There were even fractures within the long-standing alliances the divers had brought to the job. DJ blew off the last day of work in Tap’s yard, deciding he didn’t need to waste time driving north to New Hampshire just so he could accompany the other divers on the drive south to Deer Island. That unexcused absence, coming on the heels of his flagrant tardiness earlier in the week, torqued off Tap. Privately he laid into DJ, telling the party boy that he needed to grow up and take the job more seriously, rather than putting him in a bind with the Norwesco guys, who already suspected Tap of giving him preferential treatment. Tap went so far as to report DJ’s absence129 to the union hall, telling them they needed to get their shop steward in line. Now, as Tap walked on eggshells around Harald, DJ found himself in the unusual position of walking on eggshells around Tap.
As Harald ran a hose along Tap’s driveway, he struggled to get the system working right. Finally he muttered something in frustration to Tap and then hopped into his car and drove off. Tap took that moment, late in the training week, to call all the divers into the Black Dog shop. All week he had been trying to walk a fine line. He was conscious that this was clearly Harald’s project—not his—but he was also aware that the training was taking place in his own yard and that he had a responsibility to the divers, especially the Black Dog guys. “Is everyone comfortable with this?” he asked the divers. “Are we all right?” They told him how frustrated they were that key pieces of the equipment hadn’t arrived yet, especially the mixer, and that Harald was so lousy at communicating with them. But the divers also told Tap they thought things would eventually work out.
Hoss raised a specific question. As designed, the system called for the three divers doing the actual plug-pulling to remain attached to the main breathing supply through fifteen hundred feet of umbilical. As they had been setting up the system during the week, Hoss noticed that the umbilical hoses had a relatively narrow diameter of three-eighths of an inch. Now he asked, Would that width be able to provide enough volume for the three guys working at the end of the tunnel? Wouldn’t they be better off with a halfinch-diameter hose? By the time he raised that question, Harald had returned to the site and was ready with a reassuring reply. Everything had been calculated properly and approved, Harald said. The size of the umbilical was more than adequate.
To Tap’s ears, Harald’s response sounded uncomfortably familiar. All week, when Tap had asked him one question or another, Harald had invariably responded, “The system’s been approved130” or “It’s an approved design.” As if to underscore that point, a Kiewit safety officer and other officials with the contractor had visited Tap’s yard to observe the setup, while project sponsor Tom Corry had flown in131 from Kiewit headquarters to Deer Island to see this final operation through to its conclusion. Tap knew that if the contractor or the sewer agency had concerns with the Norwesco plan, they had ample opportunities to raise them. Still, by the end of the week, Tap felt he needed to escalate things somehow. He called Norwesco owner Roger Rouleau back in Spokane and relayed the divers’ concerns about how rushed the whole setup process seemed to be. “Hey, Roger,” Tap said, “I don’t think Harald’s got this squared away very well.”
Roger told Tap he’d look into it. Later that day he reached Harald by phone. Harald admitted that they’d run into some problems, but he reassured Roger that things had been worked out. “Is everything tested132?” Roger asked.
“Yes it is,” Harald replied.
When Roger pressed further, Harald said, “Things are going fine. No worries.” Even though Roger owned the company, he had only a basic understanding of the system that Harald, in consultation with their suppliers, had designed. In fact, no one besides Harald seemed to have the complete picture, and he seemed to be guarding that exclusivity. Over their years working together, Roger had developed such abiding confidence in Harald’s capabilities that he saw no reason to question him now. Trusting him had proved very good for Norwesco’s bottom line. He suspected the angst that had been surfacing in Tap’s yard was simply the result of Harald’s poor social skills. Roger wished Harald could have found it in him to huddle up the crew and work through a problem collaboratively. But he knew Harald was too much of a lone wolf to do that. Still, it was enough for Roger to know that Harald had worked out the kinks all on his own.
And Tap really didn’t feel he could argue with that. When he had pressed DJ and Billy and the other divers on whether they felt everything was going to be all right, they had replied in the affirmative. All dive jobs—especially the most complicated ones—have a few bugs early on. Sometimes those problems can be addressed during the preparation period. Other times you just have to push ahead and figure things out once the job actually begins.
7. The Cavalry
Just past seven o’clock in the morning on Monday, July 12, the caravan of Humvees that had left Tap’s yard arrived on Deer Island, navigating across the narrow spit of land that connected it to the mainland. The trail of muscular guys in muscular Hummers charging onto the island gave the divers the impression of an invading army. And for many of the island workers who had spent the last decade struggling to get the tunnel done, it was a welcome sight. They adopted the posture of long-aggrieved peasants showering a conquering army with rice and flowers, on the assumption that the invaders couldn’t help but improve their desperate lot.
Dave Corkum was no peasant, but he was just about ready to toss flowers. As point man in the tunnel for construction manager Kaiser, he’d spent a draining ten-year sentence on Deer Island. He knew it would all have been for nothing if they couldn’t get those fifty-five plugs out. When Kiewit officials had introduced him to Harald Grob, Corkum had been wowed by the engineer’s intelligence and poise. His faith in Harald had only grown when he saw the cool competence with which the Canadian engineer had fielded the questions about his novel plan from Corkum and his counterparts with tunnel owner MWRA and designer PB. When Corkum asked the engineer if he’d ever used a similar kind of mixed-gas system before, Harald had assured him, “This is something we do all the time.”
“Where do you use it?” Corkum had asked.
“In small submarines133.”
That impressed Corkum, as did Harald’s comment that they were using mostly “off-the-shelf’ gadgets that were simply being combined in a unique way. Corkum was comforted by the notion that as long as it was in expert hands, Harald’s setup was a lot less exotic than it appeared to be.
Of course, conscious of what he’d learned in his law school classes, Corkum had been careful not to “touch” the Norwesco plan too much. He didn’t want to fall into a Kiewit legal trap that ensnared his employer or the MWRA into somehow “owning” a problem that contractually lay entirely in the contractor’s lap. That helped explain why he had to tread so carefully around this Norwesco deal. Kiewit had failed to supply him with a report he’d requested, detailing what Norwesco had found on its fact-finding mission the previous summer, when crews had tested for levels of oxygen as well as explosive gases like methane and carbon monoxide. But he didn’t push it134. If they had found anything worrisome, Corkum assumed, he would have heard about it. The plug-pulling plan that Harald had crafted with the help of his suppliers had said only that liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen would be blended for the divers in some way, but offered no specifics on what type of mixing equipment would be used. “As far as I knew135,” Corkum would say later, “it was a black box, and it came in liquid one end and came out a breathable mixture at the other end.” He saw the full vetting of the design as Kiewit’s responsibility. After some modest back-and-forth, Kaiser and PB had signed off on the Norwesco plan, although they were careful not to offer any kind of formal approval. Instead, they had returned it to the contractor with “no exceptions taken.” About as far as Corkum had been willing to probe136 was in asking Norwesco for a detailed schematic for its oxygen-supply plan to ensure that the Humvees’ internal combustion engines would operate in the tunnel. He asked for no similar schematic of the divers’ breathing supply.
129 (Chapter 6, note 7)
Tap went so far as to report DJ’s absence: Tap Taylor, deposition; Taylor, interview by author.