Surely, he thought, it couldn’t be that bad.
“Therefore, Mr. President,” Lipinsky went on, “on my own authority, I began the process of alerting all response teams concerned with Urban Search and Rescue, Firefighting, Transportation, Health and Medical, Public Works, Hazardous Materials, and Mass Care. Such elements as Energy, Food, and Public Resource Support can wait until the full scope of the emergency is better determined. I also took it upon myself to alert the Public Health Service.” Lipinsky raised his bushy eyebrows. “I hope this display of initiative meets with your approval, sir?”
“Yes,” said the President, happy to finally have a chance to speak. Lipinsky plodded on. “Most of our response teams will be ready to deploy into the affected areas within six hours. The deployment will be through MARS, so we will need to coordinate with DOD, U.S. Transportation Command as soon as possible. I hope that my staff will have recommendations for deployment within a few hours.”
MARS was shorthand for military units under the authority of the Department of Defense. The President nodded and said, “Very good.”
“We are contacting the regional phone companies. During a disaster of this scope, the phone lines are often jammed with calls from outside the area trying to discover if their friends and relatives are all right. This can prevent genuine emergency calls from going through. So we are asking the phone companies to close down long-distance service from outside the area. People in the disaster area will be able to call out, and they will be able to call each other and emergency services, but those from outside will not be able to call into the area unless they are calling on official business.” The President nodded again.
“My office has been trying to contact General Breedlove, our Defense Coordinating Officer, who is the military gentleman responsible for coordinating FEMA’s teams with those of MARS. But he is on a fishing vacation in Arkansas, which is one of the affected areas, and may be out of communication for some time. Perhaps you, Mr. President, or some other person in a position of authority, will take it upon yourself to appoint a Supported Commander-in-Chief to manage the deployment of our civilian/military Joint Task Forces?”
There was a moment before the President realized that this was his cue to speak. Lipinsky’s labored rhythms had a certain hypnotic effect, and the President had been lulled into a near-trance.
“I’ll consider that when General Shortland arrives,” the President said. “I want his advice on any military matters.”
Lipinsky nodded. “Very good, sir. I must also ask you to appoint a Federal Coordinating Officer for each affected state. The FCOs will travel to each state and coordinate state, local, and federal disaster response.”
“I presume you have recommendations?”
Lipinsky signaled to one of his aides, who came forward and opened a briefcase. “I have taken the liberty of making up a list of candidates that I consider suitable.”
The President ground his teeth as he took a copy of the list and reached for his reading glasses. Bureaucracy, he thought. You couldn’t do anything without the bureaucracy. Everything had to be crammed into organization charts, boxes, lists, accounts, departments, labeled with acronyms, staffed by bureaucrats who used other acronyms as their titles.
A major disaster would take all those neat organizational charts and tear them into shreds. But he had to deal with them anyway.
What was the choice? Particularly now? The President could stand on his desk and scream, “Everyone help those people!”, and people would probably try to do their best, but unless the efforts were organized and directed by all those people with the acronyms, little good would result. And so the President resigned himself to his duty. He consulted with Lipinsky, appointed his FCOs, and once General Shortland appeared, the President appointed a Supported CINC to handle MARS deployments via the AMC and USTRANSCOM. Then SAAMs could be tasked to deliver US&R teams and other JTOs to affected areas. USACE personnel trained in Basic and Light US&R were placed on alert. Attempts were made to contact SCOs in their individual states. DOMS established a CAT in the Army Operations Center. USTRANSCOM SAAMs were tasked to deliver FCOs into the field.
And all along, information kept arriving as to the scope of the crisis. Memphis and St. Louis had been, apparently, flattened. Parts of Chicago were on fire. Little Rock was hard hit. Bridges, roadways, airports, and railroads were out. Even large military units seemed to have dropped off the map. Millions might well be homeless.
And almost all the military air missions had to be rescheduled. All airfields in the quake areas had been destroyed, and fixed-wing aircraft couldn’t land. SAAMs—Special Airlift Assignment Missions, for those who lived outside the world of acronyms—had to be landed at the nearest intact airports, and the rescue teams, and their equipment, reassigned to helicopters.
Selected Reserve units were mobilized—engineers to rebuild runways and other vital transport, signal units, logistics commands, supply, transport, plus ground units to provide them with security. National Guard had already been called up by the governors of the quake-ravaged states. At the insistence of the National Security Advisor, the entire U.S. military was put on alert. Terrorists or other enemies, he warned, might try to take advantage of the situation.
In the end, the President was thankful for the acronyms. They kept him from thinking about the people, the people trapped in rubble or cringing from the flames or watching the flood waters rise slowly above their children’s knees…
“We have the word from the Earthquake Information Center, sir,” Lipinsky said around midnight. “The quake tops out at eight point nine on the Richter scale.”
The President blinked. “That’s not so bad, is it?” he said. “I gave a speech in Monterey in ’98, I think it was, and there was a five point five. Just a big bang and it was over. And eight point nine, that’s, what, not even twice as large.”
Lipinsky’s bland blue eyes didn’t so much as twitch. “The Richter Scale isn’t numerical, sir,” he said. “It’s logarithmic. A three on the Richter scale isn’t half again powerful as two, it’s ten times as powerful. And a four isn’t twice as powerful as two, it’s a hundred times the size of a two. So the 8.9 in Missouri is therefore—” the blue eyes turned inward for just a half-second “—one thousand four hundred times the strength of the quake you experienced in Monterey.”
Numerals swarmed through the President’s mind. One thousand four hundred times… Lipinsky went on. “In fact, Mr. President, the Information Center told me that the earth probably can’t hold enough energy to deliver a quake larger than eight point nine.” He looked solemn. “This is the worst the geosphere can do to us, Mr. President. There’s only one earthquake in human history that compares with it, and that was in China four thousand years ago.”
The worst natural disaster since the Bronze Age, the President thought. And on my watch.
“I need to get out there,” he said. “I need to get into the field myself.” And, as his press secretary would no doubt remind him, he would need to be seen in the field. The Secret Service would go nuts. The presidential bodyguard wouldn’t want the President anywhere near a catastrophe on this scale. Assassins were the least of their worries, not when an aftershock could drop the Gateway Arch on him.