10
RAGING INFERNOS
Dangerous fires ignited throughout the city, especially to the south. As one observer recalled, “Electrical wires popped and crackled all around, and there was the danger of the ocean spreading the flaming oil and gasoline throughout the city.” People estimated that at least fifteen and up to twenty different fires occurred during the night. Luckily, most were finally extinguished, either by nearby firemen and residents, or even by the tidal waves. However, the biggest contagion was reserved for Highway 101 South and these could not be put out.
The large Texaco gasoline bulk-tank station was below the downtown section, one-half mile down on the inland side of Highway 101 South. On the city side of the bulk station was Nichol’s Pontiac dealership, on the other a Union Oil service station. Heading due south from the Union station was a Texaco service station, a repair and paint shop, a Shell station, and then the Long Branch Tavern. The Del Norte Ice plant was on the ocean side of 101, with tourist shops, a trailer court, and motels heading south on both sides from there to the highway’s intersection with Elk Valley Road.
The ocean’s third wave crashed over a transformer at the Nichol’s Pontiac dealership, electricity surging directly into the building’s main electrical box. This junction box shorted and caught fire, causing the Nichol’s building also to start burning. The flames eventually consumed the structure. The churning, high seas at first kept the fire under control, but it then burned without restraint when the ocean receded and the flaming gasoline spread.
At the same time cars and logs pounded against the three-story, huge bulk tanks at the Hussey-Texaco bulk station that was directly adjacent to Nichol’s Pontiac. There were five such tanks, each ten feet in diameter and containing 50,000 gallons of fuel. One six-foot-wide massive log in particular swept in and smashed one of those bulk tanks, causing it to rupture and spill gasoline over the sea. Other debris ruptured one of the feeding pipelines with more fuel spilling on top of the roiling waters.
Sizzling electrical wires and the burning dealership ignited the fuel that eddied over the ocean and now spilled out of the ruptured pipes and tanks. Whether on an ocean trawler, at Seaside Hospital, in downtown Crescent City, or far up in the mountains, anyone could see in the night’s sky the series of fiery explosions that lit up the air, now visible from tens of miles away.
Two of the bulk tanks exploded in showers of flames, the firemen helpless to battle the blaze. Over time, all of the bulk tanks exploded. Gasoline floating on top of the waters burst into more brilliant flames, creating the danger of further fires and explosions throughout the area, especially as the tides swept from one place to another. The flaming seawater and collapsing, burning bulk tanks were a constant danger in spreading the contagion. One resident said that this scene looked like a “naval engagement at night with ships burning with towering flames as the sea spread the flaming oil around.”
Next, the ocean powered a colossal, eight-foot-diameter redwood log through the back gate of the Union Oil station. This huge log smashed through everything in its path, finally slamming into a large gasoline truck parked at the station. The projectile hit with such force that it knocked the truck fifty feet back, the vehicle coming to an abrupt halt against debris by one of the bulk tanks. It wasn’t known whether this gasoline truck exploded by flaming gasoline or if one of the bulk tanks accomplished the task. Regardless of how the vehicle burst into flames, the heat from the flaming bulk tanks and truck literally melted it down.
The question was just when the nearby Union Oil station would catch fire. It soon did. The holocaust of burning bulk tanks set the station’s fuel tanks ablaze. These tanks burned for several hours, until the tidal waves subsided enough for the fire department to put those fires out, just before they burned completely through the tanks. The underground fuel tanks and pumps of the Texaco station also caught fire, and nearly every structure except for, surprisingly, the main Texaco building was in flames.
The tidal wave swept trailers, logs, and even people into the Shell service station. Cars and debris plunged into the station, shattering its front bay windows. A large trailer sledgehammered two gasoline pumps from their cement foundations, spilling more gasoline over the sea. Spinning cars and lodged wreckage knocked other gasoline pumps off at weird angles. The Shell station’s smaller storage tanks sustained heavy smoke damage, but they miraculously didn’t ignite. Butane tanks spun around in the high seas in front of the station, including several that hissed leaking flammable gases into the air.
Fortunately, the Shell service station didn’t catch fire, due to the different ways the ocean currents moved in this area. The currents first surged in from the sea, around the station, and flowed towards the flaming bulk tanks in one sweeping motion. When the ocean pulled back, the flaming seas receded in a different route away from the bulk-tank farm over areas with not as many structures as before—the tsunami having already swept away most of the buildings and homes that were combustible fuel.
