Back at Snow Hydrology, Alec and Troy lighted cigarettes and waited
for Plumber to show up with their assignments. Of all of the sections,
theirs was the one which would have the least immediate action. The
bulk of the emergency was falling on the waterflow and engineering
sections.

"Let's go have a look at the profiles," Troy suggested. "This quake
could have set off quite a few avalanches."

They went into the survey data room where a half dozen technicians
were running bank scans of the gauges throughout the Region. At the
desk on a raised dais in the center of the room, the junior duty
engineer was poring over a fresh set of graphs.

"How's it look, Walt?" Troy asked. The young engineer looked up at
them and smiled. "Hi Troy, Alec. Oh, not too bad from our point of
view." He indicated the graphs on his desk. "We've had some shifting
in loose pack and ice stratas along the Palouse Range, a little in the
Sheep Mountain Range. But so far, we've been lucky. The worst one is
right here, on Lookout Peak. She must have dumped at least a hundred
thousand tons down the slope and into the valley and she stripped
right down to the rock and took out every gauge on the way. Then it
piled up in the valley and knocked out all but three gauges there. And
they're reading anywhere from sixty-five to more than one hundred foot
depths. We'll lose some of that if it's not lying right for
retardation spraying."

The three engineers studied the new profiles as they came in from the
techs. They were huddled over the desk when Plumber entered the room
and joined them at the table.

"What's the word, Jordan?" Alec asked.

"Nothing for us right now," Plumber said. "We're to remain on standby
alert, possible fill-in in other sections for the time being. Then
we'll have to come up with some new figures as quickly as possible."

He glanced down at the charts and then asked the duty engineer, "How
many positions knocked out?"

"No reports from sixty-eight gauges on this last scan," Walt reported,
"most of them in Idaho. But there may be a few more before noon
tomorrow. According to my last avalanche report before this thing hit,
there should be at least ten more cornices that could have been
cracked by this shock but that haven't fallen yet. It's still snowing
over most of the Sawtooths but it's due to let up by dawn and a
warming trend set in. That ought to trigger the others and when they
go then we'll have just about all the replace