Archive of Our Own

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BUCK: Hi everyone, and welcome to the first ever episode of Best Case Scenario! I’m Firefighter Evan Buckley with Station 118 in Los Angeles, California, but you can call me Buck. I’m here with…

EDDIE: I’m Eddie. Diaz.

CHIMNEY: —and you’re watching Disney Channel.

BUCK: Chim! You said you weren’t gonna be a part of this.

CHIMNEY: What, I’m not allowed to talk now? We’re in an open-plan loft, I live here.

BUCK: You said, and I quote—

BUCK & EDDIE: I refuse to become a podcast guy.

HEN: You did say that. Like, five times.

CHIMNEY: And I stand by it.

BUCK: Also, it’s not like you’re paying rent.

CHIMNEY: I literally bought toilet paper yesterday, you should all be bowing down to me right now.

HEN: Chim, are you in their little podcast or not?

BUCK, CHIMNEY, & EDDIE: Not.

HEN: Then read your damn book.

BUCK: Anyway. You can call me Buck. Eddie and I are partners, and we’re here to tell you about natural disasters!

HEN: Tell them why you called it Best Case Scenario.

BUCK: Hen!

EDDIE: It’s a play on “worst case scenario.”

HEN: What’s the play?

BUCK: …That we’re best friends.

CHIMNEY & HEN: (cackling)

BUCK: It’s a good title!

EDDIE: Thank you.

BUCK: Alright. So, we’re both firefighters—

EDDIE: —and our hecklers are paramedics.

BUCK: But we don’t speak for or represent the LAFD. We’ll be talking about natural disasters and sharing our own personal experience as well as research-supported guidelines for best safety practices if you’re caught up in one.

EDDIE: Like Buck was.

BUCK: Right. The reason why I’m so interested in natural disasters is because I was—wait, did he decide on a fake name?

EDDIE: He said he wants to be called Megatron.

BUCK: God, I love that kid. Okay, so I’m gonna assume pretty much everybody listening knows that a tsunami hit Los Angeles in September last year. When it hit, I was on the Santa Monica Pier with Eddie’s son, Megatron.

EDDIE: I was at work, I didn’t just opt out of a trip to the pier.

BUCK: You’d never, you like funnel cake too much.

EDDIE: God, I miss funnel cake.

BUCK: You think we could make it at home? I bet we could figure out how to make it at home.

EDDIE: You putting it on the list?

BUCK: Obviously. Okay, so I was off work for an injury and I took Megatron to the pier.

EDDIE: You know he still swears we owe him a giant teddy bear?

BUCK: Well, we could always go and win another.

EDDIE: Those things are scams—

BUCK: Megatron and I managed to win one. Maybe you just suck at the games.

EDDIE: I do not suck at the rigged carnival games, they’re rigged—

BUCK: Sounds like a sore loser—

EDDIE: So you were on the pier when the tsunami hit.

BUCK: Right! Megatron and I are both okay—

CHIMNEY: Obviously.

BUCK: —but it was a really wild experience to have, you know? You start to wonder—well, at least I started to wonder—why me, right? Why us? Why that time, why that place? Could we have predicted it? Did I do everything I should have? Is there something I did do that I shouldn’t have?

HEN: I can think of a few things.

EDDIE: Hen.

HEN: Unrelated things!

EDDIE: Buck managed to keep my son alive through getting hit straight-on by a tsunami. So, I guess if you’re looking for tsunami survival tips, you’re in the right place.

BUCK: I think it’s mostly just luck. Uh, but I did pick up Megatron and run—

CHIMNEY: You can lift Megatron? Wow, you must be going crazy on arm day.

BUCK: Ignore him. As soon as we noticed that the water had receded, I ran. Obviously you can’t outrun a tsunami, though, so right before the wave hit I managed to tuck us both behind the wall of a booth, and I think that helped with the impact a little bit. Which leads to item number one on the docket! Eddie?

