8
STRUCTURES ON THE LOOSE
THE SAVAGE tidal surges slammed into a house on Highway 101, ripping it away from its secure foundation, and spinning the remains across the highway. A neighboring house was turned around on its foundation with all of the flowerpots still in place on the windowsills. One resident looked out his front door and watched incredulously as five cars floated up the street past him, one by one. None had drivers.
Inundating her home, the cold seawaters caught Mrs. Clara McIndoe, a seventy-six-year-old widow, by surprise. Being treated later for extreme exposure, she said from her hospital bed, “I hung onto something, and I guess that’s the reason I’m still here. I lay there for hours and almost froze to death before someone got me. I was born in ‘18 and 88.’ I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The bore surged seven feet high into nearby Helen Boone’s house. The ocean’s surge that smacked against her home’s sides awakened her as the sea picked up her house and carried it away. She began screaming for help in a frightened high-pitched voice. Her house eventually caught on a sunken car and came to a swirling stop, the structure tilting with one end thrust high into the air. Floating at the lower end as more seawater rushed in, Helen continued yelling for help and two boys finally heard her screams. When the waters receded and before another surge could build up, they scrambled into the wreckage through a broken window and one carried her out on his back. Although Helen recovered, she could only talk in a whisper from then on, because her screaming had permanently damaged her vocal cords.
Owing to her flu and having taken a sleeping pill, Mabel Martin had been sound asleep for hours. In fact, Mabel slept through all of the warnings and the first three tidal waves that crested in that night. As Bill Parker observed, “It just wasn’t possible to warn everyone in time, because some just slept through it, for one reason or the other.” Mabel Martin was one of these people.
The seventy-five-year-old woman awoke only after the third wave had come and gone. Mabel had no idea that anything had happened during her sleep. She lit another cigarette and was smoking it when she noticed that a piece of plywood over a broken window was rattling. The plywood cover soon blew off. When Mabel’s house gave a lurch and started to “jerk and wobble,” as she said later, she thought it was an earthquake. “God help me,” she thought.
Her house was located behind the G&G Liquor Store at Third and J Streets. Although she didn’t know it at the time, the tidal wave had picked up her house and was carrying the structure away with others. As the ocean filled her house, Mabel clung to her bed in fear. The raging sea soon tore the overhead roof away from the walls. It collapsed on top of her, smashing down the headboard from her bed. The debris pinned Mabel down, her left arm across her chest. Only able to move her head to one side, the wreckage now completely covered and immobilized her.
Her wooden bed floated on the ocean’s surface, pushed up by the flooring, and lodged beneath the eaves of the now free-floating roof. An air pocket allowed the screaming woman to breathe as she and the debris-filled roof floated for blocks. Mabel was completely trapped under the rubble. Bob Ames, Jr., and his family from their rooftop perch heard her cries and watched Mabel’s house float past into the night.
Time passed quickly for Mabel, who lapsed back and forth into unconsciousness. After shivering uncontrollably, she became numb from the cold saltwater, but her worries as to whether the ocean would finally engulf her mouth and nostrils never left. Finally, she felt the encapsulating wreckage stop with a sharp shudder. She reached down from her bed and felt the ocean foam still around her. Although she was trapped, Mabel felt glad to still be alive, but worried over how long she could hold out. She screamed again for help, the waters surging back and forth close to her face. Searchers wouldn’t discover Mabel Martin until mid-morning.
RUTH LONG, her husband, Dale, and their twenty-two-month-old son, Ted, then lived in an oceanside, rear-corner apartment above G&G Liquors at the corner of Third and L. Dale’s mother, Tina, lived one block away in a similar rear-corner apartment above the shop area of their family business located at the corner of Third and K.
Dale worried about the potential saltwater damage to his equipment at their welding shop, called Fashion Blacksmith, so he headed there after the first wave. He put all of his tools and what equipment he could on higher workbenches and then returned. He expected “a bit of minor flooding,” but nothing else.
Tina called and said she could see that the garbage cans at their welding shop were now floating away. Dale told her not to worry about this, which turned out in hindsight to be an excellent decision, because the big wave was just arriving. Ruth Long stared outside and saw a Volkswagen floating by with its dome light on and a frightened, elderly couple inside. She worried that the tidal wave’s withdrawal would sweep them into the ocean, but there was nothing she could do. These were the people later saved by Guy Ames and his friends.
