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FICTION FICTION
In the loose community of civic duty reservists, some are part-timers supporting their local communities - the heirs of the volunteer tradition. Others are hobbyists, would-be re-enactors playing a stricter game for bigger stakes. A chunk are would-be careerists trying to break into what passes for a "full time" job - 16 hours per week - in public service.
Aside from a few private forums, we don't interact all that much outside our own comfort zones. But there are a few distinctions. "I was at..." and various reactions based on the experience and prejudices of the listener.
I was at Sacramento River. Three years ago, a bridge complex over the Sacramento River on the old I-80 corridor had a major structural failure, later traced to ground subsidence and a reset error in seismic monitoring software. Just as the ultimate cause of the San Bruno pipeline fire was a voltage defect in a modulator-demodulator network device ("modem") that falsely reported a low pressure condition and ramped up the pressure to spec until the pipeline exploded, the ultimate cause of a disaster in San San tends to be something pedestrian.
Six thousand dead.
I was at Sacramento River...
###
A steady stream of capsules arrived and departed at the transfer station. As I stepped off the capsule with several other reservists, it turned colors to white highlighted in red and joined the line of waiting ambulances.
I had responded wearing what I usually wear and carrying what I usually carry - all I really own. A smartweave shirt, jeans that are neither made of cotton nor absorb water, a solid pair of boots and a backpack also made of smartweave that contained several useful items.
The Staging Officer was wearing a vest that proclaimed her role. She looked sharply at each of us and gave us our assignments, slotting us into the existing emergency response organization based on our skills and experience.
"Report to Medical for Critical Care. Report to 2nd Battalion Heavy Rescue, draw a respirator. Report to Traffic Control. Report to Morgue. Report to Medical., stretcher-bearer. Hazmat Team 4, suit up."
She looked at me.
"Establish CSAR-6. Conduct hasty evaluation riverbank south. You and you, CSAR-6, search and recovery team. You, CSAR-6, hoverboat pilot. That's the four of you, go."
My shirt changed color to yellow and the back now read "CSAR-6 ANDERSON TEAM LEADER." My three compatriots also now wore yellow shirts with CSAR-6 and their last names TSAO HERNANDEZ COOLEY - the latter the pilot.
"Let's go. I'm Anderson," I said over my shoulder as I consulted the incident graphic. Obviously we needed a boat, and in all likelihood Logistics would have it.
Logistics was a farmer's field, now ruined, which contained all manner of devices and equipment. As we walked past, capsules and bots and a few humans with LOG vests were delivering an astonishing amount of gear. My smartware careted the boat, the helmets, the packages of inflatable life preservers and throw rings and the GPS tags we would need.
We rushed. As the pilot pulled the straps to uncrate the boat and the other two team members pulled gear, I quickly reviewed the Incident Commander's intent.
Thirty acres of void space for heavy rescue. Over five thousand persons missing. Seven known hazardous materials spills, all life threatening. Two reactors with cooling integrity in question. We were twenty minutes into the problem.
But my piece was water rescue. X number of people may have been able to swim out or washed downstream. Exactly four of us could be spared to try to help them. We were it. CSAR-6 was the water rescue piece. If we blew it, it was blown.
"Anderson, commanding California Search and Rescue Team 6 ad hoc, Sacramento River incident, signin 1103 hours. Personnel per slug. Gearing up. Water rescue tasking."
The pilot was now powering up the boat and the other two team members were loading gear. I was putting on my personal protective equipment - inflatable life preserver, rescue harness, SCUBA facemask loose around my neck but with straps properly adjusted, heavy monoweave gloves. I quickly read through the incident map - two of the hazmat spills were in the river.
Then I climbed aboard the boat and we hovered over the ground in ground effect. I used my smartware to draw a course from the farmer's field to the water line. Cooley acknowledged silently by flickering his callsign before smoothly applying power.
Tsao took port side and Hernandez took starboard side. They rigged lifelines first, then rescue lines, then throw buoys. Reluctantly, Hernandez then loaded the projector with the GPS tags.
