Free TSUNAMI STORM by David Capps

looking nervous. “Yeah, maybe, but I couldn’t really take her out for dinner, now could I? I mean she owns a restaurant and all.”
    “She just might enjoy a dinner she didn’t have to cook, Henry. Think about that.”
    Rather than wait for Henry to answer, Willa headed down the pier toward Jason.
    The pier was a popular place for both tourists and locals. Blue Crabs were in abundant supply and catching them was the most popular sport in Dolphin Beach. She passed several more people with Blue Crabs in their buckets. The local restaurants would cook and prepare the crabs anyone brought in for a small fee. It was one of the nice touches that made Dolphin Beach a favorite and drew people from Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
    “You have different pier types in your program?” Willa asked.
    Jason had been looking down into the water at the end of the pier and spun around in surprise.
    “Oh,” he replied. “Thirteen types of piers, 187 different types of bridges, which you don’t have, and 82 types of water towers, which you also don’t have.”
    “We have the Three Sentinels,” Willa said, pointing to the three large rocks that stood their silent vigil over Dolphin Beach. ”Would they break up a tsunami?”
    Jason looked at the three large rocks protruding out of the water. “Depends on the wave,” he said. He pointed the camera lens on his tablet toward the Three Sentinels and tapped the screen. “Do you happen to know how high they are?”
    “Sure, the center one is eighty feet high, the one on the right is sixty five and the one on the left is sixty feet. But that depends on the tide. Each one has navigational lights mounted on it and the center one has a radio navigational beacon on top.”
    “Okay, I can figure that in,” Jason said. “A small tsunami might be affected by them, but if we’re looking at the tsunami from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, then no, they wouldn’t make a difference.”
    “But they’re really large rocks,” Willa replied, wondering exactly what Jason was thinking.
    “Relative to a hundred foot tsunami, they’re not that big.”
    Willa looked at the Three Sentinels and tried to imagine a wave that was that much higher than the Sentinels were. It was a frightening thought. “So what does it look like?” she asked.
    “I don’t know yet,” he replied. “The Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup was focused more on rebuilding towns that have been destroyed. The working premise was that every town directly on the coast would be a total loss.”
    Willa suddenly felt her knees weaken. She reached out to the railing for support. “What about the people?”
    Jason turned to her. “That’s where I hope to make a difference.”
    * * *
    Saturday morning Willa checked her outfit in the mirror four times before deciding on the blue dress. She poured a cup of coffee that she couldn’t finish and skipped breakfast altogether. She felt like a nervous wreck. She held her hands out in front of her and watched her fingers to see how badly they were shaking. God, what are people going to think of all this?
    “You can do this,” she said to herself. She looked in the mirror one more time, turning slightly to the right and then to the left. God, why on my watch?
    People had arrived at the town movie theater early. Some had gone inside and taken seats. Some appeared to be too nervous to go inside at all. Willa watched their expressions, which ranged from worried to terrified. She felt encouraged by the number of people who looked only worried.
    “Look,” she said to the group of people standing outside the theater. “I’m very worried too, but we’re better off knowing what could really happen rather than letting our imagination run away with us, or worse yet, ignoring something that is life threatening.” She looked at their expressions, searching for some sign of agreement.
    “It’s a waste of time.” Frank Gillis said in a loud voice. “I looked it up. The