Deluge (The Best Thrillers Book 2) by James Best (top romance novels txt) 📗

their call after he finished with his current guest and took a station break. After about fifteen minutes, the call screener came on to tell them that they would be on the air in less than a minute. They had prearranged that Smith would take the lead.

“This is Bob Mandel. To whom am I speaking?”

“Hi, I’m Dr. Tom from Caltech. I’m with three other PhDs, and we’re bored stiff, stuck in traffic on the I-80. One of us is from the U.S. Geological Survey, and the other two from UC Santa Barbara. First off, we want to make clear that this weather is not our fault. No, siree. So, don’t kill the messenger.”

Mandel laughed at the lame attempt at humor.

“Well, Dr. Tom, what kind of doctor are you? Are you an astrophysicist or a gynecologist?”

Since the call screener had their credentials, Mandel already knew the answer to that question.

“Seismology, Bob. I head the seismic department at Caltech. My second PhD is in civil engineering, so I know how to build dams, and I know how to shake them down to the ground.”

“Hey, if I recall, seismology is about tremors and upheavals and such,” Mandel said. “Maybe we need to talk to Chicken Little instead of you. Terra firma seems to be living up to its name at the moment. It’s the sky that’s falling. This darn rain is messing up my golf. Wise men from on high say we have an atmospheric river overhead, but all that water doesn’t want to stay up in the sky. It’s falling smack dab on our heads.”

Smith laughed, apparently with sincerity. “Yeah, that about sums it up. I just looked at my car mates. No Chicken Little, but I do have Sherrell Wilson from the USGS. Maybe she can help.”

Taking the lead from Smith, Wilson kept it tight and nontechnical. She explained atmospheric rivers and directed the listening public to the USGS website to learn more.

She finished by saying, “We haven’t seen the worst of it yet. It appears that this downpour will continue for five to seven more days.”

“Holy smoke,” Mandel said. “That sounds biblical. Nonbelievers call that the great flood myth, but Jews and Christians call it the Genesis flood—from Genesis chapters six through nine. Ya know, other cultures and religions have similar stories, including Mesopotamians, Greeks, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, Norse, and even native tribes in the Americas. I rail against California all the time, but I can’t believe we’ve been that bad.”

“I can’t speak for everyone,” Smith said, “but Santa continues to visit my home.”

“How much flooding? How bad can it get?” Mandel asked.

“Dr. Ashley is an expert on that subject,” Smith said.

As Ashley started explaining the Great Flood of 1862, Baldwin spread her thumb and index fingers wide and then slowly closed them to signal to keep it short. He used more professorial jargon than she would have wished, but kept his description succinct.

When he’d finished, Mandel said, “That’s interesting as hell, but what meaning do you think we should take from it?”

“If it’s happened before, it can happen again,” Ashley said.

“Okay, so what do you brainiacs suggest?” Mandel asked.

It had been agreed that Baldwin would take it from here. “Actually, this is Professor Ashley’s observation, but in the simplest terms, we need to drain water out to sea or store it where people don’t live.”

“That sounds simple,” Mandel said.

“Saying it and doing it are two different things. The Central Valley is getting flooded, and we need to drain it faster. Much faster. In olden days, the valley drained through Salinas, but geological uplifts blocked that exit, so now we rely solely on the California Delta to drain the valley.”

“Could we blow another path through the mountains?” Mandel joked.

“Not as farfetched as you might think,” Baldwin said. “We need to let all of our rivers, channels, and sloughs run free. No impediments. For example, we could open up the locks and earthen dam at the Sacramento Bend of the Sacramento River. It separates the water flow between the Sacramento River and the Deep Water Ship Channel. The Deep Water Ship Channel is several feet lower than the Sacramento River, and if we open it, water would gush down the channel to the sea, helping to drain the upper Central Valley faster. Also, we could eliminate all impediments to the Elk and Steamboat sloughs. Do the same on other rivers. Just let the water find its own way to the ocean. Remove all manmade obstacles.”

Mandel’s next question made Baldwin nervous. “If we do that, what’s in the way of all this gushing water? If we unconstrained every river, channel, and slough, who drowns?”

“Excellent question. Especially since our second recommendation puts a lot more water in those channels. We believe we should immediately open the spillways of every dam to drain them as fast as possible. There’s going to be a lot more rain in the next week, and our dams are full, some well beyond predefined safety limits. We’ve had two dam failures already. We need to release pressure on the dams, as well as make room to store all that water that will be coming soon.”

“Let me get this straight; the Central Valley is flooding … and you want to release more water on top of what they’re already getting?”

“It’s the lesser of two evils. If we do nothing … well, we’ll own a humongous new lake and lose $50 billon in agricultural production. Property tax revenue will be cut by at least a third and state income tax revenue in half. The state’s economy will be devastated.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Who is gonna get hit with all this water?”

“Mostly farmland, but that’ll be underwater anyway.” Baldwin hesitated. “Still … the lesser of two evils is still evil. As these rivers and channels approach the Bay Area from Sacramento, they’ll overpower homes, shopping, and industrial areas along the flood plain. We have time to evacuate people, but property damage would be substantial.”

“And you think this is a better plan?”