Fire authorities allowed the monstrous bulk fuel tanks to burn out of control for four days, eventually consuming all of the stored fuel. When the fires eventually extinguished themselves, the flames had consumed the city’s entire supply of gas, diesel fuel, and stove oil. Nichol’s Pontiac burned to the ground, the Union Oil and Texaco stations sustained heavy damage, and even a nearby Union Oil bulk plant sustained extensive fire damage.
The scorched tanks resembled what remained after a wartime bombing attack on an oil-supply depot. The pictures of the crumpled, burned-out shells of the tanks—several twisted on the ground or leaning at crazy angles with one still filling the air with acrid smoke—is one of the hallmark pictures of this disaster. For days afterwards, the city’s residents endured the pungent smell and pall in the air from the dense, black oily smoke.
ALTHOUGH THE TEXACO service station was located close to the Nichol’s Pontiac dealership, bulk oil tanks, and Union Oil station, it was situated further back toward the mountains than the others and on somewhat higher ground. Al Stockman that night was the Texaco attendant. He was filling a gas tank when a resident drove in and told him that a tidal wave was projected to hit the city at midnight. Al told the customer that they had experienced false alarms before. The man said he wanted to see the tidal wave from high ground, so he could get a good look at it. Stockman directed him to Pebble Beach, which he thought would have a good view. He laughed when other customers asked him if he intended to close the station down right then and run for safety.
Around midnight, Stockman peered down the street toward Elk Creek and watched the sea splash down Highway 101. He said, “It started as a little stream of water, then suddenly water was all over the place, with logs slamming into cars and people shouting. When the water came right to the edge of the drive, I began to worry, but this soon subsided.”
He called the owner, Sonny Hussey, who also owned the Texaco bulk-tank farm. Sonny said he wasn’t too concerned, because the ocean hadn’t flowed up the driveway and into the station. He said he would come down to check the lids over the underground gasoline tanks to ensure that they were still watertight. Stockman then checked them just before Sonny and his wife arrived and the underground tanks were fine.
The Husseys arrived before another wave started down the street, shortly after 1:00 A.M. In a quick decision, Sonny told Al to run their car up on the last grease rack, just in case the water surged higher. Stockman already had one car on the rack, about to start repairing it for its nearby, impatient owner.
This wave flooded Highway 101 and flowed up the driveway to a depth of one-half foot inside the station. They worried for the first time about the danger of fire and electric shocks, but these fears lessened as the ocean again began to recede. Thinking ahead, Stockman drove his car to higher ground, as Hussey moved a gasoline truck away from the driveway. Al then called another employee to come down and drive the truck away to safety.
While they were waiting for their employee, a large wave surged in. Sonny and his wife jumped inside their car on the service bay, as Stockman raised the rack all the way to its top. He started raising the customer’s car on the second rack, as the ocean surged into the garage. When cold seawater raced over his knees, Stockman climbed on the higher tire-changing rack. The water kept rising, so he jumped off that and climbed onto a service rack, pulling the customer up with him. They grabbed the overhead tire rack on the ceiling and held on.
The lights were still on outside the service station, so everyone stared at the huge logs, cars, debris, and even trailers floating down the street. The thirteen-ton gasoline truck just parked in front surfed away like a boat. The water level rose to over eight feet inside the garage, as water inundated Stockman to his chest while on his high perch, and the car with Sonny and his wife rocked back and forth from the currents.
The lights suddenly flashed off, throwing everything into darkness. As his eyes tried to adjust in the moonlight, all Stockman could feel was the surrounding cold water. The fears of an electrical fire bubbled up inside him and the others, but that thankfully hadn’t happened yet. The people watched a fire flicker outside through a side window, then increase in intensity. They stared at the outside flashes of shorting electrical lines in the darkness. After what seemed to be a long time, the ocean finally began to recede.
The people climbed down from their roosts and waded through three feet of water. None of their equipment was operable, as all of the electrical power had cut off. They waded through the ocean towards the fire, past the Union service station and bulk-tank farm.