EDDIE: Why does the water recede before a tsunami hits?

BUCK: Excellent question! To answer it, first we need to figure out what a tsunami is.

EDDIE: It’s a big wave.

BUCK: Eddie.

EDDIE: Muy grande.

BUCK: It’s a series of muy grande waves.

EDDIE: Your accent is awful.

BUCK: You just think that because I learned in Peru!

EDDIE: I don't think that's how people sound in Peru. Anyway, yeah, I remember when it came back around.

BUCK: Eddie was doing water rescues at the time. You were on the Ferris wheel, right?

EDDIE: Yeah, we really had to rush to get the last few people off before the ocean took the whole thing down.

BUCK: So, normal waves don’t destroy Ferris wheels.

EDDIE: They do not.

BUCK: Most waves are what we call surface waves, meaning that they’re caused by wind blowing across the surface of the water. Tsunamis aren’t surface waves.

EDDIE: That’d be a hell of a breeze.

BUCK: Tsunamis are caused by either earthquakes or undersea volcanic eruptions. Did you know that there was an ancient Greek guy who figured that out back in, like, the fifth century BC?

EDDIE: Wow, really?

BUCK: Yeah, his name was The—Thy—Thucydides? Thucydides.

EDDIE: Thucydides.

CHIMNEY: Bueller?

BUCK: So, tsunamis are caused by geologic activity under the ocean. When that geologic activity displaces the water above the sea floor, the water's gotta go somewhere, right? So it moves in a wave. And as that water moves toward the shore, the wave gets compressed and grows higher and higher until it becomes huge and devastating.

EDDIE: You still haven't answered the receding water question.

BUCK: We're getting there. Trust the process.

EDDIE: I trust you, I just figured I'd remind you.

BUCK: So, I want you to imagine you're carrying something full of water. Like, a glass or a pot. Eddie, what's your water in?

EDDIE: Your beer stein from Oktoberfest.

BUCK: Wh... Why did you think of that so fast?

CHIMNEY: I don't think it was that fast. It's—it's a distinctive glass, it makes sense he'd think of it.

BUCK: ...You broke my beer stein from Oktoberfest.

CHIMNEY: Whaaat? No! Why would I even—why would I even touch it? I haven't—I don't even like beer.

BUCK: So, if I go open the cabinet right now—

EDDIE: He was jumping to try to reach something on the top shelf and he knocked it down.

HEN: (wheezing laughter)

CHIMNEY: Thanks for nothing, Benedict Arnold!

EDDIE: Chim, it's gone, he was gonna notice—

CHIMNEY: No, he wasn't! He never even used it!

BUCK: Okay, just—forget the imagination exercise. The point is that waves have a ridge and a trough. Am I saying that right? Trough?

EDDIE: Trough. Yeah, I guess.

BUCK: So, waves have a ridge and a trough. The ridge goes up, the trough goes down, and they're proportional to each other. High ridge, low trough. Either part of the wave can reach shore first. So, the ridge reaches first, you get hit with a giant wave out of nowhere. The trough comes first...

EDDIE: You see the water recede before the tsunami hits.

BUCK: Exactly! We were actually lucky that the trough hit first. Uh, Megatron and I were sitting right at the edge of the pier, looking out over the water. He noticed the drawback, little genius.

EDDIE: Drawback?

BUCK: Yeah, that's the actual term for it. Speaking of terms, you know that the word tsunami is borrowed from Japanese?

EDDIE: I did actually know that.

BUCK: Historically, tsunamis have been most often experienced in Japan, but as Los Angelenos can tell you, that doesn't mean they never happen elsewhere.

skip to 25:00

EDDIE: Water rescues can be tricky. Unless you're in a swimming pool, there's always gonna be some pretty significant movement that you can't control; there's no way to stop Mother Nature. Water's powerful. It can carry things a hell of a lot heavier than you, and bash you right in the face with them if you're not careful.