The 33 foot [ten meters] hovercraft shuddered as we crossed the interface from land to water. We had already bypassed survivors, who were trying to make their way through the mud farther away from the river. I used my smartware to designate two of them. Medic bots from the Logistics cache acknowledged and started on their way to the injured persons.
A bot was not smart enough to do this job. The boat probably could have driven itself to the water without running anyone over, and navigated close enough to a single survivor in the water to be boarded, but further response was a Traveling Salesman type problem that could overload even the best expert systems. There was no right or perfect answer; so it was a human problem.
I flagged a running display for hazardous chemicals and radioactives. The latter was thankfully well within background limits. The chemical count was nasty - if one had grown up in the well manicured 21st century, and thought that 300ppm exposure to hydrocarbons would require decontamination. As someone who had once handled gasoline with his bare hands, I was not quite as worried. I set the display to IDLH 1 day, 4 hours, 1 hour and 30 minutes. The streaks and whirls of contamination cleared. IDLH for Immediate Danger to Life and Health.
The life threatening chemical I was most worried about was all around us, dihydrogen oxide or H20. The water of the river. The acronym came back to me unbidden: SOFA-HIP. Swiftwater Oxygen Fratricide Acidosis Hypothermia Ingestion Predation. The factors that kill people in the water.
Swiftwater - the river continued to flow sluggishly through the collapse area. Certainly numbers of entombed persons had drowned - but no one was going to be beaten to death by the current before having the chance to drown. The flow meter on my display confirmed my eyeball assessment - carried downstream, not pummeled by obstructions or rocks.
Oxygen - a person could drown in less than six inches of water if they could not get their mouth or nose out of the water. A person who passed out could not prevent this unless they were wearing a special life preserver, an old style "TYPE II PFD."
Some people could swim, but surprisingly enough, many people in San San cannot. The simple skill of "drownproofing" - which anyone could learn - was not taught as part of the mandatory school curriculum.
Fratricide - a drowning person would fight to keep from drowning. They can become so panicked that they would attack would-be rescuers or other drowning persons.
Acidosis - water in the lungs would throw off the body's PH balance, a medical emergency that required oxygenation and medication to support.
Hypothermia - cold water starts the clock on sluggishness and confusion, and ultimately unconsciousness.
See oxygen above.
Ingestion - if they don't drown, people can end up drinking some of the water, which has secondary effects ranging from throwing off the pH balance due to salinity, poisoning if the water is contaminated, and relatively easy to treat illness if the water contains bacteria or viruses, which untreated water does essentially by definition.
Predation - some animals and invertebrates would attack people in the water, most notably sharks. Not a factor according to the Ecology Guide, Sacramento Valley.
Of all the above, the biggest fight was Oxygen or simply countering the effects of immersion. I felt the "PONG" tone through my feet as the hovercraft started active sonar scanning from sensors extended down into the water.
People weakly struggled out of the water or on the shoreline. But we also saw bodies, floating face down.
Hernandez quite properly started shooting them.
Meanwhile, I read the active sonar readings from the water flow "under" the disaster area. There were people trapped down there.
A warning careted across my screen. "DANGER HIGH ENERGY DRILLING WITHIN 2KM YOUR POSITION. SECONDARY FLASH EFFECTS." The viewscreen darkened in anticipation.
An enormous CRACK of superheated air flashing to vacuum swept over us as we turned away. I focused instead on the data flooding both the viewscreen and my smartware. The tags Hernandez had shot people with were flooding us with data, mostly blood oxygenation levels.
I looked at how many and subvocalized a request for medic and rescue bots immediately.
"CSAR 6 Anderson estimate thirty numbers thirty persons triaged Immediate for oxygenation emergency requesting same number medic bots and half number rescue bots time now time now time now."
The response was immediate and frightening.
"Six medic bots assigned. No rescue bots available, life safety priority."
Cooley was already drifting the hovercraft towards the bodies. I moved from the center console and helped Tsao rig harnesses to them, dragging them out of the water with loops under their shoulders. Some started breathing, not a few vomited. But some were not breathing, and I hoisted these higher, then to the slippery deck.