They then realized that the flames were coming from the Nichol’s Pontiac dealership and stared in the moonlight at the dealership’s garage door; the ocean had rammed a gasoline truck straight through the now shattered doors. According to Stockman, “A junction box inside the door had broken loose and caught fire.” Watching the flames spread toward the truck, Stockman spotted a fire extinguisher on the vehicle. The broken electrical wires hanging overhead and strong smell of gasoline, however, quickly eliminated any further thoughts of trying to put out that fire. They quickly retreated.
After wading back to their station, the men discovered that logs and out-of-control cars had completely knocked over two of the Texaco gas pumps. They momentarily stared at the gasoline leaking into the sea and its oily film spreading over the water. “That was it,” thought Stockman. He quickly retrieved his car, and everyone jumped inside. Tires spinning and not catching on land, he drove through the seawater still covering Highway 101 to the downtown area, dodging floating debris on the way.
As he drove into downtown Crescent City, the group heard thundering explosions behind them and turned to look outside the car. Flames were shooting high into the black sky. Not only had one of the bulk tanks started to flare up in fiery light, but the gasoline storage and gas tanks under their Texaco gas pumps had also burst into flames. They had left not a minute too soon. The Union Oil station then erupted in its inferno. Later that morning when conditions were safer, Stockman and Hussey checked out the devastation at their Texaco station. Stockman wrote later, “We found everything but the station itself in flames, and our fuel tank burned for three or four days. It was a kind of torch to show people the way back to Crescent City, ‘Comeback Town, U.S.A.’ ”
ABLE TO SEE the flames in the night sky and having heard the explosions, firemen didn’t need to receive fire alarms. Before alarms were received, fire crews were already on the way, guided by the infernos that lit up the sky. Although the city had marshaled as best it could all of its available men and equipment for this fight, the obstacles in its way were considerable.
The ocean, especially the large, fourth wave that rolled over Highway 101 between the fire station and the fires, had already left a minefield of debris on the southbound route. Cutting off the normal routes to fight those fires, this blockage greatly delayed the response time of the men and their equipment. Firemen had to drive their fire engines over time-consuming alternate routes, constantly dodging off one road, and then turning onto another to avoid the large logs and debris in the way. The strewn wreckage stymied several attempts in getting close to fight the worst fires, and the firemen worked to find some route that would get them there.
One fire crew responded to the first fire at the Nichol’s Pontiac dealership before the last major surge. They had started hosing water down on the flames, when one of the men shouted a warning. Looking over their shoulders towards the ocean, they watched the black mass of the fourth wave barreling towards them. The firemen had to drop their hoses abruptly and race back at speeds of more than forty miles per hour towards safety, the wave in close pursuit. They were able to reach higher ground only seconds in front of the grinding tidal wave—still climbing up after them.
When fire crews finally reached the Texaco bulk farm after it first exploded, flaming electrical wires had by then ignited the gasoline spilled over the waters. The flaming gasoline flowed around the fire engines and spread, quickly trapping the firefighters. It became too dangerous for the men, who had to turn quickly around and leave for their own safety. Even when back on the scene, the firemen needed to be ever mindful of more tidal waves returning. In fact, after fighting the fires at this area for three hours, all of the units raced back to higher ground when a report came in that another tidal wave was on its way. This proved to be a costly false alarm.
The city’s Fire Chief was Bill Marshall, Jr.; the First Assistant was Wally Griffin, who owned the Crescent City American; and Bob Ames, Jr., was the Second Assistant. Neither assistant was available. Wally voluntarily helped out the fire department, but this time he had to work through the night so an extra edition of his newspaper could be brought out that following day. The tidal wave already had caught Bob Ames and his family, causing them to fight for their lives, both inside their building and out.
Among the first fire alarms received that night by the fire department, one involved a home at Front and J Streets; another electrical short had started those flames. At the beginning of the conflagrations, Marshall and his firemen raced to the house and began to hose down the burning residence. The ocean suddenly rose quickly up again. Without a moment’s hesitation, Marshall ordered his men to put down their hoses. “Put this thing in low gear and let’s get the hell out of here,” he ordered. “Don’t stop for anything.”
As the last big surge steamed over land, the fire engine and its crew raced up K Street with the tidal wave in hot pursuit. This surge actually overtook the fire engine, washing over the running board of Engine No. 5 at one point. However, the fire truck was able to keep moving and won the race.
