APRIL 27TH AT TEMBAGAPURA

Our wonderful Mt. Zaghaam, the most spectacular backdrop to life in Tembagapura occasionally reminds us that she is more than a pretty face. She stands behind our town of 8,000 souls and towers 8,000-ft above us. We look up to her in the morning and marvel at the sheer cliffs, myriad waterfalls, and broad scars of landslides. From every angle she is has a different visage, a different beauty, but always the same personality: strong and protective. Her mountain ridges reach out and down like arms to form a protective valley within which Tembagapura nestles. We bask in the morning sunshine that slips over her shoulders and sleep peacefully as the evening rains she collects wash away the cares of the day and patter on our tin roofs.

Until the evening of 27 April when something went amok. A few clouds drifted in during the early evening and were gathered by her outstretched arms and wrung out as our usual rain to provide our drinking water and the moisture necessary to dampen the roads and keep the next day's dust at bay. But the clouds kept coming, thicker, higher, wider, and lower than recent memory could recall. And Zaghaam kept gathering and wringing, gathering and wringing, gathering and wringing. She harvested nearly four inches of rain in less than four hours - and the harvest was high up on her broad bosom. The moisture gathered as drops, rivulets, trickles and streams. Finally it all coalesced into three raging torrents that ripped through Tembagapura with a fury never experienced, by even the oldest of old timers and the most native of natives.

The first culvert to plug was adjacent to the Senior Guest House. The benign little stream from above the new Kawiki shop area that often flows a chocolate milk color (and no more) during heavy rains unleashed a furious flood of rocks, boulders, and mud. All too much to absorb. Result? Water and debris down the road towards Palapa on one side and a hint of things to come across the administration parking lot on the other. The hint was just that: a few inches of muddy water under the door of the cash office, soggy carpets in the human relations offices, and slightly damp cables under the raised floor of the EDP Center.

As the clouds were gathered and harvested, the stream adjacent to the power plant became the dominant force. It grew and grew, sweeping past the power plant but stumbling at the culvert near the bus and tire shop.

The stumble wreaked havoc: a portion of the deluge swept south through one of several tire store yards to tear away the downstream wing-wall of the culvert and deliver a hundred tires and wheels to the Trakindo engine rebuild shop a hundred yards below. The shop was closed for business but the tires forced their way through the front wall and displaced the equipment inside. The displaced equipment went out through the back and side walls and into the river to become artifacts for future archaeologists to study. With standing room only at Trakindo, the remaining tires went on downstream to visit barracks, the hospital, the new specialty warehouse, Waa, and points south. Some have been seen in the river near Timika.

Another portion swept north and, finding the front doors of Shipping and Receiving open, went in and picked up a hundred thousand dollars of material. Finding no rear exit, the flood of water and material went through the back wall of the building to be only momentarily phased by the bus and tire shop. More tires, rims, wheels, machinery, supplies and mud, mud, mud were carried across the road to the heavy equipment shop. This shop, open for business 24-hours a day, absorbed some debris until its grease pits, storerooms and offices could take no more. The abundant overflow went next to the warehouse. And what is a warehouse for? To store material of course. The river added four feet of mud to our inventory. The mud was left not only on the warehouse shelves, but in the file cabinets of Purcon, on the printers and terminals of Purchasing and between the pages of PPUD's import records.

Still laden with silt, sand, and pebbles, a portion of this vector found its way to I- and J-Barracks and left deposits on beds, in drawers and lockers, and filled the laundry's washers and driers. Days later, by using a combination of fire hoses and wheel barrows, shovels and brooms, the unfortunate occupants had managed to evict over six truck loads of errant mud from their quarters.

Finished? Spent? Not by a long shot! The hospital had a foot of water in the wards and nearly lost the dental clinic into an adjacent excavation. The Public Health vehicle, dutifully parked, was slenderized by a combination of forces from rocks, tires, and tremendous water pressure. And then this force joined the first torrent from Kawiki to render the hospital foot bridge and the vehicle bridge near the tennis courts unusable. But the worst was yet to come.

The Mulki River which normally lulls the inhabitants of F-, K-, L-, and M-Barracks to sleep, displayed its strength by tearing away a part of the supports for the only bridge leading to the mine and mill. It then teased the inhabitants of the new 'T' Apartments with enough water through the soccer field and into a living room or two to ruin the carpets and lift some tiles. The teasing took on a more serious tone when one of two culverts under the Amole Bridge plugged and threatened to lift the river into West. A quarter mile downstream, a sewer line, suspended twenty feet above the normal river level, was torn loose from its moorings before the Mulki joined its brethren from the south.