Ruth watched houses spinning around in the shadows of the moonlight. Some of these houses had been built in the early 1900s. Although built sturdily, some lacked foundations and others had been built partially on sand. The first surges lifted these houses cleanly up and carried them all over the city. Later, the ocean would pound those floating structures with debris and break them up, adding this wreckage to what rammed into other buildings, such as where the Longs lived.
Worried about Tina, Ruth and Dale Long flashed their flashlight at her unit in the Fashion Blacksmith building. Dale’s mother finally signed back with a bright light that she was okay. The Longs learned the next day that Hiller’s Shell Station had saved her. The last surge had knocked this structure away (as seen by Patrolman Evans), and it smashed into the first floor of the Blacksmith building. With this wedged underneath, the service station became that building’s support. Engineers later concluded that the building would otherwise have collapsed.
Meanwhile, the water level kept rising as Dale held their son and Ruth clutched their toy terrier, Koko. The sea rose rapidly to the last step of the stairway that led into their apartment. The air and water smelled heavily of oil; Ruth saw “all of the colors of the rainbow on top of the water,” indicating the heavy amount of gasoline and oil that had spread over the ocean’s surface. Large logs had smashed through gasoline tanker trucks and cars, spreading this oil and gasoline around. Portions of this would ignite later and set structures on fire.
Seemingly an eternity later and to their relief, the ocean finally began to recede. One step at a time, the sea went back down the stairs. When the water was waist high, a county grader appeared from the shadows below them. Dale ran down the steps and began wading through the ocean toward his mother’s place. Ruth, now carrying both Ted and Koko in her arms, and other apartment dwellers quickly followed after Dale. Eight people jumped on top of the heavy grader which soon lumbered off Third Street to head up L. As the grader reached safety, Ruth heard explosions and saw flashes of light—the bulk oil-tank farm had just blown up. Dale later said that the grader and its human cargo looked like a “roost covered with chickens.”
The county and city had mobilized every type of equipment on hand to save people. Graders, steam shovels, fire engines, and whatever they had that could move were brought in the search for survivors. The use of this equipment, however, depended on the tsunami’s course. When fire engines couldn’t make it down to help people because of high-water levels, the firemen were forced to stand on an overlooking hill, lights flashing and sirens sounding, with no way to assist until the ocean finally receded.
Diane Anderson was staying in town with her parents prior to her wedding the following week. Their home was located on A Street, two doors down from Seaside Hospital on the same side of the street. They had stayed up late watching the Johnny Carson Show when a news bulletin about the Alaskan earthquake interrupted the programming. Afterwards, Diane walked upstairs to look out at the ocean for the first time that night.
The moon was full, and visibility from the second-story window was clear. She could make out the outlines of the jetty (the breakwater) and Battery Point Lighthouse below. As she stared out, “some unknown force” seemed to pull the ocean away from the jetty. The water receded beyond the lighthouse, going farther out than any low tide she had ever witnessed before. For a time, the lighthouse was no longer situated on an island, but stood on a huge rock jutting from an endless beach. “Just as the ocean had ended withdrawing,” she wrote, “it suddenly came rushing in, passing the lighthouse and rolling up and over the jetty, much the same way as water overflows in a bathtub.”
Diane ran to a front window just in time to watch logs float up B Street to Front Street and then disappear from sight. The surges had turned her parents’ home and the hospital into “a small island surrounded by water, logs, and debris.” Despite this, her brother ran out to help a family on Battery Street. After her brother returned, they heard the receding water tear and rip buildings away from foundations. Electric wires snapped and sparkled, and they noticed a sharp odor of gas in the air.
Running upstairs to a front window and looking out, they saw the bulk plant near Elk Creek explode, sending flames into the sky and illuminating all of Front Street. Water now covered the entire area. “The explosions were continuous as one tank after another went off like firecrackers,” she wrote.
Later, they discovered how close the tidal waves had come to their home. Owing simply to where her parents’ house had been built years ago, Diane and her family had been fortunate. Whether the tsunami destroyed people’s lives or not just depended on where they lived or were at the time. Due to this good fortune, some had no idea what had happened until after the last huge wave receded.
