across the entire downtown district.
Atkins watched in amazement as a woman’s burning dress drifted by high in the sky, the sleeves flung wide.
A tremendous explosion nearby rocked the building. A fireball curled into the sky behind them. A gas tank had blown up somewhere along the riverfront, a big one.
Atkins didn’t like the way the fires were starting to ring them in.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”
FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 14
10:15 A.M.
DURING THE FIRST HOURS OF THE CRISIS, Governor Tad Parker had been strangely paralyzed, unable to decide what to do. That wasn’t like him. He prided himself on his ability to make quick decisions. It didn’t seem possible that only a day earlier, a lifetime ago, he’d been confidently trying to raise money to run for president.
Parker was overwhelmed. His only decisive act was to order a National Guard helicopter to take Paul Weston and other staff members of the Seismic Safety Commission down to Memphis. He’d never liked Weston and remembered his calm assurances about Kentucky Dam when those cracks appeared in the walls after the first earthquake. He planned to revisit that subject with him later, but right now Weston was the most knowledgeable man in the state about earthquakes. More than anything, Parker needed information about what was happening in the ground. He hoped to hear from Weston soon.
There’d been so many disasters—all of them piling up at once, each requiring immediate attention: the clouds of lethal gas that had killed a couple hundred people near the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah before the gas dissipated; the dam break; the continuous reports of casualties from every large city in the state.
In those early hours Parker had fired his chief of disaster operations, a political hack who’d gotten the high- paying job solely because of his connections. Parker had gone to the disaster operations office in the state capitol building and found the man seated at his desk, drinking straight from a bottle of scotch. Parker’s bodyguard had to pull him off the man.
They didn’t have enough shortwave radios and portable satellite dishes. And no one had thought what they would do if almost every large hospital in the state had to shut down because it was either destroyed or badly damaged.
They couldn’t even get a reliable casualty count. Parker knew instinctively that the numbers were going to be horrendous. On the short drive from the governor’s mansion to the capitol, he’d counted eleven bodies himself. Lying on the side of the road and covered with blankets, they’d been removed from damaged buildings and homes.
He ordered his driver to stop. An elderly man sat on the porch of his collapsed brick home, holding the body of his dead wife. Despite the cold, he wore a thin bathrobe. His face was bloody. Weeping softly, he clutched her to his chest as he rocked back and forth.
“What am I going to do?” he sobbed, recognizing the governor, who sat down next to him and offered his condolences.
It galvanized Parker, who’d been in mild shock ever since the quake. He stayed with the man for a couple of minutes, trying to comfort him. When the next crisis came, and it came soon, he was able to make decisions.
A shortwave transmission came in from the director of the state prison at Eddyville, 180 miles south of Lexington. The quake had knocked down one of the dormitories, which dated to the turn of the century. Some of the crenellated walls had collapsed. Another prisoners’ building was badly damaged.
“We’ve got a dangerous situation here, governor,” the warden said excitedly. “Most of the guard towers are down. We’ve got prisoners getting away. Half my people are dead or injured.”
The man started to ramble.
Parker shut him up.
“I want you to do just what I tell you,” he said. “You march twenty men with shotguns into that mob and shoot over their heads. If that doesn’t work, open up again, and this time tell your people to shoot to kill. That ought to quiet them down until I can get some National Guard troops over there to help out. You got that, warden?”
“Governor, I can’t do—”
Shouting into the radio, Parker said, “I’m not going to lose control of that prison. I don’t care how many people you’ve got to shoot. You just carry out those orders. If you don’t, I’ll get somebody else up there who will.”
MEMPHIS
JANUARY 14
1:35 P.M.
ATKINS AND ELIZABETH WENT OUT A FIRE DOOR ON the side of the building and were soon on Exchange Avenue, heading east through downtown Memphis. For the next hour they took whatever unobstructed road or alley they could find. Sometimes they managed only half a block before they ran into a collapsed wall or building and had to change course.
More people were out. Many had come from their homes in other parts of Memphis to try to rescue papers and documents from their downtown offices only to get trapped. Their stalled cars and vans added to the congestion and confusion. The streets were hopelessly jammed.
The sound of sirens, exploding glass and the frequent crash of falling bricks made talking difficult. Atkins and Elizabeth often had to shout in gusting smoke that was getting thicker. For the first time, Atkins began to wonder if they were going to get clear of the flames.
They were on Poplar Avenue. He vaguely remembered Walt Jacobs telling him that Poplar was one of the city’s main east-west arteries. They headed east but the smoke suddenly shifted direction and was in front of them again. Somehow, the fires had moved around them.
Through drifting smoke they saw a yellow fire-pumper pulled to a curb. A team of firefighters stood next to it, pouring a single stream of water into what looked like a new building. Their hoses weren’t attached to hydrants. They were using the pumper’s water supply.
Atkins knew what that meant. The quake had knocked out the city’s water mains. When their pumper ran dry, they’d have to pull back. It looked like the fire hadn’t taken hold yet in the three-story building. Thinking it could be saved, the firemen were sticking it out as long as possible.
The building suddenly burst into flames. The fire blew out the windows and doors with a shuddering, explosive roar. A sheet of flame swept across the street.
Atkins felt the heat from the blast. He lost sight of the firemen and pulled Elizabeth around a corner. They ran down another smoke-filled street. It was no good. The flames were ahead of them again. They turned up a street, then another, and realized they’d gone in a full circle. They were back at the exact spot where they’d first seen the firemen battling the fire.
The pumper was just down the street. They headed in that direction, coughing in the smoke, holding handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses. It was difficult to see, but Atkins thought something looked wrong. Then he saw that the front wall of the building had collapsed into the street, an avalanche of bricks and glass that had just missed the pumper.
The truck’s red lights were still flashing. But there was no sign of the crew.
The wind had shifted again. The heat from the burning building had slackened. Believing they could get by it and keep moving east, Atkins headed down the street. He noticed the yellow paint on the fire engine was scorched black on the side that faced the building.
