Lights Out

by Ted Koppel

  If Congress was convinced that at some point the government might need to provide emergency food supplies to, say, thirty million people for a year, it could, for $2,000 a head, provide the basics to keep them alive. Could this be part of a solution? The $60 billion cost is hardly prohibitive when you consider how many lives would be at stake. It would probably take the industry years to accumulate the necessary raw materials, but in theory, at least, it seems a viable option. In its 2008 findings, you may recall, the EMP commission projected far greater numbers than thirty million at risk. What can be projected with some confidence is that any crisis—whether EMP or cyberattack—that knocked out electricity for more than a couple of weeks over a multistate area would exhaust emergency food supplies in a matter of days.

  Ray Kelly served in the New York City Police Department for a total of forty-seven years, twice as commissioner, from 1992 to 1994, and then again from 2002 to 2013. What concerns him is the proliferation of guns and what would happen to the most vulnerable members of society in a city like New York in the face of an extended crisis and prolonged shortages. “People certainly have the potential for trying to take things by force. What happens in an elderly community, where they’re certainly susceptible to being attacked in terms of taking what they have, the limited resources, least able to defend themselves?”

  Government agencies at almost every level try to anticipate problems by holding what are sometimes called “tabletop exercises” or “war games.” Ray Kelly participated in many such exercises. He cannot remember a scenario, though, in which New York City and its surrounding area were assumed to be without electric power for more than five days. Not, he assured me, that he thinks a protracted blackout is unlikely: “There’s a real danger here. And I think we just haven’t done nearly enough. There’s not enough awareness of it, but also government is asleep at the switch.”

  There were reports in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that as many as two hundred members of the New Orleans police department were under investigation for deserting their posts. The number of police officers ultimately charged was closer to fifty, but the stresses and challenges facing first responders worried about their own families are not difficult to understand. Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City during 9/11, thought the New Orleans example was a reflection of poor training and management. “In a good police department,” he told me, “a well-run police department, New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, I think most of your cops and most of your firefighters, if anything, are going to come and volunteer for duty.”

  Interestingly, his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who came up through the ranks, starting as a police cadet, didn’t have quite that same level of confidence. “The security implications [of getting first responders to work] are huge. You know, they’re concerned about their families, they’re concerned about their well-being. So over time when you talk about protecting the points of distribution, that all implies that government workers are showing up and do their jobs, and you can’t guarantee that over a sustained period of time. Their ultimate concern, like most human beings, will be their families’ and their own well-being.”

  There are individuals whose preparedness planning will get them through the initial days and even weeks when food runs out. FEMA, the National Guard, and branches of the federal government are focused on finding a way to keep water flowing—enough, at least, to keep people alive and to dispose of their waste—but maintaining an adequate flow of food into the cities and keeping the very young, the elderly, and the infirm alive will depend in some measure on the season. Winter, when there is no safe source of heat, would take a particularly heavy toll. In an environment of crowded, hungry, freezing people, each passing day would presumably elevate the potential for violence. It requires a degree of advance planning well beyond whatever exists to deal with the consequences of a natural disaster.

  We are inclined, as Tom Ridge observed, to be a reactive society. We apply unimaginable amounts of money toward dealing with the aftermath of crises. The most conservative estimates put the financial cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at around $1.5 trillion. Most estimates are significantly higher. The Transportation Security Administration, which came into being as a direct consequence of the 9/11 terror attacks, now employs fifty-five thousand people, with an annual budget in excess of $7 billion. Over the course of the past fourteen years TSA has been funded to the tune of somewhere between $90 billion and $100 billion of protection we didn’t know we needed before 2001. Nor, it seems, has the money been particularly well spent. In early June 2015, the Department of Homeland Security revealed that its teams of undercover investigators were able to smuggle dummy explosives and weapons through TSA checkpoints at airports around the country in 95 percent of cases.

  We tend to come up with funding after disaster strikes.

  12

  Press Six If You’ve Been Affected by a Disaster

  They refuse to fill me in because…you know, it’s secret squirrel stuff.

  — MARTIN KNAPP

  Martin Knapp is homeland security coordinator for Park County, Wyoming. On the inside of the door to Knapp’s office in Cody is a poster with the bold headline HOMELAND SECURITY above a photograph of four native Americans holding rifles. Underneath the photograph is a slogan: FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492.

  Martin Knapp has a sense of humor with an edge that probably plays well in the Cowboy State. As he pours us both a cup of coffee, I take photographs of a couple of other slogans on the walls of his office, these starting to crinkle with age: SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE, said one, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT’S AGAINST THE LAW TO KILL THEM. And this one: POLITICIANS ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO CREATE PROBLEMS AND THEN CAMPAIGN AGAINST THEM.

  Knapp is a transplant from Mansfield, Ohio; he can still recall his first day in Wyoming, back in 1971. “I drove up South Park, passed three cars going the other direction. Two of them waved to me. Now, where I come from, if I waved to somebody going down the road, I’m likely to get flipped off, even if I know the person. Here, people are waving and they don’t know me. But that’s the way people are around here.”

