Most people were able to head for higher ground as the waters rose, but still thousands drowned. These were trapped in collapsed buildings and unable to flee, others were injured, caught in areas away from high ground, caught in the flood when they were caught behind uncrossable fissures, or caught in floating debris that carried them to their deaths.
Marcy Douglas watched the waves go by. She greeted the dawn from her post at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, standing below the soaring stainless steel Gateway Arch that marked the safe, high ground where neither floor nor fire had reached. Marcy had worked all night in the collapsed parking garage, pulling people free of the debris. She had seen men crushed in their cars, women trapped beneath falling concrete, children lying blue-lipped and cold, smothered beneath the arched bodies of the parents who died trying to protect them. She had helped to carry the bodies out as well as the survivors, but there was nowhere to lay them but on the grass of the Memorial park. There were a few doctors and nurses among the crowd of refugees that had fled across Memorial Drive, and these did what they could for the injured. There was no medicine, no supplies, no beds, no blankets. But the doctors and nurses and Park personnel and a thousand ordinary people did what they could, and over the course of the night they performed miracles, and saved scores of people who otherwise would have died.
And so Marcy—with no sleep, no food, no rest—stood to greet the dawn, the red sunrise that gleamed on the Arch. She stood tall in her stained khaki uniform, her wide hat square on her head, and knew, through her weariness, that she had done everything possible for her tourists, for those caught in the parking garage, and for everyone else that had come within the boundary of the Memorial. As Marcy watched the sun rise, she saw the long foaming waves rolling along the channel of the Mississippi. The brown water mounted higher and higher, nudging at the groaning wreckage of the Casino Queen and the Tom Sawyer. Marcy knew that the day would be long, and that her part was not over.
And a few miles south of where Marcy stood on the river, a man watched the waters rise and felt ice run up his spine.
His name was Stewart DeForest, and he was fire chief of the City of St. Louis. When he felt the first tremors slam into his home, even as the glass shattered and the furniture leaped, as shingles spilled from the roof and the house rocked on its foundation, he knew that his place was in south St. Louis, by the River Des Peres.
The Des Peres was a tributary of the Mississippi and formed the southern boundary of St. Louis proper. The Des Peres’s flood protection was inadequate, and everyone knew it. If the Mississippi backed up into the Des Peres, the area near the river was threatened with inundation.
Mere flooding was not what frightened the fire chief. What terrified DeForest were the long white rows of liquid propane cylinders that crouched near the river. Each cylinder held 30,000 pressurized gallons of one of the most explosive substances on earth, and there were more than fifty of them, making for over a million and a half gallons altogether.
One leak, one spark, was all it would take to ignite the greatest conflagration that Missouri had ever seen. The catastrophe had barely been averted in the flood of 1993. DeForest was determined that it would be averted now.
Two characteristics of propane combined to make the situation dangerous. Propane was heavier than air, but lighter than water. When confined in its cylinders in a flooded area, propane would try to float to the surface. When released, it would lie atop the water in a dense cloud, caught between air and water. If the area was flooded to a sufficient depth, the 30,000-gallon propane cylinders would rise, float loose from their moorings, then break their cables and bob with the current, ramming into buildings, trees, and other obstacles. Leaks were probably inevitable, and leaks would create a dense, flammable fog that would float downstream to the Mississippi in search of a source of ignition.
Against this danger, DeForest could do little. Over the course of the night he deployed his men on rafts and boats and temporary platforms. Fire hoses, nozzles set to maximum dispersion, played on the huge cylinders in hopes that this would diffuse any leaking propane. Propane was very slightly soluble in water, if DeForest could keep his artificial rain playing on the area, he might absorb some of the propane, and scatter the rest.
By dawn it was working well. The area had flooded to a little over three feet, then receded slightly. Breaks in the levees upstream and down were keeping the pressure off the Des Peres. But then the water from Mark Twain Lake began rolling in—DeForest could see it, see brown waves rippling in from the Des Peres—and DeForest knew he was in a toe-to-toe battle with a holocaust. The waters rose. DeForest told his men to stay at their stations and summoned other units. He called in police to make certain the area was evacuated.
The pumpers pulled flood water into their intakes, then spewed it out over the tank field. From his command post on a hill overlooking the tank field, DeForest could see the propane cylinders rising, straining at their moorings.
The water just kept on rising. DeForest deployed more hoses and called for more backup. He ordered a fire boat to wait at the outlet to the Des Peres, ready to catch any cylinders that floated that far. He gave a start at the sound of a shot. One of the cylinders had broken a cable. There was another shot, another. DeForest felt sweat gathering beneath his helmet. He blinked salt droplets from his eyes and began to pray.
God help those people, he thought earnestly. God help us all. More shots, a metallic shriek. One of the cylinders broke free, began bobbing on the tide. It floated up against one of the other cylinders with a metallic clang.
“Can we corral it somehow?” One of DeForest’s deputy chiefs, with panic in his eyes. DeForest shook his head. “Do you know how much one of those things weighs? It will go where it wants. The only way we could move it around would be with motorboats, and I don’t want hot motor exhaust around any of those cylinders.”
More bangs, more cables parting. Weary hopelessness washed over DeForest. People down in the tank field were reporting the smell of propane. They asked permission to evacuate.
“Denied,” DeForest said. “Put on your respirators, and keep that water pumping.” The huge unmoored cylinders were spreading like oil on the surface of a pond. Some of them caught in a line of trees on the edge of the property. Others floated off into residential areas. DeForest didn’t have any way to chase them down. All he could do was hope that they would disperse so much that if one of them blew, it wouldn’t set off any of the others.
But he knew too much about liquid propane to really believe in that hope.
He had a daughter in college in Wisconsin. A son lived in Colorado. Both were safe. He began to mentally say goodbye to them. And to his wife, whom he had left in her housecoat on their front lawn, and whom he hadn’t been able to contact since. He hoped she would be out of the blast radius.
Two of his men breathed in too much propane and collapsed. They were dragged to ambulances and replaced. The hoses continued to flood the area with gentle rain.
Even on his little hill, DeForest could smell an occasional gust of propane. It was everywhere. The cylinders spread across the quiet inland sea. The waters were still rising. The city was very quiet. And then he saw the flame rolling in from the direction of the Des Peres, a little blue wavy line that fluttered and shifted in the wind, but that raced like lightning toward the huge leaking cylinders. DeForest turned to dive behind his car, and he thumbed the transmit button on his walkie-talkie and opened his mouth to tell his men to take cover.