Chapter 21 –
The beast grows
We walked for another hour. We stayed on the highway until the next intersection, and then we had to get off -- cars were using it, actually filling it as people tried to get out of town. Cars were bumper to bumper headed north. A few blocks later we saw another main street taking cars east. It was time to get out of town, and anyone who could, did. So far cars were moving slowly, but they were at least moving. Would grid lock take them like it had taken cars on the island? We could hope not, but how does any highway handle such a surge of traffic?
Elise and I stayed out of the traffic and headed for higher ground. Knowing nothing of the city, we followed the crowd for a while, then decided we would make our own way to a hilltop park we could see. It even had a small watch tower on top, no doubt there for quiet views of barges coming down the river. If barges were still coming down the river, well, we hoped the port people had warned them not to.
Up in the park was a refreshment stand. It occurred to me it might be a long time before we found food again, so I bought two ice creams for each of us and some water. Oddly, we had the place pretty much to ourselves as everyone else struggled to find a highway out of town. I even had time to talk with the concessionaire.
"Do you know where everyone is going?" he asked. He was a young guy, maybe high school age, working what appeared to be a part-time minimum wage job for the summer.
"I think they are trying to get away from the river."
"It's that bad?"
"Kaskaskia Island is gone already. I suppose they are worried the river will rise over its banks and take out the city over here too."
"Yes, my grandfather told me once about the river coming over the levees. He said it was pretty bad. Although, I have to admit, I wasn't paying much attention. It was just an old story, you know?"
"So you aren't going to close down and leave?"
"I don't want to get fired. I'm supposed to be here until five. Then my relief comes in for the evening shift."
"I doubt your relief will be coming."
"Well, I wouldn't mind a little overtime pay. We get time and a half, you know." I wished him the best and took my ice cream and water to where Elise was sitting on a park bench facing west. We had disaster-side seating.
She was working her phone. Basically she was providing a first-hand account to the Ministry. I handed her an ice cream and opened her water bottle for her. We were both incredibly dehydrated from the walk, and frankly from the fear. I held the ice cream for her while she drank the water, and the water while she ate the ice cream. Her right hand stayed on the phone. Judging by what I could hear, she was in a conference call with half the Ministry.
At one point she put down the ice cream and stepped closer to the end of the park. Ice cream had probably not been the most intelligent food choice given our circumstances. It was already mostly a puddle, as were my ice creams.
"No, I cannot see a breech from here. But we are several hundred yards from the river. Shawn," she turned to me. "Could you find the name of this park? It would help them if they understood our perspective."
I walked back to the concession stand. The kid was sitting behind the counter. I wondered if he was already dreaming of how he would spend his overtime check.
"Do you know the name of this park?"
"Sure." He seemed proud of his knowledge. "It is called Pauquette Park. It is named after some historical guy." So, there you have it. In case you are ever interested, Pauquette was "an historical guy." I walked back to Elise and gave her the news -- about the name of the park, not the fact that he was an historical guy. She repeated it to the Ministry people, and then went on with her description. I ate my melting ice cream, chugged my water bottle, and looked down at the river.
From this distance, we really couldn't see anything. The river was below us to the west, but it was too distant to see its motions. We could not see the beast. We could see the river was wide here. If we were new to town, we would never have known it was wide because it now covered Kaskaskia Island. We could see the bridges were all down, not because we could see the bridges in the water, but because we could see the bridge approaches standing. They were just paths of concrete that ended abruptly at the river's edge. We saw standing water, not raging water. I was fine with that. We had been as close to that beast as I ever wanted to get again.
While I had no sense for the actions of the water, I could clearly see the actions of the cars. The Illinois side of Kaskaskia was emptying out. Every road was filled with cars. Every street was full. If you had a car, you were in it and you were leaving. But you weren’t leaving very quickly. From this height I could probably see a mile or so in every direction, and in every direction traffic was inching along. There were plenty of car horns blaring. People were out of patience, although you had to wonder about horns. How was the car in front of you supposed to move forward when the thousand cars in front of him weren’t going anywhere? But, maybe it felt good to lay on the horn. If so, lots of folks were getting some release.
Up on our hilltop, Elise still had her phone glued to her ear. Was she the only person they had on the spot? There had to be port authority folks who were also available, even on a Sunday morning. Or were they totally engaged in stopping river traffic? Or, given her position, was she making the call about appropriate responses? I kept my distance and let her do her work.