  At the age of eighteen Martin Knapp learned the skills of a horse wrangler while working for room and board. He and a group of more experienced cowboys would drive a herd into Grand Teton National Park, let them loose at night to graze, and round them up again before they scattered at first light. He eventually acquired the tracking and hunting skills required to become a guide for a local outfitter. After well over forty years in Wyoming, Knapp believes he’s almost accepted as a local.

  Wyoming, clearly, is not New York or Ohio. “They take care of themselves,” said Knapp, referring to the locals. “They’re out of power? OK, I got my own generator, I got this, I got that. We’ll make do. We lived for hundreds of years without electricity. We can do it again.”

  Which is why I’ve come to Wyoming. There is a culture of self-reliance in rural America. People will use their Medicare benefits and cash their Social Security checks in Wyoming as readily as in New York or California, but in principle there is an antipathy to dependence and an inclination to keep government at arm’s length. Perhaps a more affirmative way of saying that is to suggest that people here will try to solve their own problems before turning to any government agency, local, state, or federal. Is such a state, I wonder, any better equipped to confront a crisis for which the federal government has no specific plan?

  As homeland security coordinator for Park County, Martin Knapp worries about what might happen on his turf, and what to do about it if it does. Knapp has considered the prospect of an electric grid going down, but there’s been no guidance on the subject from Homeland Security in Washington. “In fact,” said Knapp, “that even goes as far down as the state level. When I’ve called or tried to say, ‘Hey, I’m working on something here if this happens. What does the state recommend, or what are you going to do?’ they won’t tell me.”

  “Won’t or can’t tell you?”

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sp; “Probably a little bit of both. They refuse to fill me in because they don’t want it to get out what we’re going to do—what they’re going to do. I’ll say, ‘I thought we’re on the same team here.’ But that’s, you know, it’s secret squirrel stuff.” Knapp doesn’t seem overly concerned about the lack of information from either state or federal government.

  He did try to establish a working relationship with the Red Cross, but that was hugely frustrating. Knapp called the woman who heads up the chapter in Big Horn Basin and left a message, then emailed. A week went by. No answer. Tried again. No answer. He called one of his colleagues at the Wyoming division of Homeland Security, who gave him the name and number of the top Red Cross official in the state. Knapp called and left messages, yet nothing happened. Weeks went by, then a couple of months. Nothing. Finally Knapp reached a woman in the official’s office. “ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s not here. I’ll have him call you.’ And I say, ‘You know what? Never mind. I’ve been trying to get ahold of someone with the Red Cross for three months. I want to know what I can expect from the Red Cross if I call them for resources. I can’t even get a call back or an answer to an email. I will mark the Red Cross out of my emergency operation plan and I will find other means to deal with this,’ and I hung up.”

  That did it. The phone was ringing off the hook in fifteen minutes. The following summer, when there was a big fire on the North Fork of the Little Laramie River, Knapp brought the Red Cross in to help tourists who had been evacuated. But the experience left a bit of a bad taste. “A couple of things I heard that they had done, the Red Cross had done before, was the guy that was the head of the state came up here, and he was going around trying to get donations while the evacuation was going on. I have issues with that.”

  The Red Cross is the largest nongovernmental relief organization in the country. Its CEO, Gail McGovern, whose background as a business executive led to a position teaching marketing at Harvard Business School, told an interviewer shortly after taking the Red Cross job in 2008 that the charity “has a brand to die for.” And it does. What is also indisputable is the organization’s skill at fundraising. One Red Cross website lists no fewer than fifteen different ways in which a donor can contribute. To make that process as easy as humanly possible, the Red Cross has in recent years created a means by which those wishing to make a $10 donation can do so by simply texting the message “REDCROSS” to a five-digit number, which conveniently (and repeatedly) appears on television screens following a disaster.

  In late 2014, journalists from Pro Publica and National Public Radio published an article titled “The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster.” It is a devastating account, depicting an organization more concerned with bolstering its public image and raising funds than with maintaining the actual machinery of disaster relief.

  Among the findings: emergency vehicles taken away from relief work and staged as backdrops for press conferences; inadequate food, blankets, and batteries in locations where these were desperately needed; tens of thousands of meals thrown out because no one knew where to find the people who needed them. Citing internal Red Cross reports following Hurricane Isaac in 2012, the Pro Publica investigation found that “Red Cross supervisors ordered dozens of trucks usually deployed to deliver aid to be driven around nearly empty instead, ‘just to be seen,’ one of the drivers recalls. ‘We were sent way down on the Gulf with nothing to give.’ An official gave the order to send out 80 trucks and emergency response vehicles—normally full of meals or supplies like diapers, bleach and paper towels—entirely empty or carrying a few snacks. Volunteers ‘were told to drive around and look like you’re giving disaster relief.’ ”

  Not surprisingly, the article drew an immediate and angry response. Rebutting the charge that “the American Red Cross cares more about its image and reputation than providing service to those in need,” the Red Cross replied: “Every year, the Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters, most of which are home fires that never make headlines. If the Red Cross cared more about image and PR than providing services, we wouldn’t spend time responding to these silent disasters.” There was no response to the charge that the Red Cross cares more about fundraising than disaster relief.