I opened a rescue locker and pulled out a normally disposable Bag Valve Mask, a most primitive device consisting of a face mask and hand-pumped bellows. Not disposable today. It remained connected to the airboat's oxygen supply by a long tube, which started flowing when I picked up the device.
Behind us, we carefully did not look at where the orbital laser was digging a really big really quick hole in the ground.
Someone at Corps of Engineers or CalFire was really desperate to clear a passage to something that would probably kill everyone in a nice huge radius if they didn't. Such as a fusion reactor without coolant going subcritical.
We hadn't been ordered to evacuate, so we kept working.
I moved to my first patient, got a good grip on their head, tilted it back, and bagged. Once, twice, again. My smartware showed their O2 levels going up.
From then on it was a desperate game of "put the mask on the face, bag a few times,. go to the next one" gauging progress mostly by improving oxygenation levels.
Two medic bots hovered uselessly overhead until I ordered them to fire stabilization sticky harpoon darts to the hovercraft hull and use the harpoon cabling for station keeping. They then started secondary treatment of some of the seriously injured.
Amazingly, a couple of the survivors who had been in the water were stirring themselves to help. Hernandez showed them how to operate harnesses and pull people up over the side. Thanks to the wonders of modern polyfilament technology, the boat could make as many harnesses as we needed from its supply spools - we carried the equivalent of fifty _kilometers_ of rope, in two spaces about the size of an old time car trunk.
The hovercraft finally gave me an OVERLOAD STABILITY warning. I viewed the graphic and the safety margin and promptly overrode the warning. We had a good margin before we'd have to start off-loading survivors.
The eye-hurting reflected brilliance of the laser shut off suddenly. I could see on the windscreen display that a horde of rescue bots was rushing towards the hole. That made sense, and explained why we got none.
Eight minutes later, we'd cleared the river - anyone knocked into the water, or who'd swam for it, was either on board or the GPS tag asserted that their oxygenation levels made them brain dead. So we went to shore, a bit inland, and parked next to the same capsule station we'd arrived at.
A veritable flood of rescue personnel swarmed the boat. Each victim had their own paramedic in under two minutes. But as swiftly as they appeared, they were sucked into the capsule system, serving as waiting ambulances to race them to distant care facilities. Even the hale and hearty were being shepherded away.
We remained in the boat. "Mission?" I subvocalized.
"Surface effect ambulance for transfer to evacuation point. Two reactors in question. Criticality in six minutes."
Cooley overloaded the turbofans and we rushed towards the near edge of the disaster. Medic bots loaded the deck with stretchers, each one a package containing a badly broken person. We could only take three that required ventilation support, because only the three of us could maintain an airway seal and bag.
We made two trips this way. As we departed for the third trip, a wailing siren went off on every piece of equipment, not just our hovercraft but every bot, every capsule, everything with power and a speaker. A high low wailing siren.
I didn't need my ware and the viewscreen scrolling IMMEDIATE EVACUATION NOW to get the message.
Cooley immediately turned back for the capsule point, lurching around so my helmeted head banged on the side support. I unhooked from the harness; so did my crew. As we pulled up, Cooley popped the driver hatch and without pausing for anything ran for the capsule station. Tsao and Hernandez without hesitation followed. My hands lifted me up from the console seat, my feet carried me at a run over the rail and I relied on fear and adrenalin to ignore the three-point hard landing, then got up and ran right behind them.
Morbidly, as I caught my breath running I subvocalized "Countdown display" and my ware obliged.
0:13, 0:12...
The four of us ran into the blinking capsule that said CSAR-6 on its side in huge Day-Glo letters. Upon my clearing the doorframe, it slammed and the capsule surged into motion at high G, getting higher after my side and back collided with the back wall of the capsule. I twisted starfish-like to put my back against the rear capsule wall and saw that my crew had already done the same.
0:03 ... 0:02 ...
I exhaled.
0.00 ... -0.01 ... -0.02 ...
and then the world shook like a fist from an angry God.
