Tommy Lee Jones: Mike Roark

Volcano

Mike Roark

Amy: Sometimes magma can find one of those fissures and rise up through it.
Roark: What's magma?
Rachel: Lava.
Roark: Lava? Right here in L.A?
Amy: It is one of the possibilities.
Roark: We have a history of that here in the downtown area?
Rachel: Paricutin... 1943, a Mexican farmer sees smoke coming out of the middle of his cornfield. A week later there's a volcano a thousand feet high. There's no history of anything until it happens. Then there is.

Roark: [Roark ordered 200 freeway dividers aka K-rails to redirect the lava. Trucks arrive with only 82] Where's the rest of 'em?
Truck driver: What "rest of 'em?" This is it!
Lt. Fox: Hey, there only about eighty here!
Truck driver: Eighty-two; everything else is stuck on the 5 and the 10.
Lt. Fox: We're trying to keep the city in one piece, pinhead. Eighty rails ain't gonna do it!
Truck driver: So what are you blaming me for?
Lt. Fox: CONVENIENCE, OK?

Roark: We're going to put as many people in front of it as it takes. Listen up, people! Let me tell you what's south of us: no more museums, no more department stores, just homes! People! If we turn and run now, they're going to be defenseless! You don't like my plan? That's good. Give me a another plan, but don't tell me we're backing out!

Amy: [calling Roark on his phone] How fast can you get to the corner of Wilshire and Western, we have a problem.
Roark: No, no. Not anymore. We have it stopped.
Amy: The volume of ash is too high to think that we're out of danger.
Roark: So, why did it just stop?
Amy: Well, maybe it didn't, maybe it went someplace else.
Roark: So, how do you know it didn't stop?
Amy: I don't. But what I do know is when Mount Saint Helens blew, the force was twenty seven thousand times greater then that of the Hiroshima bomb. Do you think that vent released anywhere NEAR that amount of energy yet?
Roark: No.
Amy: Well, lets just assume that we haven't seen the real bulk of the magma yet. Trust me, get down here.
[hangs up the phone]
Amy: Shit.

Chief Sindelar: Tell him he's not in Kansas anymore.
Emmet: You're not in Kansas anymore Mike.
Roark: St. Louis, I'm not in St. Louis.
Emmet: [into phone] St. Louis, he's not in St. Louis.
Chief Sindelar: I don't give a shit where's he's not! He has a desk now that's where...
Emmet: [to Mike] He doesn't give a shit. You have a desk, that's where you work.

Amy: Roark, Roark. There's lava in the red line. This just came through on the radio. The lava had overtaken a subway train in MacArthur park and completely destroyed it.
Roark: Is it still flowing?
Amy: It stopped. But there's more under us. There's has to be something feeding this. We know that the lava broke through here at the tar pits and created this vent, and we know that it broke through at MacArthur park, so that means it is traveling laterally underground over a course of at least eight miles.
Roark: Yesterday, you said it would flow straight up.
Amy: I've never tracked lava under a city before. I don't know what it will do with man-made tunnels to travel through.
Roark: I doesn't matter. I have to deal what's in front of me right now. I don't have time to read a filer on geological theory.
Amy: Well, somebody has to.
Roark: I can only fight what I can see.
Amy: Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and check it out.

Roark: All right Kelly, get your jacket and lets go. I have to go to the office for a while.
Kelly Roark: But, you said that if I visited, you would take the week off.
Roark: I am taking the week off.
Kelly Roark: I'll just wait here.
Roark: I can't leave you here after an earthquake.
Kelly Roark: Dad, I'm 13 years old, I know what to do.
Roark: Okay, what do you do?
Kelly Roark: Get into a doorframe, stick your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.
Roark: [looks at Kelly weird] All right, that's it
[picks up the phone]
Kelly Roark: Who are you calling?
Roark: [on the phone] Hello, Anita.
Kelly Roark: Dad.
Roark: [whispers to Kelly] Shut up.
[to Anita on the phone]
Roark: I need a babysitter.

Roark: [looking at the bodies on the ground at Macarthur park] Steam did that?

Amy: Right over the Red Line
[metro tunnel]
Roark: That steam could come anywhere... maybe the earthquake broke a water main
Amy: How did it get heated?
Roark: I don't know
Amy: You gotta lower me down there
Roark: I'm not letting you down there
Amy: Why... It's too dangerous?
Roark: Yes
Amy: I thought it was a water main?
Roark: All right... I'll go
Amy: You'll go... How are you gonna get up... I'm gonna lift you
Roark: I'm not letting you go
Amy: Then what are we going to do?
[lowers a camera down the shaft]