Chapter 227 We Continue
The levee at Elmwood Bend had breached, and the backflowing floodwater had already destroyed three electrical towers. The workers in charge of repairs were still working hard to restore the power facilities, but tonight's heavy rainstorm was bad news for them.
Caroline's phone rang. She glanced at the number—it was Mark Mahoney, the technical repair team leader in charge of fixing the towers at Elmwood Bend.
"Ms. Tudor, where are you?"
Caroline said, "Just passed Rosewood Town."
Mark calculated the time—it would take at least forty minutes to get there.
Caroline asked, "How's the repair work going?"
Mark was holding an umbrella, and the sound of heavy rain came through the phone. "We just fixed one tower. The other two are still being repaired. We're running out of cable and urgently need more. Ms. Tudor, we need cable."
Caroline could hear the anxiety in Mark's voice. "We'll get there as fast as we can."
Throughout the journey, Caroline's phone kept ringing like a hotline, draining her battery from eighty-three percent down to fifty percent.
The small road into Elmwood Bend was blocked again by two fallen trees. Moving the trunks was difficult work. Besides the driver, everyone in the vehicle got out to help clear the roadblock. When Ulysses saw Caroline getting out too, he called out:
"Ms. Tudor, it's pouring—you should stay in the car."
Caroline closed the car door and ran into the heavy rain with the others.
Including Caroline, there were fifteen people. The crane and bulldozer hadn't caught up with the team yet, so everyone had to manually push the trees to the roadside.
But the fallen trunks were still connected to their roots, and the branches of the two large trees were tangled together. After working for a long time, they hadn't managed to clear much space.
Caroline had Oliver go back to the car for an axe. Cutting through the trunk would be much easier than moving the whole tree, and it was the fastest way to get through right now.
Some people used axes to chop the thicker branches, while those without tools broke off the thinner ones by hand. They barely cleared one side of the road before everyone rushed back to their vehicles to continue the journey.
Everyone's clothes were soaked through, Caroline included. Water dripped from the ends of her hair, and she was shivering from the cold.
As they drove through Elmwood Bend toward the foot of the mountain, the water level gradually rose, nearly reaching the tires of the work vehicles.
Through the curtain of rain, crowds of people could be seen working on flood control and rescue operations on the distant levee. Below the levee, bulldozers and excavators kept running. The situation at Elmwood Bend was getting more and more serious.
Caroline called the rescue team and learned that the assault boats and rescue personnel had already rushed to another village where the disaster was severe. A flash flood had occurred there, and all rescue forces had gone to support the rescue of trapped residents.
"We're here."
Before Caroline could hang up, Ulysses looked ahead and called out.
Caroline put down her phone. In her view was a newly re-erected electrical tower, with three power maintenance workers at the top working in the rain.
Seeing them arrive, Mark rushed over, soaked like a drowned rat, and stood by the vehicle directing the bulldozer to unload the cable.
The rain was fierce and urgent, and the thunder hurt their eardrums. Mark had been holding an umbrella, but the strong wind had broken it, and it now lay in a puddle behind him.
Caroline got out of the car, shielding her head with her hand to keep her vision clear. Mark ran over. "Ms. Tudor, why did you get out? Get back in the car."
She answered a different question. "How many people do you have working on repairs?"
Mark said, "Twelve people."
Facing such a difficult task, twelve people seemed insufficient.
Caroline said, "I brought fifteen people. You handle this one. Where's the other tower?"
Splitting into groups for repairs was the fastest way to restore power. Mark pointed in another direction. "Go around from here, it's at the foot of the back mountain, in the middle of the river channel."
Caroline led the support work vehicles to the next location, while Oliver notified the crane and bulldozer to meet at the new address.
The damage to the third tower was better than Caroline had expected. Although it was in the middle of the river channel, judging by the riverbed, the water route must have been altered. The current water level wasn't high, so the restoration work wasn't too difficult.
Caroline began directing the repairs in an orderly manner. It took nearly three hours to reach near completion.
Back in the car, she called Mark. As long as his team finished repairs, they could restore power.
When she asked about progress again, Mark brought bad news—the second tower had a secondary accident and was still being repaired.
A rumbling thunder drew Caroline's attention. She looked at the dark sky outside. The pouring rain had reduced visibility even further, invisibly adding more difficulty for the repair workers.
"Mark, speed it up. There's going to be another heavy rainstorm tonight."
Hearing this, Mark was silent for two seconds on the phone, then replied anxiously, "I'll do my best."
Another hour passed, and the third tower was successfully repaired. Mark called.
"Ms. Tudor, the river is flooding back. We need reinforcements here."
Caroline quickly called someone at the base of the tower. "Oliver, Oliver..."
The rain was too loud and drowned out her voice. Caroline waded through the small river to behind Oliver. "Oliver, take a few others over to Mark's location."
Oliver nodded. "Got it."
He quickly gathered the others and drove toward the second tower's location. Caroline was about to leave when she noticed something wrong with the concrete foundation stakes under the tower.
"Ulysses." Caroline shouted at the top of her lungs. Hearing the call, Ulysses turned around and saw Caroline waving at him. "Come here for a second."
Ulysses strode toward her. Caroline pointed at her feet. "When we first got here, the water was still clear. Now the water flowing down from upstream is muddy, which means there's backflow. I felt the soil layer under the tower. If it keeps getting washed by floodwater, this tower might not hold. It needs reinforcement."
Ulysses bent down and grabbed a handful of mud and sand from under the concrete pier. He squeezed it in his palm, and black mud slipped through his fingers.
He frowned, his face serious. "This riverbed has definitely been dug up. The weight-bearing gravel is gone, leaving only silt from under the riverbed. If we don't reinforce it quickly, it could collapse at any time. When that happens, forget about restoring power to the North District—rebuilding this tower alone would take a month."
But the disaster victims in the North District were urgently waiting for power to be restored, and rescue work also needed electrical support. So reinforcing the tower couldn't wait.
Ulysses's thoughts matched Caroline's. She called out, "Everyone else, reinforce the tower right away."
Oliver took ten people, leaving five, including Caroline, to begin reinforcement work.
By this time, the prolonged work in the rain had exhausted everyone. Their movements slowed down, and the efficiency of the reinforcement work decreased.
Suddenly, something no one expected happened—a mountain flood broke out, and the floodwater came rolling in, roaring like a wild beast.
The tower was in the middle of the riverbed. At the speed of the flood, they wouldn't make it to shore before being swept into the water.
Caroline shouted, "The flood is coming—climb the tower!"
The person beside Ulysses saw the flood and was startled, losing balance and falling to the side. He reacted quickly, grabbed the person, and pulled them onto the tower.
All five people quickly climbed up the tower. The muddy floodwater swept through like a sandstorm, instantly swallowing the riverbed.
Caroline stared at the increasingly turbulent mountain flood below her feet and called the rescue team.
When news of Caroline's danger reached the city, Elijah was still directing operations in the severely affected Hilltop Meadows. Someone advised him to send out a rescue team to the scene, but right in front of him were over three hundred households of elderly and young people in one village also waiting for his rescue.
Elijah gritted his teeth, his face heavy. "A rescue team will go. We continue here."
At that moment, the sky turned dark, and the heavy rainstorm hit. Caroline clung tightly to the tower, hearing nothing but the sound of rain and the rushing floodwater below.
Leopold sat in his office, suddenly feeling restless as he looked out the window. He picked up his phone and pressed Caroline's number.