Fire Chief Marshall’s main concern was to save the fire truck in case the fire spread through the city. He made the right decision: this was the same fire engine used later to fight the Texaco bulk-tank fire until high waters again forced those firemen to retreat. Unfortunately, the Front Street residence burned to the ground, as fears of more waves returning and the devastation kept fire-fighting efforts at bay.
The infernos on Highway 101 South remain strong in residents’ memories. The towering flames were easily seen and highly visible in the sky. Nearly everyone who was in Crescent City at the time recollects the power and impact of those explosions and fires at night—they brought home the fact to everyone that their city was under terrible siege. Understandably, people went out of their way to avoid being too close to the flames, including the boat from the Long Branch that detoured away to miss the towering blazes.
THE LOADED-DOWN skiff continued on its laborious passage. Fairly quickly, Gary Clawson and the others saw land dead ahead. The sights were clear to everyone. Houses bobbed by others, lumber floated everywhere, but the distinctive shape of the Ames building and other structures took form. They were close to safety, and Gary and Bruce paddled harder. It would only take another minute or two, and their spirits quickly lifted.
Suddenly, the seawater surged back towards the ocean with that abnormal, deep “sucking” sound that happens after the thunderous advance of a tidal wave. Gary said, “We were about two boat lengths, just twenty feet or so, from the bank and safety when the ocean started to recede. In that instant, I realized that we were in the worst possible place we could possibly be: right on Elk Creek. And directly above the culvert through which the river passed under the highway.”
The skiff was angling over the creek when the sudden backwash of waters hit, surging from right to left, and caught the skiff broadside. “We didn’t have any time to turn the boat, and we were pulled down sideways towards the bridge at the mouth of Elk Creek. It was only a hundred feet to the culvert when the waters caught us.”
The ocean’s retreat became a frothy, raging torrent heading back to sea. The boat had nudged to the point to where all would be safe. But at that very moment the tidal surge tore away at speeds escalating to forty miles per hour. The skiff hurtled towards the low-lying bridge, underlying culvert, and ocean. Everyone knew about the steel grate on the ocean side of the bridge, waiting to stop anyone or anything that made it underneath. Anticipation and anxiety bubbled into horrifying terror.
It would be all too easy to row over what used to be a river and not know it. No matter where you were, the water level would be the same. The unspoken tenet would be to get onto land, to survive, to live. Once the receding waters ripped the boat from its course with savage speed, there was no chance to leave the swirling waters that followed Elk Creek’s outline. Tidal waves gravitate up and down tributaries, attracted by the pull of their underground contours, and this one was striking its way back the same way it came. Millions of gallons of seawater pulled back to pour off the land, a mass over two miles inland and twelve miles in length.
The bridge cleared the river by fifteen feet during normal times. The sea currents now pounded through the culvert just underneath it, surging over, around, and to the sides of the man-made obstacle. The ocean swirled over Highway 101 farther up and down from the bridge, its levels reaching toward the very height of the bridge’s belly. The sea became a flash flood in its retreat.
The mouth of the bridge with its metal guardrail soon loomed high in the moonlight. Silhouetted over the skiff, the concrete abutment raced towards them, then smashed the boat with a loud “smack” from the impact. The water level was so high that the skiff slammed astride the culvert’s narrow opening at its very top.
Bruce Garden happened to be on the side that hit. Seeing the bridge speed toward him, he instinctively stood up just before the collision and lunged forward, at the moment the boat sailed into the bridge. Taller than most, he grabbed at the structure and guardrail, while the boat slammed into the opening. The force of the impact was so strong that this collision broke two of his ribs. Garden frantically pulled himself onto the bridge, the skiff wedging momentarily between the ends at the culvert’s opening.
The ocean waters thundered against the boat and swiftly lifted it high up. The skiff hung momentarily in the air, then the ocean spun it over. Everyone in the boat spilled head over heels into the cold churning sea. As Gary tipped over, the metal cash box opened up, showering cash and checks around. The box hit him squarely in his face. His mother, father, Nita, Earl, and Joanie joined him in being instantly sucked by the currents underneath the boat, then ripped down into the underground stream that surged through the culvert.
The chilling water churned the hapless people around like a washing machine, the currents tearing one after another down toward the bottom, then forcibly propelling them back up as if they were ragdolls on a hellish roller-coaster ride. The undulating ocean slammed the six around, then up and down. For an instant, the surging waters threw everyone into a small air chamber under the bridge and a “good way” inside the culvert. Faces stared in horror or with incomprehension for a second or two at one another, before each was pulled back down into the sea. The waters were “frothing white and violent,” as Gary described.