BUCK: Yeah, that's why I wouldn't recommend using a vehicle as your island in the case of a tsunami. Obviously, when you're in the water and debris is rushing all around you, you don't exactly have a lot of options, and as far as vehicles go a fire truck is gonna be a bit more stable than, say, a Kia Sorento, but—

EDDIE: (snickering)

BUCK: —When the water rushes back out, it'll take anything that isn't bolted down with it. And some things that were bolted down, too.

skip to 45:00

BUCK: So, to summarize: get stable, get high, wait for help. Don't go into an enclosed area that might be easily flooded. Don't let your guard down because the water drew back. Remember, a tsunami isn't just a big wave. What is it, Eddie?

EDDIE: A series of big waves.

BUCK: Exactly!

CHIMNEY: You know, I bet you were an excellent kindergarten teacher in another life.

BUCK: That's gonna do it for our first episode of Best Case Scenario! If you enjoyed it or if you feel like you learned something helpful, maybe share it with a friend who lives on the coast.

EDDIE: Yes, give your friend a reason to feel anxious in their own home.

BUCK: Hey, we shared safety tips, too! I'm living proof that tsunamis aren't necessarily a death sentence.

EDDIE: And thank goodness for that.

BUCK: See you all next time. Stay safe!

BUCK: Welcome back, everyone! I’m Buck, here with my co-host and partner Eddie to teach you about natural disasters. Our second episode is a special request from our number one fan, May Grant!

CHIMNEY: Number one as in the only one.

EDDIE: Hey, your girlfriend liked it too.

CHIMNEY: That doesn’t count, she has to be nice to Buck.

BUCK: Oh, like how you’re nice to Albert?

EDDIE: In case we ever get a listener who isn’t an immediate family member, for context, Chimney’s girlfriend is Buck’s sister. Albert is Chim’s brother.

BUCK: I feel like that’s not enough context.

CHIMNEY: Don’t say more about Albert, he doesn’t need the attention.

EDDIE: Megatron said he liked it as well.

CHIMNEY: Megatron is nine.

BUCK: And he has great taste. Hi, Megatron! We love you and we miss you so much. Mwah!

EDDIE: Oh, he’s gonna be so mad you gave him a kiss.

BUCK: It’s not like his friends can see it.

EDDIE: Good point. Mwah! Love you, mijo.

BUCK: So! This episode is a special request from the coolest recent high school graduate in LA, who wanted us to talk about earthquakes!

EDDIE: Congratulations again, May, we’re all very proud of you.

BUCK: So, we at station 118 have responded to our fair share of earthquakes. Usually, they’re relatively small, and the serious damage is restricted to people who had the bad luck to be chopping veggies or welding metal when the quake hit.

EDDIE: I’ll never get used to how casual people can be about earthquakes here.

CHIMNEY: And that’s why you’ll never be a true Angeleno.

BUCK: But sometimes quakes can be devastating. Eddie and I have a story about a rescue we participated in after that seven-point-one in 2018, so stick around through the science part to hear about that!

skip to 35:00

EDDIE: It was a hell of a day.

BUCK: Honestly, a great day.

EDDIE: Great? Oh, because you met—

BUCK: (overlapping) Megatron.

EDDIE: (overlapping) Ali.

BUCK: What? Why would—

EDDIE: Oh, I was—Obviously. Sorry. Yeah, uh, Buck drove me to pick up Megatron from school when we got off work that day.

BUCK: And I helped you sweep all the glass up in your house because it didn't occur to—

EDDIE: You've said this so many—

BUCK: —you that you'd have to anchor your—

EDDIE: —times!

BUCK: —furniture after moving to California.

skip to 49:00

BUCK: Well, that's it for this month's episode of Best Case Scenario! Remember, schools and skyscrapers.

EDDIE: Safest place to be.

BUCK: If you liked this episode, maybe share it with somebody who lives on or near a fault line. See you next time, and stay safe!