Joan Clark, whose home was on high ground toward the end of town, was watching television at the time. A station out of Eureka was showing a program featuring the pianist Liberace, and the time was “around two o’clock” in the morning. Suddenly a newscaster interrupted the programming and announced: “A tidal wave has flooded Eureka, having passed Crescent City.” Next, she heard loud knocks at her front door. She let those friends in and they told Joan and her husband, Bud, about the tsunami’s destruction. They had no idea what had happened, since their house was located above the city on Ninth Street.
Bud Clark quickly put on his deputy sheriff’s uniform and headed immediately down to the city. Just blocks away from his home, Bud couldn’t believe what appeared before his eyes. Houses were in odd places and buildings had been pushed off to different sides. Cars were strewn all over the area, stacked on top of one another and wrapped around power poles. He immediately began searching for people to rescue and help, finding one “old lady in the morning” that was injured and pinned to her bed, but who was not identified.
Bud tried to keep people out who shouldn’t be there, letting only those in who had the proper pass issued by the Sheriff’s Department under Bill Parker’s plan. Knocking late at night on the front doors of houses that had already sailed away from their foundations, Bud Clark said he felt strange when doing this. “I did come across one ‘old boy’ who was sitting on a table in his living room,” he said. “When I shined my light on him, he just smiled at me and said, ‘You should have been here. It was one helleuava ride.’ ”
Getting anywhere took time. Bud needed to drive around debris, then turn around and try another way where the wreckage became too severe. He tried at times to clear away a path so that he could make headway over some streets located away from the damage zone. Others were simply impossible to drive over. He stayed on duty until the next evening.
HEROES WERE BORN that night, and Joe Snow was one. He drove to the Tides Motel between the first and second waves, finding the police urging everyone to get away. The streets were congested, and there was some traffic as people drove around, seemingly trying to decide where they should go. The second wave brought in more flooding and logs, as cars started to float around, and Joe Snow heard screaming from inside some of the vehicles. Joe saw that the headlights of some cars were on, and stayed on, until the larger third wave poured in at 1:00 A.M. Then those lights disappeared.
Joe realized that three children of a friend, Dan Bunting, were staying at home by themselves. As the second tidal wave began to recede, he drove toward Dan’s house, located between Second and Third Street on M towards the lumberyards. At times his jeep floated on Highway 101 as he drove, but when Joe reached M Street, his tires caught traction again and he sped towards the house. On the way, police at a roadblock ordered him to come to a stop. He rolled down his window, yelled that there were people inside that needed rescuing, and drove straight through. The police didn’t try to stop him and turned to the next car that had been behind him.
Halting his vehicle in front of the dark house, Joe hastily knocked on the door. When at first no one answered, he yelled his name and that it was an emergency. When the door slowly opened, he burst through and told the children that they had to get out. Dixie (age eight), Jimmy (age nine), and Timmy (age fifteen) dressed quickly, and he hustled them into his car just minutes before the third wave struck.
As Joe Snow drove away, Dan Bunting arrived at his house just as this wave surged in. Surrounded by water, Bunting climbed quickly to the roof of his house and jumped to a neighbor’s roof. When that house began to disintegrate, Dan jumped to a third, where he was picked up by Paul Green, who was rescuing people with his grader.
The fourth wave blew the house off its foundation and ground it down on one end, destroying the surrounding area. Thanks to Joe Snow’s efforts, however, Dan’s children survived.
CHARLES LAKLIN had been out on the town with his buddy, Ernie Seaburg. Charles’ wife was out of town, so he had accepted Ernie’s invitation to stay over at Seaburg’s B Street apartment. The two were ready to turn in; the time being “before midnight.” There weren’t any toilet facilities there, so Laklin “stepped outside for a minute.” At that exact moment, the first small wave surged inward.
Its height was less than three feet, but Charles said later, “Small as it was, the wave still made noise.” Ernie heard it and hollered at him, wanting to know if it was raining outside. The stars were shining above Charles, so he knew that wasn’t the case. As he didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, Laklin quickly finished up what he was doing and hustled indoors.
Once inside, Charles remembers two later waves. “The second one came over my bed,” he recalled. “It soaked both of us to the bone, but where else were we to go? The third one picked up the house.” Frenchy Arrigoni lived next to Seaburg’s apartment, and they later learned that he had died.
