Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler

Author:Clive Cussler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Read It
Published: 1976-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

SOUTHBY

June 1988

Hurricane Amanda was dying, slowly but inevitably. What would long be remembered as the Great Blow of 1988 had cut its devastating swath across three thousand miles of ocean in three and a half days, and it had yet to deliver its final apocalyptic blow. Like the final burst of a supernova before disintegrating into obscurity, it suddenly swung on an eastward track and slammed into the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, lashing the coast from Cape Race north to Pouch Cove.

In minutes, one town after another was inundated by the fallout from the storm's clod mass. Several small seashore villages were swept out to sea by the runoff' that came thundering down into the valleys.

Fishing boats were driven onto land and battered into unrecognizable, shattered hulks. Roofs were blown off downtown buildings in St. John's as its city streets were turned into rushing rivers from the deluge.

Water and electricity were cut off for days and, until rescue ships arrived, food was at a premium and had to be rationed.

No hurricane on record had ever unleashed such raw fury that its winds would carry it so far, so fast with such terrible velocity. No one would ever evaluate the enormous cost of the damage. Estimates ran as high as $250 million. Of this, $155 million represented the almost totally destroyed Newfoundland fishing fleets. Nine ships were lost at sea; six with no survivors. The death toll behind the storm's wake ran between 300 and 325.

In the early hours of Friday morning, Dr. Ryan Prescott sat alone in the main office of the NUMA Hurricane Center. Hurricane Amanda had finally run her course, accomplished her destruction, taken her Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

lives, and only now was she dissipating over the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The battle was over, there was nothing more the weathermen at the center could do. After seventy-two hours of frenzied tracking and nonsleep, they had all straggled home to bed.

Prescott stared through tired and bloodshot eyes at the desks strewn with charts, data tables, computer readout sheets, and half-empty coffee cups, the floors carpeted with sheets of paper filled with notations and the strange looking symbols common to meteorologists. He stared at the giant wall map and silently cursed the storm. The sudden swing to eastward had caught them all by surprise. A completely illogical pattern; it was unparalleled in hurricane history. No storm on record had ever behaved so erratically.

If only it had given some hint of its impending deviation, some minute clue as to its fanatical behavior, they might have better prepared the people of Newfoundland for the onslaught. At least half, a hundred and fifty lives, might have been spared A hundred and fifty men, women, and children might have been alive now if the finest scientific sources available for weather prediction had not been swept aside like so much hokum at Mother Nature's capricious whim.

Prescott rose and took his last look at the wall chart before the janitors came and

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