"It's in the west elevator shaft."
That wasn't what Grant meant by the question. "How far down?"
"About a third of the way, maybe two hundred feet."
The answer felt like a gut punch. Grant leaned back in the seat and rested his head against the cushion. Was it possible he misheard? "Sorry Brian, could you repeat that?"
"Two hundred, or maybe even two fifty."
Grant bent forward and put his head in his hands. This was much worse than he had imagined. The pressure that deep in the dam would―
Brian's voice rang in his ear. "Hello. Are you there?"
He rubbed his forehead. "Yeah Brian, I'm here." Grant hesitated at the next question, not too sure he wanted to know the answer. "You said the hole is much larger now, you said shooting out. Approximately how big is it?"
"You mean how big is the hole? I'd say let's see… maybe twenty-five or thirty-five feet."
Grant tried to picture the leak; he'd never seen a column of water that large. Actually, a thirty-foot column of water, no one on earth had, for that matter. How could there not be any casualties? "Did everyone get out of the plant?" he asked.
Brian's voice became low, almost a whisper. "I don't know, I couldn't contact them on the radio. I can only hope."
Grant pictured what amounted to tons of water falling another four hundred feet down onto the generation plants below. "Has the water destroyed the plant yet?"
Brian seemed to choose his words. "At first, the water shot out the hole so far that it cleared the plant completely. It didn't even touch it. By now, some of the water must be hitting the plant, but I can't really tell, there's too much mist down there."
Grant tried to picture the whole canyon filled with mist. "Are you alone?"
"I was alone in the visitor center, but there's a couple of my men at the upper access roads. Anyway, the cops showed up about a half hour ago."
Grant pictured a dozen police cars parked haphazardly. "What are they doing?"
"Mostly keeping people away, you know. But some of them are just looking themselves."
He imagined the spectacle and how temping it would be to just stand and stare. Grant wondered if he would be able to not stare after he arrived.
"Hey, I need to go." The security guard sounded anxious to get off the phone.
"Okay, Brian. I'll be there as soon as I can." Grant replaced the phone in the compartment.
Wendy was staring at him with wide eyes. "Is it bad?" she asked.
Grant sighed. "Oh yeah."
"The dam?"
Grant nodded. "Yeah. Looks like somebody blew it up. It's breaking apart."
Her eyes grew even bigger. "Will people die?"
Grant considered the question. How could people not die if the dam failed completely? "Luckily, the area downstream of the dam was the Grand Canyon, for three hundred miles. Not a lot of people. If someone could just warn them." He hesitated, then looked down. "I'm sure some people will get hurt."
Wendy just stared, then her demeanor changed as she remembered something. She offered Grant about twenty pages of paper. "This just came in on the fax machine. It's from Julia."
Grant took the pages and flipped them around. The title page read, "DAM FAILURE INUNDATION REPORT, Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona." He scanned the table of contents, then looked up.
"Wendy, how soon will we be there?"
"We should land in Page in about fifteen or twenty minutes."
Not enough time to read the entire document. He started reading. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wendy walk toward the back of the plane. After the second sentence, Grant skipped ahead, looking for paragraphs with numbers. Farther into the document he found tables that included flood depths and times downstream at various places in the Grand Canyon. At some point he realized he had been muttering. His stomach began to boil. He had to consciously stop himself from rubbing his forehead. Near the back of the document, he found an analysis of what would happen after all the floodwater from Lake Powell joined with Lake Mead. It described theoretical water levels and their impact on Hoover Dam. Grant swore under his breath.
Fifty-two-year-old Ted Johnson leaned upstream in the current and took a step to his left. He felt with his toes to find a rock large enough to act as a perch, but the rubber waders weren't the greatest for feeling around. He wiped sweat off his forehead for the third time in what seemed like the last minute. He was in serious trouble.
The morning had started out easy. He woke before the sun, and threw all his gear in the back of the pickup. Then it was just a short drive to Lee's Ferry. He always arrived early, before the rafters and other fishermen so he could be first down the windy road and grab the best parking spot, the one next to the river. Although he couldn't see the sun yet because of the steep canyon walls, Ted could always see the light from the sunrise on the rocks high above. That put Ted in the river right when those rainbow trout were just waking up and looking for their breakfast. And this morning, just like every other morning, he waded right out into the shallow river, staying close to the gravel strips. As usual, Ted had been overly careful to stay out of deep places. Any fool knew that you couldn't swim with waders on.
And for the first hour everything had happened just like any other day. By then he already had three big ones in his basket. But then, when he cast his bait over a nice green hole that was sure to be a virtual trout condominium, he felt the cold squeeze of the waders a little too high, up above his privates. It was a sure signal that he was too deep.
The funny thing was, he didn't remember walking deeper. And when he tried to climb back up the strip of gravel, he could have sworn the water had risen in the last few minutes. It was at that moment that he looked around and knew there was more water. He confirmed his suspicion by looking back at his pickup. There was definitely more water between him and it, than when he arrived. After climbing up to a higher point in the river, he looked back toward where he needed to go. It was time for a big decision. He could either try to wade back, or strip off the waders, shuck his clothes, and swim for it. He had taken a moment on the decision, inspecting upstream and down, debating one route verses another, and calculating the value of the gear he would be abandoning. It would be risky, but he had decided to wade.
Ted Johnson now knew he had made the wrong decision. His feet were barely holding against the strong current, and worse, even with water up to his waist, he was fairly sure he was on a high point, meaning that any direction would take him deeper. And nobody had to tell him he could not fight the current if the water levels got any higher, which Ted now knew was happening.
He scanned the bank to see if anyone was around to help, but saw no one. If only he could get out of the boots now. Unfortunately, the only way possible would be to first flood them, relieving the squeeze, and then try to swim out of them. It was a skill that he had heard of others practicing in a pool, in a controlled environment. At the time, he hadn't even considered practicing the skill. Now, however, he would pay anything for that knowledge. He would forfeit his favorite rod and reel for a quick lesson.
In fact, at that moment, the idea of his rod and reel meaning anything to him seemed absurd, even though an hour before, he would have chosen his graphite pole over his pickup. He looked down at the rod in his right hand, a few minutes ago his most prized possession, now a lead weight. He tossed it away and watched it disappear under the current. The basket over his arm was next, and then the hat with his best flies attached to it.
The motion of pulling off the basket upset his balance. He felt himself tipping. He reached with his left foot for the next toehold downstream. However, even a few feet downstream the water felt deeper. His foot slid in the gravel, finding no holds. To retain his balance, he let his other foot go. Now he was a passenger to the current. If he didn't find a hold in a second, it would be too late, although a part of Ted Johnson thought it already might be.