Once the seas receded from their neighborhood, Charles recalled that both men were “just plain soaking wet.” Seaburg seemed to be calm through all of this and continually kept trying to build a fire in his woodstove and make coffee. For some reason, he couldn’t do either. Laklin finally asked Ernie, “What are you doing, you crazy old Swede?” He then realized that Seaburg “was cold, wet, and apparently in shock.” Laklin took his friend to Seaside Hospital for treatment and then continued downtown. While seeing entire city blocks destroyed, he heard someone screaming for help on Second Street. Laklin discovered his former landlady crying for assistance from within the boarding house where he had once lived. A log had smashed through her front window, pinning the woman against one wall. He freed the elderly woman and took her to the same hospital. She later recovered from her extensive injuries. Back on the streets again, Charles helped a friend, Turf Club owner Cliff Moore move some belongings to another place on Seventh Street. Charles finally slid into bed that night, but he couldn’t sleep long as daylight soon came. Laklin spent the next day with the National Guard on patrol against looters.
Patrolman Harold Evans was another who rose above the call of duty. After the second wave, he commandeered a state road grader to take him into the flooded sections. By the time Evans arrived, the third wave was receding. He came to Mrs. Maude Kincaid’s house on Second Street and knocked on the door to get the people out. Maude and her son, Bob, told him they had awakened to find seawater surrounding their beds to their chins. As they talked, the fourth wave surged in.
Looking outside a window, Patrolman Evans watched two cars float by. As the currents began breaking up the floor, he saw Hiller’s Shell Station across the street disappear from sight, then all of the lights in the area blacked out. The ocean quickly surged inside, inundating everyone, and the house began moving. The structure completely turned around and traveled backwards.
As the sea rose over a ground-floor bedroom window, the house accelerated and tore off the front part of an adjacent store, shearing off one side of Mrs. Kincaid’s house in the process. Later, the structure came to rest behind Glen’s Bakery, blocks away in the Ames’ building parking lot. Their house was one of the homes that the Ames’ family had seen cruising past them.
When the sea finally began to recede, Evans decided it was time to get out before another wave surged in. He carried Maude nearly one hundred feet in water to his chest before finding shallower levels. Seeing the patrolman’s flashlight signals, a state highway scoop tractor picked them up blocks later. Mrs. Kincaid and her son were taken to Seaside Hospital and treated for shock and exposure. Patrolman Evans changed his clothes and returned to duty.
MAC MCGUIRE parked his old Ford flatbed truck outside the Long Branch Tavern and walked inside. After watching the initial wave action toss his boat around at the harbor docks, he drove down to buy a pack of cigarettes. As he walked in, Mac observed later: “Gary Clawson was singing and playing his guitar as usual. He was good with that thing. Gary, his mom and dad, another couple (Earl and Nita), his uncle (Bruce Garden), and his girlfriend (Joanie) were having a great time, and they still were celebrating his father’s birthday. There was no damage inside, and everyone believed that the worst was over.”
Across the street, the lights of the Frontier Chuckwagon were uncustomarily turned off for a Friday night and the structure was dark. After Coast Guard personnel had warned the people at the Frontier, they drove past the Long Branch, but Clawson’s group had not yet arrived and no one was there. After conferring with the owners, the Frontier’s bartender, Jim Custer, closed down the place and walked over to the Long Branch. By that time, the festive group was celebrating in the bar. Although Custer was invited to have a drink with them instead, he politely declined and left to put on his deputy sheriff’s uniform and start patrolling the area. Working two jobs, now Deputy Custer left the Long Branch just minutes before McGuire arrived.
Mac bantered with the Edwards, bought his cigarettes, and waited patiently for his change. As Gary had cleaned out the cash register, Nita needed to dig around in her purse for the exact change. After receiving his money, Mac thought about leaving to check on his boat moored at the docks. Since it would be more fun being with his friends, Mac decided to stay.
The skidding sounds of a car coming to a fast stop outside drew everyone’s attention. The people crowded over to stare at the red and blue lights flashing on the California Highway Patrol car. Someone opened the front door. The uniformed officer rolled down his window and yelled, “Get out, now! Another wave’s coming!” The window rolled back up. Wheels spinning, the patrol car sped away and disappeared down the road.
As the group continued looking out the front window and door, they watched in amazement as rivulets of water passed by, running southbound over Highway 101. The bright moon lit up strange shadows on top of the watercourse, as the running ocean built up in height and speed. Mac watched disbelievingly as the seawater picked up his truck and pushed it backwards. The vehicle banged with a loud, metallic sound into two nearby cars. Mac wasn’t concerned then about the collision, thinking stoically that the truck wasn’t worth that much anyway.
