Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(25)
And what’s this about being cut off from the south? One of the slides reaching all the way to Tacoma, cutting the 5, the way we drove in? Something about rerouting to the I-90, and trying to organize evacuees north to Vancouver. What’s “contraflow”?*1 They keep mentioning that, and how people trying to drive out are getting really frustrated and angry.
Tacoma must be an important port. A lot of ships are jamming Puget Sound. A lot of accidents, especially with the little private boats. Ferries can’t get out. Something called the USNS Mercy can’t get in. I’m only catching snippets about why nothing’s flying. Something with the ash in plane engines and covering the airports, but also something about a crash, a drone hitting a helicopter. Everyone was killed, including some rescued hikers. I’ve heard two different stories about where the drone came from: an army type looking for people or a private one trying to get pictures to post on social media. Both stories talk about “suspending UAV supply drops.” Is that why I haven’t seen a plane or helicopter, or even a drone, since all this started?
We might be cut off from Seattle, but it sounds like Seattle might be cut off from the world!
I don’t get how this could have happened. There’s too much coming at me. One report on budgets and politics. Budget sequestration? Shutdowns affecting “long-term talent retention”? What does it mean to “destroy the administrative state”? And what is the USGS? Someone from there complaining about local businesses not wanting to hear the warnings, accusing them of “another Mammoth Lakes.”*2
The USGS guy is also trying to dispel what I guess are rumors going around. Lots of rumors. He sounded really frustrated the way he talked about Rainier not exploding sideways toward Seattle or triggering a tsunami or setting off a chain reaction where all the other volcanos erupt as well. He must be hearing these rumors a lot. And the reporter wasn’t helping. She kept bringing up these horrible eruptions in history, Krakatoa, Fuji, Vesuvius. She asked about how many people “could die” and “hypothetically, what’s the worst-case scenario,” and when she tried to get him to imagine what the “Yellowstone super volcano” would look like, he said, “Jesus, why are we even talking about this!”
Anger. And violence.
A local station, 710am, talking about a shooting at a Whole Foods on Denny Way. Where is that? More about long lines at other stores, fistfights, a hit-and-run at a gas station. A truck driver was pulled out of his cab and beaten almost to death. It was a bread truck. It was looted and burned.
I’m listening to a press conference now. The signal’s going in and out. This woman, I think she’s the governor, trying to answer all these questions coming at her. So many of them, the reporters, the things they’re asking. It can’t be true that rescuers are focusing on “corporate assets” like Boeing and Microsoft. They can’t be choosing rich neighborhoods like Queen Anne over middle-class ones like Enumclaw. That’s what one reporter asked, along with another one who shouted, “Isn’t it true that the USGS intentionally withheld warnings so the eruption would clear these towns for high-end development?”
A question about martial law. Oh my God! I’ve heard that question! Earlier today! When I got in the car, I flipped past some rant, not a news station, I think, maybe talk radio. Some guy, gravelly, frantic voice, railing against the “deep state,” and how this was all a conspiracy of withheld warnings to cause this catastrophe “as a pretext for using federal troops to disarm the public.” Those are the exact words I’m hearing now. Is the reporter just repeating the same rant we both heard?
The governor’s talking now. She sounds mad. Writing as I hear it:
“Settle down! Please, all of you! We need you to listen carefully to what we’re saying now. We cannot afford rumors. We cannot afford speculation. A lot of people are in real danger. They need accurate, honest reporting. They need the facts. You need to be responsible for what you’re putting out there! You don’t want to cause a panic! Please, think before you speak. Think about the consequences of your—”
Tony!
In my rearview mirror! His headlights, pulling back up to his house!
From my interview with Frank McCray, Jr.
Again, you can’t just blame Tony, or even the whole tech industry, for not being prepared. They all should have had emergency supplies on hand, but, really, who does? How many people in L.A. have earthquake kits? How many midwesterners are ready for tornadoes or northeasterners for blizzards? How many Gulf Coast residents stock up for hurricane season? I remember partying in New Orleans before Katrina and people talking about “when” the levees fail. Not “if,” “when!”
And that’s just the dramatic stuff. How many have a fire extinguisher in their kitchen or emergency flares in their car? How many of us have opened the medicine cabinet in the middle of the night to find that one pill bottle we so desperately need has a long-expired label?
And when it comes to supplying everyday life, being caught unprepared wasn’t unique to Greenloop. Neither was the one-click, online delivery system they depended on. The whole country depends on that now. No one remembers that Christmas in the late ’90s, before the dot-com bubble burst, when everyone thought they could click their way through Santa’s list. They didn’t understand that the gifts they were ordering still had to be transported, in most cases, from overseas, on very big, very slow ships. The result was that a lot of my friends didn’t get their e-toys on Christmas morning, while their parents spent the night before rushing from one sold-out Toys “R” Us to the next. And that was when we still had Toys “R” Us.