Ray Gaines

Ray Gaines is a Los Angeles Fire Department Rescue pilot and the main protagonist in the 2015 disaster action film San Andreas.

He is portrayed by Dwayne Johnson, who also portrays Beck, Mathayus, and Roadblock.

History

Ray and his three best friends, Harrison, Marcus and Joby, started off as soldiers of the US Army's 58th Rescue Squadron. After two tours of duty in Bagram, Afghanistan for combat search and rescue, they transferred to the Los Angeles Fire Department together. During their service in both the US Army and LAFD, they achieved a total of over 600 documented rescues, eventually including the seemingly impossible rescue of a young girl, Natalie, who was inside a damaged car that was hanging halfway down a tight crevice in the San Ferndndo Valley.

Ray lived in Pasadena, California with his wife, Emma, and their two daughters, Blake and Mallory. When the girls were roughly 11-15, Ray and Emma took them to San Francisco for Mallory's birthday weekend.

However, everything changed when Mallory drowned in a rafting accident, despite Ray's efforts to save her. Since then, in his struggle to deal with Mallory's death, he distanced himself from Emma and Blake, despite still remaining very close to Blake afterwards.

Eventually, Emma and Blake moved in with the former's new boyfriend, Daniel Riddick, owner of a San Francisco-based civil engineering firm, sending Ray some divorce papers.

Called Into Work

The day after being sent the papers, Ray recieves a text message from his boss, Chief Logan, asking him to call into work, as a massive earthquake has just taken place in Nevada. This is bad news for him, as he was supposed to be taking Blake on a cruise up the West Coast that day, to help her get to college in Seattle in time for her volleyball team's first game of the season. As he drives to Daniel's mansion, he learns that the earthquake is the strongest ever recorded in the area, and that it has collapsed the Hoover Dam and damaged several surrounding towns.

Arriving at the house, he reunites with Emma and Blake, who have also learned about the situation, and meets Daniel for the first time. Emma, understanding Ray's commitments and the situation, simply tells him to be safe, and Daniel offers to take Blake to his company's office in San Francisco, as he has a meeting scheduled for the next day, and then to Seattle.

Rescuing Emma

The next day, Ray pilots a helicopter on his own over Los Angeles, intending to fly to the LAFD's maintenance base before heading to Nevada with his colleagues. On the way there, he contacts Emma, who is having lunch with Daniel's spoiled sister, Susan, at the Tate Weston restaurant. When an earthquake strikes during the conversation, Ray orders Emma to get to the roof so he can extract her, and turns the helicopter around.

As he flies back over the city, it is devastated by the earthquake, and by the time he reaches the Tate Weston, the entire top of the building has collapsed. Despite the damage, he finds Emma alive, and manages to rescue her before the building falls even further. As they escape, the helicopter is damaged by another collapsing building and loses control, but they nonetheless avoid getting crushed by the toppling US Bank Tower.

Journey to San Francisco

As Ray searches for a safe landing site, he recieves a call on his helicopter's satellite phone from Blake, informing him that the earthquake has also hit San Francisco, and she is trapped in Daniel's limo, in a parking garage, before her cell phone's service cuts out. Realising that no rescue personnel in San Francisco will search the garage in time to save Blake, Ray and Emma take matters into their own hands and decide to travel to San Francisco to rescue Blake themselves.

Soon afterwards, Ray recieves another call from Blake, telling him she managed to escape the garage unharmed and is at an electronics store in Chinatown. Emma taps into the call to confirm Blake and Daniel's safety, but Blake tells them that Daniel left her trapped, and two British boys, Ben and Ollie Taylor, rescued her. Ray instructs her to head to Coit Tower, as he will have better chance of seeing her if she is on higher ground.

Crashing in Bakersfield

As the helicopter begins to pass over Bakersfield, Ray and Emma briefly reminise about their earlier trip to San Francisco. Suddenly, the damage the helicopter took in Los Angeles takes its toll, causing it to suffer a gearbox failure. This forces Ray to crash-land the helicopter into a nearby shopping mall. The helicopter is eventually totalled in the crash, but Ray and Emma survive and leave the helicopter.

