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.
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.
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 2341Z 28 MAY 2007