Whiteness.
In the loose community of civic duty reservists, some are part-timers supporting their local communities - the heirs of the volunteer tradition. Others are hobbyists, would-be re-enactors playing a stricter game for bigger stakes. A chunk are would-be careerists trying to break into what passes for a "full time" job - 16 hours per week - in public service.
Aside from a few private forums, we don't interact all that much outside our own comfort zones. But there are a few distinctions. "I was at..." and various reactions based on the experience and prejudices of the listener.
I was at Sacramento River. Three years ago, a bridge complex over the Sacramento River on the old I-80 corridor had a major structural failure, later traced to ground subsidence and a reset error in seismic monitoring software. Just as the ultimate cause of the San Bruno pipeline fire was a voltage defect in a modulator-demodulator network device ("modem") that falsely reported a low pressure condition and ramped up the pressure to spec until the pipeline exploded, the ultimate cause of a disaster in San San tends to be something pedestrian.
Six thousand dead.
I was at Sacramento River...
###
A steady stream of capsules arrived and departed at the transfer station. As I stepped off the capsule with several other reservists, it turned colors to white highlighted in red and joined the line of waiting ambulances.
I had responded wearing what I usually wear and carrying what I usually carry - all I really own. A smartweave shirt, jeans that are neither made of cotton nor absorb water, a solid pair of boots and a backpack also made of smartweave that contained several useful items.
The Staging Officer was wearing a vest that proclaimed her role. She looked sharply at each of us and gave us our assignments, slotting us into the existing emergency response organization based on our skills and experience.
"Report to Medical for Critical Care. Report to 2nd Battalion Heavy Rescue, draw a respirator. Report to Traffic Control. Report to Morgue. Report to Medical., stretcher-bearer. Hazmat Team 4, suit up."
She looked at me.
"Establish CSAR-6. Conduct hasty evaluation riverbank south. You and you, CSAR-6, search and recovery team. You, CSAR-6, hoverboat pilot. That's the four of you, go."
My shirt changed color to yellow and the back now read "CSAR-6 ANDERSON TEAM LEADER." My three compatriots also now wore yellow shirts with CSAR-6 and their last names TSAO HERNANDEZ COOLEY - the latter the pilot.
"Let's go. I'm Anderson," I said over my shoulder as I consulted the incident graphic. Obviously we needed a boat, and in all likelihood Logistics would have it.
Logistics was a farmer's field, now ruined, which contained all manner of devices and equipment. As we walked past, capsules and bots and a few humans with LOG vests were delivering an astonishing amount of gear. My smartware careted the boat, the helmets, the packages of inflatable life preservers and throw rings and the GPS tags we would need.
We rushed. As the pilot pulled the straps to uncrate the boat and the other two team members pulled gear, I quickly reviewed the Incident Commander's intent.
Thirty acres of void space for heavy rescue. Over five thousand persons missing. Seven known hazardous materials spills, all life threatening. Two reactors with cooling integrity in question. We were twenty minutes into the problem.
But my piece was water rescue. X number of people may have been able to swim out or washed downstream. Exactly four of us could be spared to try to help them. We were it. CSAR-6 was the water rescue piece. If we blew it, it was blown.
"Anderson, commanding California Search and Rescue Team 6 ad hoc, Sacramento River incident, signin 1103 hours. Personnel per slug. Gearing up. Water rescue tasking."
The pilot was now powering up the boat and the other two team members were loading gear. I was putting on my personal protective equipment - inflatable life preserver, rescue harness, SCUBA facemask loose around my neck but with straps properly adjusted, heavy monoweave gloves. I quickly read through the incident map - two of the hazmat spills were in the river.
Then I climbed aboard the boat and we hovered over the ground in ground effect. I used my smartware to draw a course from the farmer's field to the water line. Cooley acknowledged silently by flickering his callsign before smoothly applying power.
Tsao took port side and Hernandez took starboard side. They rigged lifelines first, then rescue lines, then throw buoys. Reluctantly, Hernandez then loaded the projector with the GPS tags.