  It is important to draw a distinction between the Red Cross’s institutional and management problems and the efforts of its volunteers, whose contributions are often selfless, even heroic. I had asked research assistant Katie Paul to see what advice a caller might receive from the Red Cross on how to deal with an extended, widespread power outage. Initially she was left dangling in a phone tree that dead-ended on a recorded message, but a later call to a Red Cross office in California was far more productive. The staffer on the line could not have been more helpful, evaluating the pros and cons of getting a generator, touting the value of a community support network, and directing Katie to the “Red Cross Disaster Safety Library.”

  One committed and well-informed person can provide genuinely valuable information. Getting substantive help seems to depend more on the luck of the draw, though, than on organization. Research assistant Rachel Baye tried a similar approach to solicit information from the Department of Homeland Security.

  UNKNOWN: “The Department of Homeland Security switchboard. How may I direct your call?”

  RACHEL: “Hi, I was wondering if I could get some information about emergency preparedness?”

  UNKNOWN: “Yeah, one moment.”

  RECORDING: “You have reached the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Please hold for the next available agent.”

  UNKNOWN: “FEMA operator.”

  RACHEL: “Hi, I was looking for some information on emergency preparedness.”

  UNKNOWN: “OK. Hold on for just a moment.”

  RACHEL: “Thank you.” [Music for twenty seconds, then a recorded message] “…the following options. If you’re a member of the media and have an inquiry, press one. For general public affairs questions, please press two. If you’re with a state, local, or tribal government and would like to speak to someone in intergovernmental affairs, press three. To speak with someone in community relations, press four. For our office of international affairs, press five. If you’d like to speak with someone in our office of legislative affairs, press six. If you’ve been affected by a disaster and would like to register for assistance, or if you’ve already registered and have questions or would like to check on the status of your application, please hang up now and call 1-800-621-FEMA. That’s 1-800-621-FEMA. To speak with an operator, press 0 or simply stay on the line. Once again, thank you for calling FEMA’s office of external affairs.”

  Rachel pressed four, hoping to speak with someone in community relations, and got this recorded message: “Public 44 44 is not available. Record your message after the tone. When you’ve finished…” At this point, Rachel hung up. The thought struck me that anyone who has been “affected by a disaster and would like to register for assistance” may not make it through the first six prompts of that phone message.

  The greater issue, though, is a lack of consistency. The search for guidance on disaster relief, when there is no crisis under way, no stress involved, cannot be dependent on the design of a more efficient phone tree. It cannot rely on the individual enthusiasm of a staffer or volunteer operator at the Red Cross or be undermined by the bored indifference of a government worker at the Department of Homeland Security. There is no guidance on guidance.

  If not the Red Cross, FEMA, or the Department of Homeland Security, where should the interested citizen turn? What is available online can be pathetically inadequate, boiling down to the customary recommendation for two to three days’ worth of food and water, warm clothing, a functioning battery-powered radio, and extra batteries. Disaster preparation recommendations usually include a predetermined plan for where and how the family will meet. Beyond that, citizens are largely adrift, left to find their own solutions.

  A few of them have. A lot of others are still searching.

  13
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  The Ark Builders

  It’s like the ants and the grasshoppers, and how they froze to death because they didn’t prepare.

  — ALAN MATHENY, PREPPER

  For the most part, public reaction to the possibility of a massive cyberattack has not even risen to the level of apathy. Apathy suggests the awareness of a problem and the decision not to worry about it. We’re not there yet. To the degree that government and its disaster relief operations focus our attention at all, they direct it toward the familiar: natural disasters common to our region, or variations on terrorist attacks that have already occurred. Perhaps by definition, preparation for the unknown requires a generic approach.

  There is, in any event, a growing movement around the country based on the assumption that neither government agencies nor private relief organizations can be relied upon in the event of any major disaster. A generation or two ago, they might have been called survivalists, but there was an extreme rightwing aura attached to that term, conjuring images of bunkers built to sustain life against aerial bombardment. While such groups continue to exist, they have been modified and largely displaced by a much larger group for whom ideology is less relevant. “Preppers,” perhaps most easily described as “those who prepare,” can be found across the political spectrum. They are not necessarily prophets of doom, simply those who want to be ready for the worst. As such, they are accustomed to a measure of mockery; they are, after all, only rarely proved right. Dealing with daily life is complicated enough without trying to anticipate and prepare for the hypothetical, no matter how extreme the catastrophe, no matter how unimpeachable the evidence.