There was a small watch tower on our hill, and I decided to climb it. Would an extra twenty feet really give me an improved view? Probably not, but I climbed anyway. What did I see? Pretty much what I had already seen. The island was gone. The last of the rooftops had disappeared, as had all the trees. The current and the churning must have been incredible to uproot so many large trees. Where had all those trees and houses gone? I looked down river. The dam was growing. I could see tree tops, lumber, even a few cars bunched up against the bridge. It all collected there, but it also kept in motion. I could see the current continuing to push flotsam along the front of the dam, west towards Missouri. Once pressed against the levee on that side, it seemed to become locked in place. The press of objects against that levee must have been tremendous. Surely it would just be a matter of time before a tree or a car pushed through the Missouri embankment.
But that’s not what happened, at least not that morning. While it seemed like all the pressure was on the Missouri side, it was the Illinois side that gave way first. I didn’t notice it at first. There was some standing water on a street parallel to the levee, but it meant nothing to me. I paid no attention until suddenly the standing water was rushing up the street, and I could see the top of the levee suddenly disappear under a torrent of water.
“The levee breeched.” I shouted down to Elise, pointing to where the break had occurred. She jumped up from her bench to take a closer look, then climbed the observation tower, all the time describing what she was seeing to whoever was on the other end of her phone call.
“Yes, we just had our first breech.” She was saying as she ran up the stairs. “Illinois side, about forty yards north of where the provincial bridge had been. I would estimate the breech at about ten feet wide at the moment, but we are at a substantial distance, so I am not in a position to be very exact. Although I would say, whatever its width, I can see it growing.”
While Elise was providing her play-by-play, I got out my phone. The area that was about to be submerged was an area of grain elevators and warehouses. Grain that might have fed the world for months was being eaten by the beast in seconds. The other loss was going to be lots of warehouses, including Murphy Manufacturing. I had my dad on the phone in seconds. I figured he would be able to speed the most comprehensive response to the situation. My end of the conversation went something like, “Dad, there’s been a breakthrough in the levee along the Mississippi River in Kaskaskia. It is flooding the warehouse district, and it looks to me like our warehouse will b
e swamped soon. Good. Glad to hear they called you and are preparing. LeClerk is a good man. Yes, I was with him on the island. No, the island is completely gone. Elise and I are safe. We are up in a hilltop park overlooking the river.” I explained a couple more times that we were safe, and then got off the line so he could do his job. The Murphys were going to get even less sleep this week.
When I got off the phone, Elise slid closer to me while she continued to report in. She seemed to be counting the blocks the water was rushing over. I put an arm around her and she snuggled closer. I hugged her tighter.
If there was any good news in this unfolding disaster, it was that the warehouse district did not seem to be full of cars caught up in a stampede to get out. It was Sunday, and this was Canada, where lots of businesses are closed on Sunday, so while we could see a few cars racing away from the area, we didn’t have to witness carloads of people struggling against the water. No doubt there were some struggles going on inside the buildings as workers tried to get perishables up to higher levels. I assumed some of that was going on at Murphy Manufacturing now. Lots of folks would be running around, doing what they could with the time they had available. At the end of the day we could only hope they saved what they could – and saved themselves.
As we watched, the real drama appeared to be whether the water would reach the roadways filled with cars before the cars could make their exit. It was going to be close. A main thoroughfare ran about six blocks from the river, and while traffic was less backed up than it had been when we first arrived, it was still slow going. The brown river water quickly covered the first four blocks by the river, and moved inexorably closer to the traffic. Elise held her phone with one hand, and brought up her free wrist. She was going to time the expansion of the flood area. It didn’t take long to see that the river was expanding about one block every three minutes. Clearly the last of the cars weren’t going to make it. The drivers must have seen the water coming, for a few broke away from the main road and headed east up side roads to get free of the water. Others, stuck in slow moving traffic, could not or did not respond in time. Four minutes later water was over their tires, and the occupants were climbing out car windows to escape. Wading through the deep water, and then running once they got to shallower water, people headed for high ground as best they could. The beast was eating again. Lots of cars disappeared into its maw, and we could see that many more would go before the day was done.