“Look there,” Sam shouted above the roar of the water, pointing to the east canyon wall. “It’s starting to crumble. This bridge is going to go, Hank. We have to get off!”
“Yousseff said to stay by our post,” said Hank. “We’re here because everyone followed the battle plan. He said stay here.”
“Yeah, but this thing is going down. Look there. The cops realize it. We’re the only ones stupid enough to be up here. We’ve got to get out of here or we’re toast. I didn’t sign on to die,” shouted Sam.
With those words, there was a terrible scraping sound of metal on metal, and the eastern portion of the bridge suddenly lost its foundation, dropping almost 50 feet straight down toward the now raging water. It left the bridge moored and grounded only at its western end.
“I’m done here,” yelled Sam, starting to run, now about ten degrees uphill, toward the western end. “If you don’t come with me, Hank, you’re dead.”
The truck had already started to slide down the bridge, toward the destruction and mayhem below. Hank had been working to keep the camera trained on the dam, holding it by hand. Looking around him, he thought about it for a second, and then deserted their post, running after Sam. The moment he left the camera, it rocked back and forth violently, and within seconds, flipped over on its tripod.
Back in the CBS studios in New York, John saw the camera view rock, slant, and go vertical. For a second or two the images it transmitted were sideways. Suddenly the signal was snuffed out altogether. John fiddled with some controllers and dials but could not bring the signal back.
The on-set anchor did a splendid job of tying the story together with what they were getting from the helicopter, now heading at maximum speed, cameras on, over Lake Mead and eastward toward the Glen Canyon. The NBC technical assistants were able to splice and remix the feed in record time, and the network began to show the dam explosion, and the devastating collapse that followed over and over, in greater detail, with close-ups and, of course, in slow motion. NBC had just lucked into the story of the year.
Sam and Hank did not make it. The bridge, attached to solid land only on one end and buffeted by the always-present canyon wind, began to sway back and forth, and up and down. More and more of the steel I-beams that kept the structure intact were starting to buckle and bend under the unnatural forces being placed upon them. The east end of the bridge dropped down further, another 100 feet or so, leaving Sam and Hank with a climb upward of 30 degrees to reach the western bank of the canyon. As the canyon walls continued to wash away, the eastern end of the bridge dipped closer and closer to the uncaged waters of Lake Powell, now rushing and seething through the canyon below.
They were within 50 feet of the western bank when the unfettered eastern end of the bridge finally came into contact with the water. When it did, an entire section of the bridge was lurched powerfully downstream, wrenching loose the steel beams still embedded within the western canyon wall. With a terrible screaming of metal on metal, the eastern end of the bridge was pulled downstream, ripping the western end out of the canyon wall.
“We are martyrs, Sam,” yelled Hank, desperately hanging on to a girder, swaying back and forth hundreds of feet above the raging waters. “I will see you in Paradise.”
“I was kind of hoping for a cold beer and a good woman at the end of a hard day,” Sam yelled back, knowing that this would not be so.
Sam’s last memory was of hanging on to the bridge railing, just before the entire structure was ripped loose. Then the entire bridge was sent tumbling, scraping, and tearing its way down toward Marble Canyon. Sam’s body was smashed by metal beams and chunks of concrete long before his mind could grasp the fact that he was going to die. Hank met a similar fate.
Duane, Sandra, and Catherine rose as one when they saw the blinding flash, and heard the sharp crack, followed by booming, rolling echoes of thunder, coming from the south.
“Oh my God, Duane. Is it really happening?” Sandra gasped.
“I think it is,” said Catherine, crushed that she had not been in time. “I could have stopped it if, if…” Her voice trailed away. She had run 6.8 miles an hour. She could just as easily have logged sevens. She hadn’t pushed. She had stayed in the five-ton truck too long. She had started to enjoy the cat and mouse game with the drug runner, she had let the cell phone die, she had dropped the GPS unit, she had…
“Honey, honey,” said Sandra, circling her arm around Catherine’s shaking shoulder. “You’re beating yourself up over this. From what you’ve been telling us, you have gone miles above and beyond the call of duty. If you had gone by your job description, you would be sitting in a donut shop in Fernie right now, rather than here trying to save a country that’s not even yours.”
She was interrupted by more booming explosive sounds, echoing again and again over the expanse of Wawheap Arm. The sounds were so powerful that the windows rattled, and the dishes danced in the kitchen cupboards.
“Oh my God,” exclaimed Duane. “I’ve never heard anything like this. Never.”
The booming and shaking took many minutes to subside. The three were hanging on to one another, looking out toward the reservoir, when the earth finally stilled beneath their feet.
“Thank God that’s stopped,” breathed Catherine, who had grasped Sandra Becker’s hand in hers, and was leaning up against Duane for support.
“I’m not so sure it has,” said Duane.
“What do you mean?”
Duane silently pointed at a half-finished cup of coffee resting on the kitchen counter. At first Catherine didn’t understand the gesture, but a closer examination revealed tiny concentric wavelets dancing within the cup. The shaking had not stopped at all.
“And look at that,” he said, pointing to the reservoir on the other side of the road. “Look at those leaves.”
Again Catherine had to squint to catch what Duane Becker’s eagle eyes took in. Then she saw it. A few leaves in the reservoir itself were lazily starting to drift toward the south.
“Things haven’t stopped at all,” he said, holding on to his wife’s other hand, thinking of a huge wall of water rushing toward the Grand Canyon. “In fact, I do believe they’re just beginning.”
58
The wall of water was over 400 feet in height, and moving with incredible speed. Steel and concrete, now from both the dam and the bridge, were traveling with the torrent of water, acting as scouring agents against the banks, dislodging huge chunks of dirt and sandstone, and hastening the multiple collapses that accompanied it. Everything in the flood’s path was demolished. The canyon walls were in the process of being instantly and destructively changed. This was no slow millennium-by-millennium erosion by wind and gentle water. This was a geologically catastrophic change, a 9.0 earthquake, a violent eruption, a tsunami beating against one of the most geologically spectacular sites in the world.
There were a number of beautiful camping spots, and some motels and lodges at Lee’s Ferry, farther downstream. This also marked the starting place for most Colorado rafting tours. Many people were camped there, and some were already making their way down to the docking sites, to begin water tours of the canyon. While some of these groups had a minute or two of warning, the wall of rushing water made clambering up the steep canyon walls to safety impossible. Everyone within Marble Canyon died. The death toll was well over 200 before the floodwaters even reached the head of the Grand Canyon.
There, the ground shook with the oncoming flood, and the canyon came alive like a great writhing, convulsing snake. The canyon walls, already harrowing and steep, had become deadly, raining ever larger stones down into the depths. The rushing apocalypse of water was yet to be seen, but the magnitude of the tremors was increasing rapidly, and the canyon was becoming unstable.