"So you fixed it?" said Lloyd.
"It's not open yet," Grant answered.
He turned to see Charlie climbing over the rail. He looked terrible. His un-tucked shirt was smeared with dirt and soaked with sweat under both arms and in the middle of his chest. The three other workers followed, handing the ladder up as they came. With everyone on the deck, Charlie first nodded at Grant, then keyed the radio. "Okay, we're all out. Let 'er rip."
Grant watched over the side of the dam at number five as the switch was activated. He could hear the metal gate moving. After only a few seconds the small stream exiting the spillway increased. The stream quickly grew until it was almost half the size of the other four.
Charlie's head showed up next to Grant's. He yelled to be heard over the water. "The right motor is smoking like hell."
Grant looked over at him. "What'd you tell him?"
Charlie grinned. "I told him to let it smoke. We'll replace the motor later."
The sound of the gate raising was barely audible with the noise of the water. But Grant knew it was still moving because the water exiting number five continued to grow, now almost equaling the other four.
Charlie's radio squawked something indiscernible and he walked to the middle of the dam where it was quieter. He said something into the radio, but Grant couldn't hear. Charlie looked back at Grant, then walked toward him. "We burned up the right motor. It's on fire."
Grant looked back at the streams of water blasting from the spillways. If number five's flow was less than the other four, it wasn't by much. He turned back to Charlie. "Is it all the way up?"
Charlie adjusted his glasses and shook his head. "It's still got a couple feet to go."
Surely, a couple of feet wouldn't make much difference. But Grant knew it was a wish more than a fact. Grant grabbed Shauna's arm and led her to the middle of the dam where the sound wasn't as loud. "I need you to watch the water levels, by the minute. Number five is jammed again and this time we're not going to be able to fix it."
"We're already monitoring the levels every minute. But Havasu needs to rise higher until the water reaches the tops of the spillways. Only then will the spillways be at full capacity. That's when we expect the water levels to stabilize."
Grant nodded. "How soon?"
She looked at her watch. "Next half hour?"
Grant nodded again. "Okay, keep me informed." He watched her turn and walk quickly through the police officers until she was out of sight.
Grant turned and looked at Charlie again. "Order a new motor and get it installed ASAP. These spillways are gonna be open for two months. The longer we wait to open the spillway that last two feet, the more likely the water is going to damage the head-gate. Besides, if it turns out that it isn't open enough, and water starts going over the top of the dam, you'll need that motor to fix the problem."
Charlie nodded and walked away. Grant returned to the edge of the dam and stood next to Lloyd, observing the water leaving the spillways. Both stared for a few minutes without saying anything. Finally Lloyd broke the trance. "All right, Mr. Stevens, what's next?"
Grant straightened and they both walked slowly across the dam. "As soon as Shauna's water levels start to stabilize, we're off." He pointed downstream. "With all that water, Headgate Rock Dam, fourteen miles downstream, is probably getting topped already."
"You can't do anything about it?"
"We already tried. We told them to dynamite it, you know, open it up to let all this water through. But they refused."
Grant saw Lloyd's eyes grow and his mouth contort before he continued. "It's not going to matter anyway. The water'll tear the dam apart in a couple of hours. It'll just flood a little upstream before it lets go."
"What's upstream?"
"The reservoir is called Lake Moovalya. It's tiny compared to Lake Havasu, or Mojave, let alone Mead. More like a wide spot in the river. There's not much on the banks. They might get a little flooding. It shouldn't last long, though. I think Shauna's numbers predicted that at full flow, it'd take less than fifteen minutes to fill up the whole lake and spill over the top of the dam."
Lloyd pointed toward Parker Dam's spillways. "Doesn't Headgate Rock Dam have spillways?"
"Sure. But nowhere near big enough to handle 500,000 cubic feet per second."
"Why not? The other dams upstream got 'em."
Grant shrugged. "The dams downstream from Lake Havasu were only built to divert water for irrigation and aqueducts. Relatively speaking, there was no intent to do water storage or flood management. That would be handled upstream, primarily at Hoover and Glen Canyon."
"But what about a disaster like this?"
"You mean a complete failure of the Glen Canyon Dam? Believe me, that was never planned for at any of the dams, including Hoover. Keep in mind that all these dams — Hoover, Davis, Parker and even Headgate Rock — were all built before Glen Canyon. So they were mostly worried about controlling spring runoff and generating electricity. Handling flood waters from a failed mega-dam wouldn't have even been considered."
"Well, right now, you're probably wishing they had been designed for it, aren't you?"
Grant considered Lloyd's comment. What if all the dams downstream were equipped with red buttons: press here to engage management system for failed dam upstream. It definitely would have made life easier over the last thirty-six hours. But realistically some disasters are too big to warrant contingency plans. What if all 747's were to crash in one day, or what if California's big earthquake finally hit and everything west of the San Andreas fault sank into the ocean, or what if all the nukes self-detonated? These are all "what ifs" that are too expensive and unlikely to prepare for. The strategy, instead, is to do everything possible to prevent the events from occurring, versus contingency planning for the events themselves. Grant would place the failure of the Glen Canyon Dam in this category. How could you possibly prepare for it?
Grant smiled at Lloyd. "Right now I'd be happy if we just end up saving Hoover, Davis, and Parker. I might get fired for it, but I expect the flood to wipe out all the other dams downstream. That, I would consider a huge success, considering the cards I've been dealt. We could rebuild all of the small dams in a year if we had to."
"Then why would you get fired for it? Aren't your bosses going to see it the same way?"
Grant smiled at Lloyd. "Is your boss logical?" He didn't wait for an answer. "No, this thing is going to be a media circus. When they finally get a death count from Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, show video of all the floods including flooded farmland, floating houses, dead cows, damaged casinos, stranded houseboats, nobody's going to be saying 'just think how bad it would have been if Grant Stevens hadn't saved Hoover Dam'. They won't be looking for heroes, and if they do, it'll be some park ranger who dragged a fat lady out of the Grand Canyon before she drowned. More likely, the media is going to come down hard on the Bureau of Reclamation on this one. They'll want a scapegoat. And I can't see my boss volunteering."
"You really think they'll come after you?"
"Hey, look at what happened in Oklahoma. Remember when that whacko blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building and killed all those people including the kids in the daycare center?"
"Yeah, but he intentionally blew them up."
"The bomber is not who I'm talking about. If you remember, the president vowed to track down everyone responsible. The bomber had a friend who supposedly taught him how to build fertilizer bombs on his farm."
"I remember him. Isn't he the one they want to re-try in Oklahoma?"
"Yeah. He's only serving a life sentence, but they want the death penalty." Grant overemphasized the word "only" to make the statement sound more sarcastic.