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explosion and the 9.45 earthquake caused the Water-Foam Deluge System to be activated not just in the westbound center 3 lanes and the bottom two HOV lanes, but also in the eastbound tunnel that used the original I-90 lanes. 
      Using a Fuzzy Logic Ramp Metering Algorithm, the computer systems measuring the eastbound lanes, without hearing from TSMC, did the prudent thing and assumed the worst. The computers did their best because the Traffic Systems Management Center in Shoreline was exactly six miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, centered just north of Bainbridge Island.  At 6:20:20 the 9.45 shake had crossed the narrow neck of Puget Sound between Indianola and the Shoreline Highlands and smashed the crap out of every shack, house, business and government building. The TSMC Shoreline had been destroyed.
      The power was out, the building severely damaged, three employees were hurt, two seriously. Ten miles to the south on the campus of the University of Washington WSDOT’s back-up server, located on the main floor of Kane Hall, which on a normal day was a five-minute walk from Johnson Hall, the start of Karen’s day, today was a maze of collapsed parking decks and building facades. The award-winning UWTV-channel 27, like everybody else, was offline.
      The Foam-Water Deluge system wasn’t terribly complex; when activated it dumped a shit-load of foam-water at high pressure onto and into the affected area. However, the issue with older pre-9/11 fuel suppressant systems was that no one really had an experience with melted steel girders, which melt at 1400-1600 degrees F.  A gasoline truck that explodes inside a confined area will generate heat in the range of 3000-3500 degrees F.
      Unfortunately, the westbound lanes, the middle section of the tunnel, melted the ceiling of the HOV lanes below and dropped 3000-degree burning fuel into another confined space, which then rolled in both directions. Above, there were two layers of steel; one of which melted after a minute, before the foam-water deluge system could drench the fire; the second layer was the pedestrian path at the top cone of the system; heat yes, collapse, no. Westbound was fucked; eastbound, the same.
      The foam-water deluge system activated by the firestorm in the western tunnels caused non-meltdown but virtual destruction in the eastbound tunnel. Imagine it’s 6:20 in the morning, an earthquake hits, your car rolls toward the side of the tunnel, then back again; and then the great flood strikes! Not just any garden-variety flood, but a “total emersion foam-water deluge system”. Water begins to flood through seemingly every pore of the tunnel; not drip, drop, flip, flop, but water at nuclear, no Warp speed, down into the channel. 
      The earthquake and the water caused a pileup of cars in the eastbound lanes. Dead people everywhere; cars smashed up against the tunnel, water gushing in every direction.  No fire as far as the eye could see, but plenty of water.
      Many years afterwards the only explanation that made any sense was that the universe had been tilted, altered by the playing of Adam Faith & The Roulette’s It’s Alright concurrently and randomly by KWYS 920 AM of West Yellowstone, Montana and KISS 106.1 FM of Seattle, Washington at 6:20 PST (7:20 MST) just as the worst earthquakes in the history of man simultaneously exploded, like a pair of cymbals crashing at the end of the 1812 Overture.  
     

Elliott Bay, Seattle
     
      Seated in the protected second deck along with 600 other passengers, Ray looked around. Maybe it was the experience of war where the brain demanded and expected more input ; that voice said something strange was happening. Ray got out of his seat near the window, shouldered his backpack and started walking toward the center of the boat, instinctively feeling safer.
      One, two, three steps— bang —the Wenatchee was hit by the first shockwave, a jolt so powerful that it knocked him off his feet,