He numbly watched his mother, father, and Joanie struggling frantically about thirty feet in front of him, as the tidal wave raged through the culvert with powerful eddies and swirling underwater currents. From that time on, however, Gary didn’t see Nita or Earl again. The currents pummeled the six people underwater for the length of the bridge and its underground channel—a full two hundred feet—as two streets joined above ground at that point to form Highway 101. The metal grate at the other end awaited each person’s arrival.
The city constructed the grate in a straight line that veered slightly at an angle from the bridge, starting six feet away on the ocean side. The contractor built it well. Steel posts were pounded 1½ feet apart into the creek bottom and set solidly in concrete. A strong I-beam was welded on top, binding the line of posts for seventy-five feet, from one bank to the other.
The authorities designed the grate to keep debris from being pushed up the river by tidal surges. The irony now was that it trapped anything or anyone pulled down from the other side toward the ocean. The grate already had entrapped huge logs, lumber, merchandise, refrigerators, and other debris being pulled back by the tsunami. Outside the grate, the waters steamed down Elk Creek as it curved in a reverse “S” for four hundred yards down to the beach.
Incredulous at what was happening, Gary Clawson was conscious the entire time. The white water hitting the wreckage lit the area up like a neon light. Time seemed to stand still. “The phosphorus in the saltwater sprayed against the debris and moonlight into a brilliant, blue-green light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, reflecting on the explosion of sights and sounds he experienced. As each person churned toward the debris piled against the steel grating, dancing lights, thundering sounds, and drowning water engulfed each.
It was seconds after hitting the air pocket that people sailed into the grate and its trapped prizes. Before smashing into the logs and debris, Gary heard Joanie’s voice agonizingly scream his name for one last time. The force of these currents is nearly incomprehensible, similar only to smashing into underground rocks if someone fell into a swollen flood’s worst rapids. Then add that the person is inside a culvert filled with the raging ocean.
Like the others, Gary hit the grate and objects with tremendous force. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but what kept him from more serious injuries was that he instinctively threw up his hands to protect himself, just before slamming into the wreckage. The ocean’s currents momentarily flattened him against the debris pile, then dragged him underwater. The churning water trapped him under the logs where he swallowed “sea-water in gulps.”
The ocean smashed against the trapped wreckage in huge torrential sprays, then surged underneath it with full force to pound through the steel posts or gouge openings through the sand beneath the pinning concrete. Anyone slamming headfirst against the pile would be knocked unconscious and quickly drown. Or worse, they still would be conscious with the air in their lungs knocked out. The buffeting action of the raging waters would force in gulps of suffocating saltwater. The terrible sensation of drowning would take over, as each fought savagely, fearfully, to survive. Gary Clawson was no different. He said in a measured voice later:
I couldn’t get through the logs to get back to the surface. The currents pinned me against the debris, all underwater. I could look up around the logs and still see the white light at the top. I was under some eight feet of water at this time, trapped under all of the rubbish. I sucked in more saltwater, gagging without air, and I thought to myself, “Son of a bitch, I’m drowning.” When you take in water, it may only be a matter of a few seconds, but to you it’s an eternity. I felt a shot of terror.
I don’t know why, but I pushed down for some reason. If I couldn’t go up, then I must have been unconsciously thinking, “Let’s go down.” But that didn’t work. So I reached up against something above me and pushed down a second time, this time as hard as I could and toward the bottom. Fear gives you a lot of strength, and the second push did it.
The current sucked me feet first, upside down, with tremendous force. I felt I scraped the bottom of the grate, then I was swept through a hole between the posts. I felt myself whirling about, then up. I fought my way toward what seemed to be the surface and poked through. I looked around, as I coughed and coughed up seawater. I was on the opposite side of the grate. I was alive, although I wasn’t so sure at the time.
I looked around. It sounds unlikely, but I could see everything then as clear as a bell. I could see straight out to Seaside Hospital, as plain as if it was day, and the hospital was located one-half mile away. Although the time wasn’t close for the sun to rise, it seemed to be light out, lots of light out. And everything was in an orchid color... a light purple, orchid color. Everything around me was bathed in that beautiful color.