The 33 foot [ten meters] hovercraft shuddered as we crossed the interface from land to water. We had already bypassed survivors, who were trying to make their way through the mud farther away from the river. I used my smartware to designate two of them. Medic bots from the Logistics cache acknowledged and started on their way to the injured persons.
A bot was not smart enough to do this job. The boat probably could have driven itself to the water without running anyone over, and navigated close enough to a single survivor in the water to be boarded, but further response was a Traveling Salesman type problem that could overload even the best expert systems. There was no right or perfect answer; so it was a human problem.
I flagged a running display for hazardous chemicals and radioactives. The latter was thankfully well within background limits. The chemical count was nasty - if one had grown up in the well manicured 21st century, and thought that 300ppm exposure to hydrocarbons would require decontamination. As someone who had once handled gasoline with his bare hands, I was not quite as worried. I set the display to IDLH 1 day, 4 hours, 1 hour and 30 minutes. The streaks and whirls of contamination cleared. IDLH for Immediate Danger to Life and Health.
The life threatening chemical I was most worried about was all around us, dihydrogen oxide or H20. The water of the river. The acronym came back to me unbidden: SOFA-HIP. Swiftwater Oxygen Fratricide Acidosis Hypothermia Ingestion Predation. The factors that kill people in the water.
Swiftwater - the river continued to flow sluggishly through the collapse area. Certainly numbers of entombed persons had drowned - but no one was going to be beaten to death by the current before having the chance to drown. The flow meter on my display confirmed my eyeball assessment - carried downstream, not pummeled by obstructions or rocks.
Oxygen - a person could drown in less than six inches of water if they could not get their mouth or nose out of the water. A person who passed out could not prevent this unless they were wearing a special life preserver, an old style "TYPE II PFD."
Some people could swim, but surprisingly enough, many people in San San cannot. The simple skill of "drownproofing" - which anyone could learn - was not taught as part of the mandatory school curriculum.
Fratricide - a drowning person would fight to keep from drowning. They can become so panicked that they would attack would-be rescuers or other drowning persons.
Acidosis - water in the lungs would throw off the body's PH balance, a medical emergency that required oxygenation and medication to support.
Hypothermia - cold water starts the clock on sluggishness and confusion, and ultimately unconsciousness.
See oxygen above.
Ingestion - if they don't drown, people can end up drinking some of the water, which has secondary effects ranging from throwing off the pH balance due to salinity, poisoning if the water is contaminated, and relatively easy to treat illness if the water contains bacteria or viruses, which untreated water does essentially by definition.
Predation - some animals and invertebrates would attack people in the water, most notably sharks. Not a factor according to the Ecology Guide, Sacramento Valley.
Of all the above, the biggest fight was Oxygen or simply countering the effects of immersion. I felt the "PONG" tone through my feet as the hovercraft started active sonar scanning from sensors extended down into the water.
People weakly struggled out of the water or on the shoreline. But we also saw bodies, floating face down.
Hernandez quite properly started shooting them.
Meanwhile, I read the active sonar readings from the water flow "under" the disaster area. There were people trapped down there.
A warning careted across my screen. "DANGER HIGH ENERGY DRILLING WITHIN 2KM YOUR POSITION. SECONDARY FLASH EFFECTS." The viewscreen darkened in anticipation.
An enormous CRACK of superheated air flashing to vacuum swept over us as we turned away. I focused instead on the data flooding both the viewscreen and my smartware. The tags Hernandez had shot people with were flooding us with data, mostly blood oxygenation levels.
I looked at how many and subvocalized a request for medic and rescue bots immediately.
"CSAR 6 Anderson estimate thirty numbers thirty persons triaged Immediate for oxygenation emergency requesting same number medic bots and half number rescue bots time now time now time now."
The response was immediate and frightening.
"Six medic bots assigned. No rescue bots available, life safety priority."
Cooley was already drifting the hovercraft towards the bodies. I moved from the center console and helped Tsao rig harnesses to them, dragging them out of the water with loops under their shoulders. Some started breathing, not a few vomited. But some were not breathing, and I hoisted these higher, then to the slippery deck.
