The ground was still moving in sharply defined waves. These were probably S waves, Atkins thought. The freight cars were swinging out in an arc, fanning back and forth in rhythm to the ground’s wildly oscillating surface motions. Atkins glanced back just as a boxcar whipsawed across the road and flattened the Blazer.
The ground shaking had intensified. The rapid back-and-forth undulations were remarkably powerful.
Atkins smelled something. Three oil tanker cars were burning. Black smoke climbed high over the trees.
Another tanker blew in a bright flash of fire.
“We’ve got to get away from here before the whole thing goes up,” Atkins said.
Supporting each other, sometimes crawling, they moved away from the wrecked train. The ground was still heaving, the jolts so severe and frequent it was impossible to stand.
“Listen,” Atkins said.
A new sound.
The earth had started to rip apart in a fissure that cut across the railroad tracks and swept up into Mayfield. Atkins had seen the ground do the same thing three days earlier during the magnitude 7 quake, but it didn’t compare with this. As rocks moved and sheared apart deep in the ground, a huge trench was forming, opening up right before their eyes. As the earth split open, the noise was deafening.
Atkins tried to get his bearings. He looked toward the town and saw the church spire rocking back and forth, silhouetted against the black sky. Worried the earth was going to rip open right under them, he got back on his feet and helped Elizabeth stand up. Just as they were getting used to the left-right ground movement, the seismic waves changed direction. The shaking, stronger than ever, shifted to right-left. Atkins guessed they were starting to feel the surface waves. It was hard to distinguish among the different waves when you were caught up in an actual quake.
“John, look!” Elizabeth said. She’d dropped to one knee to keep her balance.
He turned as the ground broke open under the upended train and swallowed a string of boxcars.
Four or five cars just disappeared.
The foul odor that poured from the opening smelled like sulphuric acid.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the earthquake was over.
The fissure slammed closed, the sound reminding Atkins of an avalanche only more abrupt, the rumble of snow crashing down a mountainside. It left a jagged scar with a two-foot shelf, or offset. It was as if a carving knife had ripped long slashes in the ground.
Atkins’ wristwatch showed the shaking had lasted four minutes and five seconds. Elizabeth agreed with that time. If it was anywhere near accurate, it had to be a record.
The main thrust, Atkins guessed, had driven one side of the fault sharply upward. He figured this “hanging wall” was considerably higher than the other side of the fault.
“I think there was some strike-slip displacement,” Elizabeth said. This was horizontal, or back-and-forth, movement along the fault. The direction of the slip had followed a left-lateral motion, meaning each side of the fault had moved left relative to the other.
Freight cars and tankers littered the tracks. Some were piled on top of each other, crushed and flattened. Another tanker blew up, an orange-white ball of fire shooting high into the sky.
Keeping their distance, Atkins and Elizabeth cautiously moved around the end of the train. They needed to get to the Explorer, which Atkins had left parked at the Mayfield High School about five hours earlier. It was only a few blocks away.
NEAR KENTUCKY LAKE
JANUARY 13
2:15 A.M.
LAUREN MITCHELL AND BOBBY MET SHERIFF LOU Hessel at an all-night convenience store just outside Gilbertsville. The resort town was three miles down the Tennessee River from Kentucky Dam. Just below the dam, the Tennessee was more of a canal than a river. It broadened considerably at Gilbertsville, where it made a long, graceful curve before heading downstream toward its juncture with the Ohio River.
Hessel had known Lauren and her parents for years. In his early fifties, he had thinning black hair, high cheekbones, and gaunt cheeks. He didn’t like wearing a uniform and was dressed in a ski sweater, jeans, and boots. He and Lauren had attended high school together. They’d even dated a few times back then, nothing very serious, an occasional movie in Paducah or a boat trip on Kentucky Lake. Hessel’s wife, Judy, was a good friend of Lauren’s.
The sheriff listened quietly and sipped coffee from his thermos as Lauren described what Atkins and Elizabeth had seen inside the dam and her own close call out on the lake. He’d driven over from Mayfield as soon as she’d called. He’d never seen her like this, almost frantic.
“We’ve got to let people know the dam’s in danger of failing!” Lauren was practically shouting in his face. “They won’t have a chance…”
The sheriff glanced at his watch. It was about 2:15 A.M.
“You two get in the car,” he said. “We’ll start right here in Gilbertsville. Then we’re going to do some hard driving. We’ll head down to Reidland, then cut across the Highway 101 bridge into Paducah. We’ve got some ground to cover. I know every deputy, volunteer fire chief, and ambulance dispatcher in two hundred square miles. They’ll help us get the word out. We gonna raise some hell.”
Bobby got in the back of the patrol car and Lauren had just opened the passenger-side door when she noticed the lights on the parking lot. The poles had started to sway.
“Look at that,” Hessel said.
Then the ground exploded. Knocked off her feet, Lauren fell across the hood of the car. Another violent shake sent her staggering backward. She landed hard on her side.
The sheriff tried to get out to help, but the car was rocking up and down with such force he was pinned to his seat. The plate-glass window of the convenience store shattered. A young woman working there stumbled out the doorway, screaming and holding her hands to her ears, trying to blot out the thunder coming from deep in the earth. The parking lights were swaying so hard the poles snapped off at the base.
“There’s… your… earthquake!” Hessel shouted, holding on to the steering wheel with both hands.
He was trying to sit upright in the bucking car, which started rocking side to side—hard, rapid movements that made him clench his teeth. He looked in the back seat. Bobby’s eyes were wide open as he gripped the front seat and tried to hang on.
The shaking finally quieted. And the noise. Hessel wasn’t sure how long it had lasted, but he felt like he’d taken a physical beating. His left shoulder was going to be black-and-blue from being slammed repeatedly into the car door.
“Listen!” Lauren said, picking herself up off the ground.
The sheriff heard it—a loud, rending crack, followed by a roar that was different from the earthquake.
Hessel realized what he was hearing.
It was rushing water, a flood.
“The dam’s gone,” he said. He started the car’s engine. “Get in, girl! We’re going to make a run through Gilbertsville. Try to give those folks a warning.”
Two miles upstream, the mile-long dam had given way. First the exterior walls had broken and split outward, the water rushing through the cracks, rapidly widening them. The steel flood gates were pushed aside as the water boomed through the jagged breach. The hydrologist on duty in the dam’s powerhouse had sounded a warning siren moments before he fled for his life. The wail of the siren was drowned out by the rushing water.
Gunning his engine, Hessel raced into Gilbertsville. He didn’t know how long it would take the water to reach the resort town, which was spread out on low hills near the western shore of the Tennessee River.
Not long, he figured. Maybe a couple minutes.
The river ran through a narrow, twisting valley until it emptied into the Ohio at Paducah, fifteen miles downstream. The highway was on high ground. The sheriff thought they might make it to Paducah ahead of the flood, but he’d have to drive like hell on a treacherous, two-lane road.
