that didn't involve sand and surf. Then she told him the school group was from Japan, one of the countries that was covered by the PTWC, and it made sense. Kai thought Memorial Day was actually a good time to do the tour. It would be a slow day, and his administrative tasks would be light.

He scanned the sheet. Twelve sixth-graders from Tokyo, escorted by a teacher fluent in English. They only had 30 minutes for the tour because they had a full day of sightseeing planned. Educational tours from Japan were fairly common, and they tried to accommodate as many tours as possible since community outreach helped them connect with the people they would be warning in a crisis.

These students might actually be interested in what I had to say, Kai thought. Sometimes he'd get a school group of bored American teenagers who'd be itching to leave as soon as they got there. Kai couldn't get those tours over fast enough.

He dropped the sheet back onto the counter and patted Bilbo.

"Come on. Let's find out what's going on."

Following Bilbo, Kai walked the few steps into the data analysis facility, which was packed with state-of-the-art computers and seismic sensing equipment. Huge maps of the Pacific lined two of the walls. Since the news media often knew more than they did, the two TVs on either side of the room were perpetually tuned to CNN. They spent most of their time in this room. Still farther back in the building were the individual cubicles and Kai's tiny office.

Normally, George Huntley and Mary Grayson, the two most junior geophysicists, would be manning computers on the other side of the room. It hadn't taken Kai long to realize they had started a relationship, and the last he had heard, they had both taken their day off to go surfing together on the North Shore.

Three of the other scientists had already left to attend a conference that week in San Francisco, leaving the center comparatively short-handed.

Kai found Reggie hunched over a computer monitor, munching on an egg salad sandwich, the empty wrapper of a second sandwich lying next to him. When Reggie heard the dog's claws ticking on the linoleum, he looked up.

"Thanks for joining us this fine morning," Reggie said. "I thought maybe you were gonna play hooky today."

Kai nodded toward Reggie's sandwich, which was already half its previous size. "Is there ever a time of day when you don't eat?"

"Hey, I don't want to get all skinny like you."

There was no danger of that. Reggie Pona, a huge bear of a man who used to be a defensive lineman at Stanford, must have weighed at least 300 pounds. Reggie was also one of the brightest geophysicists Kai had ever met. A Samoan by birth, he had paid his way through college by playing football to accomplish his true goal of becoming a scientist. Reggie certainly didn't match the stereotype of a geek. And he was very loud.

Reggie took a bite and continued to talk while he chewed. "I thought you might go with your friends to the beach. Teresa is hot, by the way."

"You know, sometimes you almost convince me that you're not a nerd," Kai said. "But then you open your mouth to talk and remind me. Besides, I couldn't leave you alone with all those impressionable sixth-graders. You scared the bejesus out of the last group."

"Reggie 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 a standard tsunami information message.

Kai looked at Reggie. "It doesn't seem like anything to be worried about."

Normally Kai would consult with Harry Dupree, his second-in-command. Harry had taken a three-day holiday to Maui and wasn't due back until that night. Reggie and Kai were on their own, and although Kai was growing more comfortable with his responsibilities, he was still fairly new.

After the Asia tsunami, the previous director left for a position at NOAA headquarters in Washington coordinating the development of a worldwide tsunami warning system. Since it looked like it was going to take a lot of wrangling to get it up and running, they wanted to have more than an acting director at the PTWC, so naturally they looked for a replacement from the limited ranks of tsunami experts.

When Reggie had recommended Kai for the job, Kai's position as head of the University of Washington geology department's tsunami research center put him in the short list of candidates. From Kai's perspective, the job prospect 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. "The event was not tsunamigenic." Meaning it couldn't generate a tsunami. 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. "One, 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 30 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 100 meters.

"Two," 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.

"Three, 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 500 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 2000 kilometers," said Reggie. A little more than 1200 miles.

Kai did the quick mental calculation in his head that was second nature to all tsunami scientists. Since all tsunamis traveled at approximately 500 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 a 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 about 35 minutes.

"Hand me the tide gauge schedule," he said.

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 24 hours a day, their main drawback was that they only sent the tide level data 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 dot. The colored circles showed the depth of 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 500 miles of the blue dot.

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

"Weird, huh?"

Most tsunamigenic quakes occur where continental plates smash together, such as along the coasts of Alaska, Chile, and Indonesia. But shallow quakes are usually associated with plates slipping past each other, the most famous of which is the San Andreas fault in California.

"That area of the ocean floor is not very well-mapped," 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 pretty exciting, 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. To a geophysicist, it was the closest thing 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 NSN database to check our readings against theirs." They had a direct feed from the National Seismic Network, the data source for the NEIC estimations.

Kai nodded in appreciation for how fast Reggie moved. "Good work. You should also do some data analysis on the seafloor in that region. Make sure the earthquake didn't trigger a landslide. After Christmas Island, our next tide reading won't be until the wave reaches Johnston Island."

Then Kai remembered something and snapped his fingers.

"Hey, isn't the Miller Freeman testing a new DART buoy about 1000 kilometers southeast of here?" The Miller Freeman was a NOAA research vessel responsible for maintaining their ocean-going 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 Asia tsunami, there were only six operational DART buoys: three off the Alaskan coast, two between Hawaii and the west coast of the US, and one about 2000 miles away from Chile. But more were scheduled to be activated around the Pacific, one of the few positive outcomes of the Southeast Asia disaster. The buoy they were currently testing was intended for the coastline of Russia.

"Is the buoy active?"

"The buoy itself is operational, but the satellite uplink wasn't scheduled to be tested for another couple of days. There's no reason that we couldn't radio them to switch on the uplink."

"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."

"What do you need from me?"

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

The buzzer for the front gate sounded. The tour group was here.

"Looks like it's show time. Come find me when we get the tide readings from Christmas Island."

Kai took a deep breath and steeled himself for the tour. It looked like it was going to be a busy day after all.