Authors: Benjamin Blue
21
CORDEX had spent mountains of dollars and years of time pushing through the Storm Killer proposal.
They, at first, had needed to convince the insurance industry that Storm Killer had the potential to greatly reduce, or even eliminate, destruction and damage caused by tropical storms.
Once the insurance industry was solidly behind the proposal, they had to jointly convince the United States Congress and two different administrations that Storm Killer was feasible and that the required technology existed already. The final obstacle was establishing a multi-hundred billion dollar project was a reasonable cost when compared to the long-term benefits.
Congress first began listening after Hurricane Katrina all but annihilated New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast. Even now, years later, the city was just a ghost of its former vibrant self.
But it wasn’t until Hurricane Wynona in the decade following Katrina that Congress and the prior administration was finally convinced to act.
The Florida cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater no longer existed. At least, they no longer existed as they had prior to Wynona. Now, they existed as small villages scattered among large swatches of flattened piles of rubble that had been office buildings, retail businesses, and homes.
Wynona had hit at the worst possible time. She had churned ashore at celestial high tide. The moon and sun were at their closest positions to Earth and aligned at the new moon phase when Wynona made land. This alignment caused the unusual high tide of ninety centimeters. The storm surge came on top of this high tide.
St. Petersburg and Clearwater were on a peninsula separating Tampa Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. The peninsula was lined by a string of barrier islands down the entire length of the west coast. These islands were where such well-known beach communities as Clearwater Beach, Madeira, Indian Rocks, Indian Shores, Treasure Island and St. Petersburg Beach were located.
Tampa was located due east of Clearwater across the bay at a distance of about twenty kilometers.
Wynona was an immense storm and fed off the hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico. She had achieved category five status a full day before landfall. Her eye came ashore a ten kilometers south of Tarpon Springs, just north of Clearwater, was an old town that had hosted a fleet of sponge boats.
The early sponge industry created a need for eating-places at the docks for the boat crews. Soon, as news of this unusual industry spread, people began to come to the docks of Tarpon Springs to see the sponges brought in. Shops opened so that the tourists could purchase sponges and other souvenirs. Some of the original shops and restaurants were still in operation when Wynona struck, owned by the same families that started them.
The series of tornadoes accompanying the eye wall had flattened Tarpon Springs and the dock area was reverting a marshland as the remaining debris slowly sank into the water.
Because of the eye’s landing site, the storm surge was blown directly through the mouth of Tampa Bay. Billions of decaliters of seawater poured through the narrow mouth of the bay. And the immense storm surge and the high tide caused Wynona to push water up and over the seawalls of lower St. Petersburg. At the storm’s height, St Petersburg became an island. The sea cut across the peninsula from Treasure Island to the northeast through Pinellas Park onward to the bay just south of the Courtney-Campbell Causeway.
A large portion of the west side of Clearwater lay many meters under water. Clearwater Beach no longer existed. Only the top floors of the tallest buildings could seen jutting up out of the water like old Florentine homes in Venice’s canals.
The barrier islands that lined the peninsula’s west coast ceased to exist for almost twenty-four hours until the filthy waters retreated back into the Gulf of Mexico.
Across the bay in Tampa, water poured up and over the city. Even though it was further inland, it suffered the same fate as St. Petersburg. Water stood five meters deep from the edge of the bay all the way to Kennedy Blvd.
While storm surge is the primary destroyer of property and life, Wynona had a second weapon of mass destruction aimed at the Tampa Bay area, wind. Wynona was known to have spawned over one hundred and fifty tornadoes along the west coast and central Florida. The sustained winds of Wynona were measured at two hundred and twenty-five kilometers and hour. Gusts were over three hundred kilometers an hour. While these winds were destroyers for structures built to pre-Katrina building codes. While the tornadoes leveled most structures built to even the most rigid building codes.
Buildings that had survived the floods were blown apart by tornadoes and the cyclonic winds. Over five thousand people died as a result of the combined wind and flood damages.
It was now five years after Wynona and CORDEX was readying their Storm Killer team. It was felt that the team didn’t have a good comprehension of how important their mission would be. If they could kill a hurricane, many lives and many billions of dollars of property damage could be avoided. The CORDEX management decided the only way to give the team the right level of comprehension was to have them actually experience a full fledge hurricane. Of the entire station compliment of one hundred and twenty-eight people, only twenty-eight had actually been in a hurricane. Those twenty-eight were aware of the power of such storms and were sensitive to the desire that Storm Killer succeed in its mission.
Over the last two hurricane seasons, the St. Thomas area had been directly hit by three storms of strength of at least category three. The latest forecasts were that the area would be probable for another storm this season. The odds were also high that the Caymans would be hit.
CORDEX made arrangements for housing of the entire team on one of two small islands within both possible storm tracks.
In St. Thomas, they rented the facility on Little Saint James Island. This seventy-two acre island had a single set of manmade structures that had been the home of Kevin Costner, the actor.
The house had been severely damaged by Hurricane Marilyn, a category three storm, in 1995. Now, rebuilt and converted to a very expensive retreat for the rich and famous, it had four separate bedroom pavilions. CORDEX had removed the furniture from the complex and set up a barracks environment with one hundred army cots, a mobile field kitchen and a medical dispenser. The home had satellite TV and radio for staying connected to the outside world.