They witness the mall being looted, and discreetly escape into the mall's parking lot. In order to continue the journey, they enter a Ford F-150. A gunman arrives and forces Ray out, intending to steal the truck first, but Ray knocks him out, hot-wires the truck and drives off with Emma.

The Exchange

Ray and Emma face a new obstacle when they pass an elderly copule, Herb and Margie, warning them to stop the truck. Ray narrowly manages to do so before an enormous crevice in the road, revealed to be the San Andreas Fault. They return to Herb and Margie, finding them stranded on the side of the road  to ask for a way around the line, but Herb claims that their only chance is to go a further 70 miles back and hope the 198 freeway is still standing. However, Herb and Margie direct Ray and Emma to a nearby airfield, and they trade the truck for a plane. Herb and Margie refuse to be taken for a flight, as the mountains where their son lives have no landing site.

As the plane refuels, Ray confides to Emma that he distanced himself from them because he blamed himself for Mallory's death, as it was his idea to take her rafting that day, and he is still haunted by the moment Mallory realized Ray couldn't save her. The two reconcile, with Emma assuring Ray that if he couldn't save her, nobody could have. The plane finalises its refuelling process and they take off.

Arriving in San Francisco

Soon afterwards, Ray and Emma approach San Francisco in the plane. They find the roads gridlocked with people attempting to escape the city due to a warning for a second earthquake issued by Caltech seismologist Dr. Lawrence Hayes, and the airport devastated, leaving them without any places in the city to land the plane. Needing to get as close to Coit Tower as possible, Ray decides to parachute into AT&T Park with Emma, abandoning the plane to crash into the Pacific when it runs out of fuel, despite Emma's nerves about parachuting.

After they touch down in the stadium, the earthquake, stronger than the earlier one, strikes. Ray and Emma escape AT&T Park to find hundreds of people running past a collapsing building. Ray manages to save as many of them as he can, including an injured woman, by directing them to the side of the stadium until the earthquake subsides.

The Tsunami

After the earthquake, Ray and Emma find their path through the city blocked by debris. They commandeer a boat and ride it through the San Francisco Bay Area, only to find Coit Tower engulfed in flames. Ray realises that the fire has been raging for hours, and that Blake has gone somewhere else, but is unable to work out where. Suddenly, the waters in the bay begin to recede. Realising that a tsunami is approaching, Ray restarts the boat and drives it out of the bay.

Ray and Emma see the wave, and drive the boat at full speed. They manage to cross the wave before it crests, barely avoiding a huge cargo ship getting caught up in the wave and several shipping containers falling off the ship.

Finding Blake in a Collapsing Building

After the tsunami completely floods the city, Ray and Emma use the boat to scout the city's still-standing skyscrapers, knowing Blake would be smart enough to head for one of them in the event of a tsunami. As they pass the Gate, an unfinished skyscraper constructed by Daniel's firm, they are signalled by Blake. Before they can enter, the building sinks several metres, trapping Blake underwater.

Ray dives in alone and attempts to rescue Blake, in what seems to be a reenactment of Mallory's death; Blake drowns, but Ray manages to bring her back to the surface of the water in the building, and performs CPR on her while Ben and Ollie attempt to break a window on Ray's orders to allow them to escape. Emma, discovering the situation, uses the boat as a battering ram to smash through a window. Ray manages to board the boat again, taking Ben, Ollie and Blake's unconscious body on board, and they escape the building narrowly before it completely collapses.

Ray continues performing CPR, even after it appears not to have worked, until Blake finally wakes up.

Aftermath

Some minutes later, all five regroup at a relief camp near the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ray and Emma thank Ben and Ollie for helping Blake, and the boys acknowledge that Blake also helped them. They witness several rescue vehicles descending on the ruins of the city, as well as an American flag unfolding on the bridge. When Emma asks what will happen next, Ray declares "Now we rebuild."

Relationships

Emma Gaines - Ray's wife

Blake Gaines - Ray's daughter

Marcus Crowlings - Ray's best friend and fellow LAFD member

Harrison Rhodes - Ray's co-pilot and fellow LAFD member

Joby O'Leary - Ray's fellow LAFD member

Chief Logan - Ray's boss

Elgin - Ray's friend and an LAFD mechanic