At the same time, Gary bolted out the front door in time to see the back of his large, white Pontiac Grand Prix rear up, then slam down on the top of his father’s Dodge Dart. Both cars were brand new. The whiteness of Gary’s bigger car slowly carried over the smaller, darker one and completely covered it. Hearing a hissing with crashing away in the distance, which then became louder and louder, the once-festive group stared intently outside.
They watched as a churning black mass of ocean rose to rush at them from the darkness. Waves soon seemed to be dancing on top of waves. In fact, more waves traveled behind the main advance, although seemingly on top of the first one. The sea hissed closer.
The moonlight illuminated the larger black waves as they powered over the highway with whitecaps, moving toward them with a speed as fast as cars on a city street. Someone screamed. People ran towards the back. At the same time, the sea lapped into the tavern from the back door, the tidal wave having surged up Elk Creek behind the Tavern. These waters poured toward its backside, then spilled into the structure.
The main tidal wave suddenly burst through the open front door with a roar, and green, brackish water poured into the Long Branch. Everyone jumped up on whatever was nearby. Mac, Nita, and Earl scrambled on top of the shuffleboard table, while Bruce Garden and Gary jumped on top of the bar. Joanie and the older Clawsons ran to the higher, stepped-up lounge.
The lights were still on, highlighting the maelstrom of turbulent sea and crashing barstools and splintering booths that surrounded everyone. The building shuddered from a heavy thud as the bore hit against the west wall facing the ocean. The trapped people watched with a mixture of fear and incomprehension. The brackish waters outside rose above the bay windows, then crashed through with a raucous shattering, flooding the insides with still more saltwater. The ocean thundered in, whirling together large logs and driftwood with the tables and stools.
Nita, Earl, and Mac stayed on top of the shuffleboard table as it floated against the bar. As the sea carried Joanie, Bill, and Gay around, Gary leapt into the water to help his parents and girlfriend get onto the bar. As the currents swept in, the water soon engulfed everyone to their midsections.
It looked to Mac as if he was in a flooded submarine now sinking to the bottom of the sea. The whole west wall of the Long Branch caved in with a splintering crash from the ocean’s pressure, and the floor thrust up around the posts. Gary watched the ceiling buckle “like a crumpled beer can.” The only support holding the place together was the wood floor. A sole overhead light now reflected off the swirling waters, as the sea worked its way towards the ceiling.
When the surge blew out the wall, the north side of the roof caved in over the bar. There was scant headspace for anyone to breathe. The ocean swiftly rose past their midsections to their chests, then their necks. People grabbed for the roof rafters to breathe and keep their balance.
The last light shorted out, plunging everything inside into total darkness. The Long Branch suddenly ripped from its foundation, and the structure began to move inland with the surging sea. Power lines crackled outside with blue flashes, as the surge snapped poles and then rose to trap the broken lines. Immersed in cold saltwater with debris swirling about, people watched in horror as larger objects passed. Mobile homes from across the street floated slowly past, bobbing along with huge logs, crazy-quilted driftwood, and shattered furniture. Because “it was bright as hell,” everyone clearly saw what was happening.
Gary’s mother started screaming with piercing shrieks, as she had a deathly, phobic fear of any water. “I can’t swim,” she cried and cried. A heavy-set woman, Gay Clawson’s fears were that she would sink like a stone if she fell off into the sea. Of the eight people, only Mac and Gary could swim. Minutes before, they were raising drinks in toasts and swapping jokes. Who could or couldn’t swim was then the last thing on anyone’s mind.
From time to time, Joanie and others would yell for help. For the most part, people soon became too stunned to say anything, as the unthinkable had happened: people who couldn’t swim were now engulfed in stinging saltwater and trapped in a tidal wave now sweeping inland. Fear seeped inside, and dead silence prevailed.
The sea was very cold, damnably cold. It was the end of March, late at night, and the ocean had swept in with the colder bay waters. As logs big as boxcars and vehicles of all sizes slammed into buildings, no matter how far away, the loud banging sounds echoed to those floating away with the remains of the Long Branch. The flashes from electrical wires shorting out and leaping fires created at a distance offset the dark shadows. Power transformers exploded when seawater drenched them, showering sparks up into the sky.