The company’s plan was to airlift the hundred-man team to St. Thomas thirty-six hours before forecasted landfall. From the St. Thomas airport, the whole team would be ferried to the island.
And so, on September 1
st
, one year before Storm Killer was to go operational, the Kim Danby, Lt. Randall James, and Dan Hoch, the designated Storm Killer security team found themselves standing in front of the lone house with ninety-seven other team members watching the ferry boat depart from the island’s single dock.
Hurricane Buford was due to hit the island in twenty-eight hours. The eastern skies were already clouding over in the direction Buford approaching storm center.
This was the first time all three of the team members had been together. Kim Danby had spent training time with Hoch in Houston, but Lt. James, as the unit’s senior officer, had been at the Cape in Florida establishing the protocols and procedures to be used by his team thousands of miles above the Earth.
Hoch and Danby were taking the opportunity to size up their team leader.
Lt. Randall James was a rather striking tall ebony skinned man in his early thirties. His build was one of a man who took care of his body through rigorous exercise. His almond colored eyes gleamed and sparkled with an almost internal brilliance.
When Kim and Dan had inspected his personnel jacket, his file had not given any background prior to his hiring by CORDEX. All prior history was closed to viewing and simply marked, “Classified, Restricted Access”.
Kim flashed a smile at him and asked, “What shall we call you? Is Randall alright”
The lieutenant turned to her and, without any external sign of emotion, replied, “I prefer Lt. James, please. I like to stand on formality Officer Danby.”
Kim was a little taken back by the seeming unfriendliness of the man. She stuttered a reply, “Yes, sir!”
With that short exchange the initial ground rules were set. While Kim and Dan shared a more friendly relationship, they treated their commander as simply a superior officer. From that point forward, he was to be known simply as Lieutenant James and addressed that way.
The security team took up their position in their assigned quarters in the east wing of the house. They would act as the police and security force for the one hundred assembled people during the upcoming exercise of living through a severe hurricane.
The compound was under the nominal command of the proposed management team that the Storm killer station would be turned over to when it was complete and ready for operation. This executive team called the group together, and doled out assignments for each person in the group. Some would act as cooks, others as hurricane preparation squads, others would inventory the supplies CORDEX had left for their needs, and still others would perform duties related to their skills such as the medical team. One group was dispatched to assemble the mobile communications van and run coaxial cable from the van to the house. This would allow the same team to monitor the TV and radio reports on the storm twenty-four by seven and provide hourly updates to the assembled group on weather conditions and any safety items they felt would be important to the overall group.
The hurricane preparation squads began to board up the house’s windows and fuel and inspect the twin power generators that provided electricity to the whole facility. Another squad assembled the cots and prepared the bed linens. The medical team established a small infirmary in the room next to the room being used by Lt. James’ security team.
Prior to bedding down in their respective barracks at the end of the day, Kim and Dan took time to run through their Karate
Kata,
or forms. The Kata is a series of techniques used to develop strength and posture. Currently they were working on Kata for developing leg strength. Hoch had gotten Kim interested in marital arts and was giving her a two to three hour training session each day.
They were using the patio in front of the pool for their training area.
Lieutenant James had been returning from the portable field latrine when he spied his subordinates ending up their practice session. He noted the grace of movement Kim showed and the raw power obvious in Hoch’s frame. He started to walk toward them when they bowed to each other and picked up their towels. As they began toweling the sweat from their brows, Kim leaned forward and gave Dan a kiss. The lieutenant stopped and rethought his uninvited breaking in on his subordinates’ free time. It appeared that there was more to their relationship than just associates.
Lt. James thought,
As long as they do their jobs in a professional manner, what they do after hours is their own business.
With that he turned and walked away leaving Kim and Dan toweling dry. If he had stayed and approached them he might have heard their conversation after the kiss.
Dan said in a startled voice, “What the hell was
that
for?”
Kim laughed and replied, “It just a Thank You to a good friend who has introduced me to a wonderful pastime. I love Karate!”
Dan returned the laugh, “Okay. I thought you were coming on to me. Damn girl, while I like you a lot, I don’t like you
that way
.”
Kim smiled, “I know, Dan. Me, too! You’re not my idea of a romantic interest. Your too much of a beast with all of those muscles for my taste.”
She continued, “But really Dan, the Kata seems to help reduce the pain in my old injuries.”
Kim turned toward the back of the house and saw Lt. James walking away from them. She thought, I wonder if he saw me kiss Dan? Crap. That’s all I need! To have my boss think I’m having a relationship with my work partner. I’ll have to figure out some way to get it across to him that Dan and I aren’t an item.
The situation receded from Kim’s thoughts as the hurricane descended on them. The thought of talking to her boss was replaced by the animal need of just surviving the approaching monster that would all but flatten their refuge.
22
Hurricane Buford hit St Thomas and the surrounding islands with a vengeance. While small and weak by comparison with hurricanes like Katrina, it still packed a tremendous one-two punch of wind and water.
The resort’s large plate glass windows looking out on the pool and onward to Saint John’s Island had been left un-boarded. It was felt they were protected under the three-meter deep overhang of the patio roof. The roof was masonry and was actually the floor of the deck that came off of the master bedroom suite and ran the length of the house on floor up.