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The three rivers, marauding with unimaginable force, swept down the valley to Waa. With huts built only feet above the normal high water line, the native village was not remotely prepared for the volume of water or the force behind it. Huts, belongings, even families were swept away and sent to the South Gap, Mile 50, Mile 39, and points further south enroute to the Arafura Sea, to be found days later or not at all.

The immediate aftermath found Tembagapura with little water, no electricity save the mess halls, hospital, and telephone system with alternate supplies. The roads into and out of town were blocked by mud slides (the author spent the night in his Toyota after an ill-fated quick trip to the mill) and debris was spread from top to bottom and beyond. Aside from the dump truck and backhoe which were carried a half mile downstream and deposited in a heap at the hospital foot bridge, the most obvious indicator that this flood had called at an industrial site were the tires. Tires of all sizes. With and without rims. New and used. Stashed, stuck, deposited, flung, buried and simply left in just about every conceivable cranny and crevice starting a few hundred feet below their original storeyard to as far away as Timika, tires could be found. No doubt those archaeologists who choose to study the remnants of the Trakindo shop will have an extra challenge on their hands with the tires.

There was no sense, at midnight with waters raging and little light, in attacking (or even defending against) this force of nature. Instead, management chose to send everyone home for a good night's sleep (the last for many for at least a week). By the time the next morning's 10:00AM task force convened, the flood had ebbed, preliminary damage assessments had been completed and plans for recovery were being formed.

Electricity (and CHN) was restored twelve hours after the river uprooted all connections to the Townsite Power Plant. Arrangements were made to carry five-gallon cans of fuel to a little generator which kept the satellite link to the outside world, the telephone system and the now-overworked pager system at jobsite 'alive'. Bulldozers, dump trucks, loaders and graders were diverted from assignments on the stockpile, levy duty (more on that subject later) in the lowlands, and slurry line burial duty at Mile 60 to serve in Tembagapura. A fleet of truly magnificent proportions, operated and serviced by men who knew what to do, went to work to open roadways, clear river beds, build temporary crossings, and force a degree of normalcy back into the stunned town. Within 24-hours a temporary ford allowed the miner's buses across the Mulki River to assure transport for that life-blood workforce on Monday morning. Thirty-six hours passed and the footbridge below the hospital was restored to limited service allowing school children and shoppers a path to their goals of the day. Day and night and day, the valley below Zaghaam echoed with the sounds of 'dozers, trucks, graders and loaders, all engaged in a frenzied but directed activity. All efforts and all attentions were directed towards a single goal: establish order and restore services.

Because of the volume of heavy equipment traffic, school children were initially herded in groups across the foot bridge near the school. All our drinking water had to be boiled until the distribution mains could be permanently repaired. Getting from one side of the river to the other at the Administration Building meant taking a ride on a bulldozer, walking an exposed pipeline across a mild torrent, or simply wading through and filling one's boots with cocoa-colored water. Occasional planned (and a few unplanned) power outages were required as the line crews rebuilt and restored the power distribution system to normal. The barracks dwellers (4,000 of them), accustomed to a highly efficient waste heat recovery hot water distribution system for hot showers, suffered cold showers on and off for four days until that system could be restored to order.

Levy duty? The water that Zaghaam delivered to Tembagapura was but a fraction of that which hours later found its way to the lowlands. The torrent, reinforced with water from adjacent valleys, left the haul road submerged as levies dissolved. Over two miles of man-made embankments collapsed under the combined forces of the Otomona and Ajkwa rivers and let the rivers run amok over the road and around the culverts. Fast work and careful traffic control allowed single lane passage of critical materials in less than 24 hours and released much of the heavy equipment for duty at Tembagapura.

As time marched on and services were restored, an accounting of the losses started to take place. This accounting would reveal not only immediate problems such as submerged equipment, but shadows of longer term problems: the spare parts to repair equipment which had not yet failed were gone. In every tragedy there is always some good to be found. In this tragedy the computer will be part of the salvation. Because the computer was able to 'stay alive' throughout, it will be able to tell us what we once had. All our warehousemen have to do is tell the computer what is still around and the difference is what we lost. Simple? All it will take is tens of thousands of dedicated man-hours, infinitely careful attention to detail, and the patience of Job. Until those spares with as yet unrecognized criticality can be replaced, the entire jobsite will be on the brink - waiting and wondering which insignificant component now lying in the river bed is the key to a hot breakfast, an active bulldozer, or a functioning Toyota.

Zaghaam is a few thousand tons lighter now that she has sent a little weight to the lowlands. But she looks pretty much the same: Bright, sparkling and shiny in the morning, misty and withdrawn in the evening. Has she more in store for us? Most certainly. Will we be better prepared for the next onslaught? Most certainly. Will we fare better? Only time will tell.