The Eruption- Volume 1

The Eruption- Chapter 11

                                                                                 Chapter 11

It was another week after the second earthquake before school sessions resumed. The original school was much too damaged to continue holding school sessions. Instead, school resumed in a different building. This building housed mostly college students, but they have enough empty rooms for the high school. This building was located on the other side of Cody. The tremors that has been shaking the area continue, and are getting stronger each day. I can feel the Earth tremble about three to four times every day. That's how active Yellowstone has become. It shows no signs of slowing down. The USGS still maintains they see no imminent eruption, but many of us in northwest Wyoming, including myself, are questioning that statement. Sure, Wyoming is used to getting an earthquake once in a while, but not every day! The sleeping dragon that draws so many people out here every year may be rumbling back to life, and possibly much sooner than what everyone is hoping for.

"Are you about ready?" Allison asked as I prepared for school that morning. "Almost. I'm going to grab something to eat real quick." I replied. "Jake, I assume you are riding with Allison to school this morning?" mom asked from the other room. "Yes ma." I replied back to her. I walked into the kitchen. "I made you a PB&J sandwich." Mom said as I walked in. "You can read my mind!" I laughed, snatching the sandwich from her hand. I walked into the living room. Allison was sitting in there watching the TV. "Jake, you need to see this." I sat down next to her, taking a bite out of my sandwich. On TV, the local news station was already talking about Yellowstone. The reporter began the discussion. "Locals around northern Wyoming are concerned of the recent and much frequent Earth rumblings over the past month. Two large earthquakes have damaged the area, and now quakes large enough to be felt occur a few times every day. The concern is that these quakes are all coming from Yellowstone National Park. The park contains an enormously large, ancient volcano that has lie dormant for tens of thousands of years. Is this behemoth volcano waking from its slumber? Some, if not many, believe the recent rumblings are the red flags that an eruption is on the way. As a matter of fact, two high school students from Cody High School made an entire project on Yellowstone and its potential to wreak havoc across the area." My eyes widened. Allison and I glanced at each other in shock. "What the hell is this?! We weren't even interviewed! They can't do this!" I exclaimed. The reporter continued on "Two students named Allison DeWitt and Jacob Warren based their Yellowstone project off of surrealism, where a sequence of events can cascade into something completely out of proportion. It was stated in their presentation that a Yellowstone eruption is very unlikely, but after taking a good look at what is happening at Yellowstone today, their project seems all too real. The ground is rising, earthquakes are happening, animals have fled the park, new cracks and craters have opened up in the ground, and the park has been closed down. It seems crazy that two teenagers could even predict an event like this, completely against what expert geologists have stated. The question now is, who do we believe? Yellowstone's last supereruption was 640,000 years ago, and with the signs we have now, the sleeping dragon appears to be slumping towards another one." "No! No!!" Allison shouted. "Folks of Wyoming need to take these warning signs very seriously. Ignoring these warning signs could be catastrophic. Yellowstone could erupt at any time, and the only thing we can do now is watch it happen. Citizens in Wyoming need to prepare in case that's where all this unrest leads to...." Allison changed the channel. Every news channel on the TV was talking about Yellowstone. From local to national news, all were talking about Yellowstone's potential re-awakening. Allison shut the TV off. "What...what have we done Jake..." Allison stuttered. "What do you mean Ally?" "We did this! Our project started a national panic!" "I wouldn't necessarily say that." I replied. "Well... every media station is talking about it across the nation, probably even internationally now, and it all started here! We started this!" "Yeah I know, but they are just using our project that, really, by no means, was meant for real." "Yeah you're right Jake." "The news is just trying to make a hot story, and they will stop at nothing to make stories like that, including our project." Mom walked into the room. "Hey! You two are in the newspaper!" she exclaimed. "Oh we are aware. We are kinda all over the news right now." I said. "Even nationally." Allison added on. Mom frowned at reading the paper. "Seems to me they were hungry for a story." She said. I glanced on my watch. "Ally, we better get going." The two of us headed out the door to school.