The building moved swiftly back toward the mountains and Elk Creek, as the main energy from the tidal bore pressed on from the sea. People held onto one another and the rafters for their very lives. Tree branches, lumber, tables, and other hard objects swirled in, bumped against rigid bodies, then eddied back out to disappear into the shadows.
The building had moved nearly one hundred yards when it came to an unexpected stop, undulating in the calmer water’s movements. The tidal wave had reached one of its equilibriums. As the structure and its prisoners bobbed up and down, the floor of the Long Branch caught on submerged trees or scrub brush. More of its underpinnings then ground away.
The group could no longer stay inside what was left of the Long Branch. It wouldn’t be long before the supports would totally give way, and the roof would collapse to trap everyone underwater. The longer they stayed in the water, the greater the danger of hypothermia setting in. Gary told everyone they would have to get on top of the roof. No one argued.
Mac half-swam, half-floated his way into position at an opening in the roof. Bruce followed Mac. Floating in the ocean up to their necks while holding onto the roof rafters, people carefully made their way toward, then over the bar. Gary led the Edwards, Joanie, and his parents through the water toward the open sky. One by one, he helped them work around the splintered wall, reach up for the roofline, and then float up to the roof. Mac or Bruce then pulled them upward to scramble on top. Gary led his wide-eyed and speechless mother to safety with no resistance. Having succumbed to her fears, Gay’s body was nearly limp. Everyone made it to the top of the roof structure. Gary even saved the ledger book and metal cash box, bringing them also with him to the roof.
“This was so overwhelming, people just didn’t know what to think. They were stunned by it all,” said McGuire later about that time. However, he worried more whether his eighteen-year-old son, Jerry, had avoided their predicament. Mac knew that Jerry had been planning to go down to the wharf earlier that evening. Gary’s worst nightmare had already become his reality, as his parents, girlfriend, and other friends were all there.
At the same time, their surroundings were surrealistic. Mac recalled, “It really was a beautiful moonlit night out. You could see everything clearly, from the stars to the nearby hills.” Cars, heavy redwood logs, houses, the outlines of animals, and objects of every possible description floated around them on top of more than fifteen feet of water, as the building slowly danced up and down. As fish swirled inside, the salty smell of the sea became nearly overpowering. Nearby fires and the moonlight combined to accent the grotesque shapes of objects and shattered structures.
The question on Gary’s and Mac’s minds was what to do next. They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. The ocean began churning and moved again. The roof with its trailing walls and people took off once more toward Elk Creek, passing several of the cars, house trailers, and tanks that had first moved past them. After a few minutes, the water again became calm and smooth. The roof slid to a quiet stop against a grove of saplings that once marked the banks of Elk Creek. This protective “glove” would keep future ocean movements from carrying them any further. It also ensured that they were trapped on this sea lake.
The nearby fires began to occupy their thoughts. A few blocks from where the Long Branch had once been, Nichol’s Pontiac was in flames. Its main transformer had blown up when the ocean cascaded into it. This fire quickly spread to the adjacent Union 76 gasoline bulk station, causing one of the three-story-high gasoline tanks to burst into a towering, flaming inferno that lit up the night. Debris ruptured two of the pumps at the Texaco station, ripping them open to spill gasoline over the ocean. These Molotov cocktails soon exploded in front of their eyes in another firestorm, a scant two hundred feet away.
As the fires burned out of control, the marooned people heard the strong hissing of the propane tanks at the Shell service station, seemingly right next to them. They feared that if these tanks caught fire, the explosion and concussion would surely kill everyone. It was ironic to come this far, yet to still be in such danger. Seemingly calm and benign, the ocean didn’t seem to be as much of a threat. The true danger now was from the fires raging out of control near the leaking propane tanks.
Despite this, Mac and Gary didn’t want to leave their safe haven. Shivering in the night air, Gary mulled over their predicament. None of the choices, however, seemed to have an appeal. Staying close to the fires and explosive propane tanks appeared suicidal. Trying to swim for it with people who couldn’t was equally dangerous. Mac also wasn’t very interested in any swimming-out alternative. Trying to pull one non-swimmer out at a time was simply not an option, as it would be hard enough for either to swim out alone. As they talked this over, the fires flared up higher and burning gasoline spread out farther over the sea.