I opened a rescue locker and pulled out a normally disposable Bag Valve Mask, a most primitive device consisting of a face mask and hand-pumped bellows. Not disposable today. It remained connected to the airboat's oxygen supply by a long tube, which started flowing when I picked up the device.
Behind us, we carefully did not look at where the orbital laser was digging a really big really quick hole in the ground.
Someone at Corps of Engineers or CalFire was really desperate to clear a passage to something that would probably kill everyone in a nice huge radius if they didn't. Such as a fusion reactor without coolant going subcritical.
We hadn't been ordered to evacuate, so we kept working.
I moved to my first patient, got a good grip on their head, tilted it back, and bagged. Once, twice, again. My smartware showed their O2 levels going up.
From then on it was a desperate game of "put the mask on the face, bag a few times,. go to the next one" gauging progress mostly by improving oxygenation levels.
Two medic bots hovered uselessly overhead until I ordered them to fire stabilization sticky harpoon darts to the hovercraft hull and use the harpoon cabling for station keeping. They then started secondary treatment of some of the seriously injured.
Amazingly, a couple of the survivors who had been in the water were stirring themselves to help. Hernandez showed them how to operate harnesses and pull people up over the side. Thanks to the wonders of modern polyfilament technology, the boat could make as many harnesses as we needed from its supply spools - we carried the equivalent of fifty _kilometers_ of rope, in two spaces about the size of an old time car trunk.
The hovercraft finally gave me an OVERLOAD STABILITY warning. I viewed the graphic and the safety margin and promptly overrode the warning. We had a good margin before we'd have to start off-loading survivors.
The eye-hurting reflected brilliance of the laser shut off suddenly. I could see on the windscreen display that a horde of rescue bots was rushing towards the hole. That made sense, and explained why we got none.
Eight minutes later, we'd cleared the river - anyone knocked into the water, or who'd swam for it, was either on board or the GPS tag asserted that their oxygenation levels made them brain dead. So we went to shore, a bit inland, and parked next to the same capsule station we'd arrived at.
A veritable flood of rescue personnel swarmed the boat. Each victim had their own paramedic in under two minutes. But as swiftly as they appeared, they were sucked into the capsule system, serving as waiting ambulances to race them to distant care facilities. Even the hale and hearty were being shepherded away.
We remained in the boat. "Mission?" I subvocalized.
"Surface effect ambulance for transfer to evacuation point. Two reactors in question. Criticality in six minutes."
Cooley overloaded the turbofans and we rushed towards the near edge of the disaster. Medic bots loaded the deck with stretchers, each one a package containing a badly broken person. We could only take three that required ventilation support, because only the three of us could maintain an airway seal and bag.
We made two trips this way. As we departed for the third trip, a wailing siren went off on every piece of equipment, not just our hovercraft but every bot, every capsule, everything with power and a speaker. A high low wailing siren.
I didn't need my ware and the viewscreen scrolling IMMEDIATE EVACUATION NOW to get the message.
Cooley immediately turned back for the capsule point, lurching around so my helmeted head banged on the side support. I unhooked from the harness; so did my crew. As we pulled up, Cooley popped the driver hatch and without pausing for anything ran for the capsule station. Tsao and Hernandez without hesitation followed. My hands lifted me up from the console seat, my feet carried me at a run over the rail and I relied on fear and adrenalin to ignore the three-point hard landing, then got up and ran right behind them.
Morbidly, as I caught my breath running I subvocalized "Countdown display" and my ware obliged.
0:13, 0:12...
The four of us ran into the blinking capsule that said CSAR-6 on its side in huge Day-Glo letters. Upon my clearing the doorframe, it slammed and the capsule surged into motion at high G, getting higher after my side and back collided with the back wall of the capsule. I twisted starfish-like to put my back against the rear capsule wall and saw that my crew had already done the same.
0:03 ... 0:02 ...
I exhaled.
0.00 ... -0.01 ... -0.02 ...
and then the world shook like a fist from an angry God.
Whiteness.