It was an extra five minute drive to the new building Allison parked her car. "I hope we don't get in trouble." She said. "I don't think we will. It's not our fault the media took the project out of proportion." We walked into the building. It had a total of four floors. There was sign at the entrance that said "High school 1st floor". Inside, it was much large than Cody High School. I saw all familiar faces on this floor. Another sign pointed all the directions of the classrooms. Mrs. Snow's classroom was located on the other end of the hallway. We walked into her classroom. As usual, she wasn't there and we were the first ones in the room. "This is becoming so redundant!" Allison laughed. We sat down next to each other to wait for the school day to begin. "While we have some time on our hands, let's take a look at Yellowstone." Allison opened her laptop and loaded her usual web pages to monitor the volcano. The first thing we took a look at was the earthquake map. "Dear God!" I exclaimed. Over the past seven days, there has been 4,700 earthquakes at Yellowstone. The earthquakes ranged in all different magnitudes: 2,3,4, even 5! "That's probably not even all of them." She pulled up the digital recordings of the seismometers at Yellowstone Park. Every single one of them we looked at was saturated with ground movements. A new earthquake appeared on the graphs every few seconds. "That's nothing really new other than the earthquakes are getting bigger." I said. "Well, here's one thing I'm worried about." "What is it?" I asked. "This here is the Norris Junction station. Notice how the earthquakes are only a few hundred meters deep? And the gas meter shows a massive increase in carbon dioxide, plus the ground temperature has risen to 230 degrees, well past the boiling point of water!" "So does this mean another hydrothermal explosion is coming?" "Not necessarily. Have you heard of an event called a phreatic explosion?" Allison said. "I believe so. It's a large gas explosion, right?" I asked. "Yes that is correct. It's a big release of gas that comes from the magma chamber itself. Many of these explosions on other volcanoes have preceded magmatic eruptions that come shortly after." "But why is this happening at Norris? The shallowest magma is southwest of Yellowstone Lake." I said. "That's a good question Jake! I have no idea why this would be happening at Norris. Hopefully I'll be able to... oh hi Mrs. Snow!" Mrs. Snow walked into the classroom. "Principal Gray would like to see the two of you." She frowned. "Ummm.... Why?" I asked. "Just follow me." Allison and I followed her to Principal Gray's office. "What could be wrong?" Allison whispered to me. I shrugged my shoulders. "Good morning everyone." Mr. Gray said. Mrs. Snow stayed in the room with us. "I'm Principal Gray." He shook my hand and then Allison's hand. "Why are we here? Is there something wrong?" Allison asked. "I want to say, I'm deeply concerned with the project you guys submitted just a while ago." He said. "The surrealist project? It was intended for a class project. Mrs. Snow said it was beyond excellent." I said. "Yes I agree, it was very excellent. However, are you guys aware of the media attention it has sparked?" "Yes, we are aware." Allison replied. "Your project has caused widespread panic, not only locally but also across the country." "It wasn't our fault. It's completely beyond our control." I chimed in. "I'm not suggesting it's your fault, not at all, but do you realize what this has started?" "As we have said, we are aware of the media buzz it's sparked, but....." "Your project might put a lawsuit on this school. We could lose money because of this!" Mr. Gray interrupted Allison. There was a silence that spread across the room. "It's all my fault. I'm the one who forwarded the project to the local paper." Mrs. Snow said. "That doesn't matter anymore." Mr. Gray replied. "So what do we do? It's already in the media..." Allison said. "I would suggest to the two of you that you guys start making another story that voids what was stated in your previous project, and make sure that gets forwarded to the media." Mr. Gray said. "Ummm... I don't think that is going to do us any good." I said. "And why not?" "The media already has the original story. Releasing another one that reverses what we already said wouldn't stop the media from all the hype." I replied. "And we're only teenagers, not full on volcano experts. This shouldn't have even come this far." Allison added on. "The media will look for anything to make a hot story, especially on a topic like that." Mr. Gray said. Another silence spread across the room. "So...do we have a deal? Will you guys make another story?" "Yes sir, we will..." "But we can't." Allison interrupted me. I was shocked. "Ally please..." "We can't do that. I'm sorry sir." She said. Mr. Gray raised his eyebrows. "You guys are more than capable of putting together a good story. Please don't sit here and tell me you can't do it. For our school's sake, I suggest you better do it." "Principal Gray, I'm sorry but we literally can't do this." Allison sighed. "Ally!" I nudged her. "And why not?" Allison gave me a nervous look, then around the room. She sighed as she looked at Principal Gray. "We cannot void what we said because now... that theory we came up with might be coming true."