The Tsunami Countdown

TWELVE

10:01 a.m.

1 Hour and 21 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

Kai called Hawaii State Civil Defense and the officer on duty, a junior staffer named Brian Renfro, answered the phone immediately. “Brian, this is Kai Tanaka over at PTWC. I need to speak to Jim Dennis.” Dennis, the vice director of HSCD, was the person who normally made the big decisions there and coordinated all the efforts of the state’s emergency services.

“Sorry, Kai, he took the weekend to visit some friends on Kauai. It’s just me and a couple of others here today. What’s wrong?”

On a normal working day, HSCD would have up to thirty people on staff. He knew Renfro from the first semiannual training scenario he had participated in. Renfro was a bright kid, but young, not much older than twenty-five. Kai could only hope that Renfro’s thorough training at HSCD would prepare him for what was about to happen. He was about to get a big dose of responsibility.

At least Renfro was in a safer location than Kai. Rather than being built three hundred yards from the ocean like the PTWC was, HSCD was well ensconced in a bunker inside Diamond Head crater. Because Hawaii was exposed to so many different types of potential disasters—tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes—the state took civil defense very seriously. Situated inside an extinct volcano with sides over six hundred feet high, the bunker could withstand virtually any disaster nature could dish out.

“Brian,” Kai said, “we’ve got a situation here. Did you see the bulletin we sent out earlier?”

“Sure did. What’s the problem? Are you upgrading it?”

“Yes. We’ve lost contact with Christmas Island.”

“You mean the tide gauge?”

“No, I mean the whole island, including the tide gauge.”

“When?”

“The tide gauge was supposed to give us a reading over thirty minutes ago. Since then, we haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone on the island.” Kai took a deep breath. “We think it may have been wiped out by a tsunami.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

“Okay,” Renfro finally said. “Give me one minute. Then I’ll call you back. I’m going to try to get in touch with the vice director.”

Kai hung up the phone and told Brad and Reggie what Renfro said.

“What do we do now?” Brad said.

Reggie perked up as if he just remembered something. “My God!”

“What?” Kai said.

“There’s a team of scientists on Johnston Island.”

“But I thought it was abandoned,” said Brad. “There was an article in the paper about the chemical weapons disposal facility being shut down in 2004. Now it’s a nature sanctuary or something.”

Johnston Island, a tiny coral atoll like Christmas Island, was only about twice the size of Central Park. Until 2001, it served as the United States’ primary disposal facility for chemical weapons, but fortunately it had incinerated its last bomb. If this tsunami had happened before then, they might have faced the additional specter of having thousands of canisters of the deadliest chemicals known to man washed out to sea. That was one of the few things Kai felt relieved about at that moment.

The other good news was that, now that the facility was shut down, the thirteen hundred people who manned the station had packed up for good, with the last of them having left in 2004. Since then, it had been operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife preserve.

“How do you know someone’s there?” Kai said, snatching the map of Johnston Island from its bin and unfurling it on a table.

“I wanted someone to check the tide gauge there because we’ve been having intermittent signal problems,” Reggie said. “Alvin Peters over at U.S. Fish and Wildlife said a team was there for a month doing observational studies of turtle nesting on the island and that they could check on the equipment for me. Even gave me their sat phone number.”

A quick scan of the map showed that the maximum elevation on the island was no more than forty-four feet, not high enough to ensure protection from a large tsunami. Kai didn’t know the state of the buildings there or whether they would be able to stand up to the force of a tsunami. The only truly safe place was out at sea in deep water. Thank God the scientists on the island had a phone.

“They only have ten minutes,” Kai said. “Call them right now. Let’s hope they have a boat.”

As Reggie ran to his cubicle to get the number and make the call, the office phone rang. It was Brian Renfro.

“I couldn’t get in touch with the vice director,” he said, “but I just got your tsunami warning, so I’m going to follow standard procedure. We’re trying to contact the governor now. The sirens will go off in a minute, and then I’ll start broadcasting our standard tsunami warning message on the EAS. Call me back if you get any new information. Especially if it’s a false alarm.” With that, he hung up.

“So HSCD is going to evacuate?” Brad said. “You know, your daughter—my niece—is at the beach today.”

“I know. Along with a hundred thousand other people.”

“So, shouldn’t we call Rachel and Teresa and let them know?”

Kai was tempted to set aside the duties of the job and warn his own family. If everyone did that, though, the entire system—the government, fire department, police department, emergency services—would grind to a halt. He had to trust that the warning system in place would work. But that didn’t mean that Brad couldn’t call them.

“Try Teresa’s cell. Her battery was dying, but she still might have it on. Then call Rachel and let her know what’s happening. All the hotels are part of the warning system, but it can’t hurt to call her anyway.” Kai handed Brad his cell phone. “She’s busy this morning, so she probably won’t answer it unless she sees that it’s my phone number. If she doesn’t answer, choose the pager option when you get her greeting, then dial 999. That’s our code for an emergency.” Kai had instituted the code three years ago when Lani broke her leg playing soccer and he wasn’t been able to get Rachel to answer her phone for two hours.

Brad took the phone and went into the conference room to make the call. Reggie almost knocked him over running into the ops center.

“I got ’em!” he said.

“The scientists? Thank God! How many are there?”

“Seven.”

“Do they have a boat?”

“No, but they have a plane. The weekly supply flight from Hawaii didn’t take the holiday off. But there’s a problem.”

Kai’s stomach sank. “With the plane? It can’t take off?”

“Oh, it can take off. In fact, they should be getting into the air in a few minutes. But it’s just a small supply plane. It can only take five of the scientists. Two of them will have to stay behind.”

At that exact moment, Kai heard the first wail of the tsunami siren.