Summoning PowerPoint frames up from her laptop on to the overhead system, and speaking into a Bluetooth ear and throat piece that linked remotely to the PA system, the scientist began her briefing at once. ‘I’ll start now, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said as Robin sat down, her quiet tones booming around the room, amplified by the speakers. The audience of local businessmen and women settled to a tense hush.
The USGS logo flashed on to the screen. It was replaced almost immediately by another, more sinister emblem. Within a grey circle sat the stylized outline of an ark with a jagged bolt of black lightning splitting it down the middle. Beneath the circle were the words ARkStorm. ‘My name is Danielle Jones,’ began the scientist. ‘I won’t bore you with my qualifications. You can check me out online if you feel the urge. I work for the USGS National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration division — NOAA for short. I am also consultant to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Emergency Management Agency. My specialism is in floods: their prediction and their management. During the last five years and more my team, my associates and I have been planning for, preparing to face, and watching out for early warning signs of what has become known as an ARkStorm. I can see one or two smirks — NOAA has an ARk, of course — but in fact this is no laughing matter.
‘Put at its most simple, an ARkStorm is one continuous wet weather event that is likely to last, non-stop, for in excess of forty days and nights. Just like Noah’s flood in the Bible, in fact. And it could, really and truly, bring our world close to the edge of total destruction. Our particular piece of it here in California. An ARkStorm is not a series of individual severe weather events like the Pineapple Express storms that can come at us in California up from Hawaii, as they did in LA in 2012 and in San Francisco in 2014, or like the series of six consecutive depressions that hit the west and south of Great Britain between December 2013 and February 2014. No. I’m talking about something more akin to the monsoon that hits various areas of the Indian subcontinent. But something much more powerful and sustained than the average monsoon. Uninterrupted rainfall on a state-wide basis in which more than three metres — ten feet — of precipitation will fall everywhere from the coast to the Sierra Nevada during six weeks of unremitting torrential downpour. Imagine the San Joaquin Valley becoming an inland lake; everywhere from Chico to Caleinte under several feet — maybe metres — of water. Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Bakersfield … And that’s just part of it. You guys at the coast will suddenly find not only storm surges and spring tides rolling upslope, swamping the docks and coastal city blocks, but there’ll also be a couple of million tons of water upstate and inland with nowhere to go but downslope and over the top of you as it all washes back out to sea.’
Dr Jones reached for a glass of water beside her laptop and took a long, thoughtful sip as she watched her words begin to sink in and the amusement die out of the faces in front of her. Nic put his hand up as though he were back at a lecture hall in Harvard. ‘This has happened, right? You’re not just theorizing, Dr Jones. This has happened before. Here.’
Dr Jones nodded. ‘One hundred and fifty-some years ago. December of 1861 to January 1862,’ she confirmed. Suddenly the ARkStorm logo was replaced by the first in a series of old sepia-coloured photographs. ‘This is Sacramento at that time,’ she said. ‘What it looked like by the end of January 1862.’ The buildings astride the main street of Sacramento stood tall. But between them, instead of a road there was a deep lake and men in boats were rowing across it. Suddenly everyone in the room was paying very close attention to Dr Jones indeed.
She looked around, seeming to meet every pair of eyes there. ‘Beginning in early December 1861 and continuing forty-five days into January 1862, an extreme storm struck California. Between ten and twelve feet of water fell. That’s three to four metres; twice the depth of the deep end of your swimming pools. And on every square metre of land. This caused severe flooding, turning the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea, requiring Leland Stanford to take a rowboat to his inauguration as Governor of California, and ultimately causing the state capitol to be moved out of Sacramento altogether because it was totally underwater, as these contemporary photographs show.’
More old photographs appeared. It was just possible to make out a sign saying ‘Coffee Warehouse’ above the water in one of them. Dr Jones continued gently, ‘So was San Francisco, which suffered an enormous amount more damage than it was to do forty-four years later in the famous earthquake of 1906 and the fire that succeeded it. In which, I might add, all the photographic records of the catastrophic San Francisco floods were burned. So what we have is mostly from Sacramento newspapers and state archives.’
Pictures followed at an increasing rate — photographs and daguerreotypes from the newspapers of the time, local and national. ‘Inundation of the State Capitaclass="underline" K Street from the Levee’; ‘The City Of Sacramento From the Pavillion’ … In each picture, city blocks stood like fleets of ships becalmed above an inland sea large enough to be generating waves. In the distance, churches stood on tiny islands that had once been hillocks. Rowboats bobbed like cockleshells. Desperate men looked out across the devastation as though contemplating the end of the world.
Dr Jones cleared her throat. ‘Lakes formed in the Los Angeles Basin, Orange County and the Mojave Desert. Something if, if it happened now, would surely peeve the guys at the solar electric generating system they brought online in 2013 covering three and a half thousand acres out there. It’s not fitted for hydro-electric back-up! That alone would mean two and a half billion dollars down the Suwannee and nearly twenty per cent of the state’s electricity with it. Well, back in 1862, that’s what happened: the Mojave Desert became a lake more than ten feet deep. The mouth of the Santa Ana River moved six miles and the largest community between Los Angeles and New Mexico, Agua Mansa — which means smooth water, ironically enough — was completely wiped off the map. Forever. Nobody knows how many people died.
‘The storm destroyed one-third of the taxable land of California and bankrupted the state. And this, remember, was at a time when there were 379,994 residents, according to the Census of 1860. Now there are more like forty million. In Sacramento there were 13,785 citizens in 1860. Now there are three quarters of a million. You see where I’m heading with this? According to our latest calculations, independently of business premises, state and federal institutions, warehouses, schools, hospitals and so forth that would be inundated, we’re talking nine million flooded homes. Nine million …’
‘OK,’ came a voice from the front. ‘So that’s the worst-case scenario. But just what is an ARkStorm and why are we talking about it instead of keeping the businesses you mentioned afloat? That’s afloat in the other sense of the word.’
‘I guess if you think back to your fourth-grade geography or science lessons, you’ll all remember learning about the water cycle,’ answered Dr Jones. ‘I’ll have to rely on your memories. I didn’t bring any PowerPoints with me—’
‘Check online,’ suggested Robin loudly.