Big Miracle

by Tom Rose

  The farther Weston flew, the terrain below grew sparser and more hostile. The heavily wooded wilderness thinned. As if a line was actually drawn in the earth, the vegetation vanished after crossing the imaginary Arctic Circle at sixty-seven degrees north latitude. Such extreme latitudes were more than even the hardiest trees could bear. Then, out of the white void emerged the stark pristine magnificence of the Brooks Mountain Range that formed the Arctic’s impregnable southern boundary. Only a small part of the 10,000-foot peaks that constituted the world’s northernmost and least explored mountain range was visible. Its tranquil countenance seemed to belie its creator’s desire to keep its uncharted peaks … well, uncharted. Many of those who had explored the dangerous peaks to unlock its hidden treasures never returned.

  As the plane began its descent, the wonder of where it would land outweighed Russ’s own experience of descending onto a sea of Arctic desolation. No matter how many times he had done so, Weston still thought they might be making an emergency landing on a frozen lake bed in the middle of the tundra. Then, there it was. A 7,000-foot runway built at the edge of the universe.

  Looking south as the aircraft taxied to the hangar, Russ saw the same expanse of white he saw from the air. Only the bizarre Buck Rogers look of the North Slope Borough television transmission site interrupted the bleak vision. It was the presence of this site that brought him back to reality. Stepping off the plane, Weston could not believe he had just traveled 1,200 miles without seeing a trace of man. It was sixty degrees colder in Barrow than in Anchorage. He awoke that morning prepared for just another day as an Anchorage television cameraman. The day ended as one of the most remarkable of his life.

  Biologists Craig George and Geoff Carroll were driving back to the Wildlife Department after sliding down their quota of greasy thirteen-dollar quarter-pounders at the local Burger Barn when they saw Oran descending the wrought-iron steps of Barrow’s city center, the airport hangar. Geoff and Craig were struck by the sight of the two strangers who accompanied him. Their bright ski clothes stood in marked contrast to the drab but warm look of the locals.

  Unaware of his own conspicuousness, Geoff stepped on the brakes, bringing his Dodge Caravan to a stop right in the middle of Ahkovak Street, one of Barrow’s busiest roadways. Ahkovak Street was crowded not with cars, of which there were few in Barrow, but with ski machines, and even these were infrequent so early in the season.

  A car in the Arctic often proved not worth the bother. It needed special heaters to keep the engine from freezing even as it ran. The brutal cold destroyed transmissions within weeks, not years. And if the owner ever wanted his car to start in the winter, he had to keep the engine running—sometimes for six straight months.

  The fact that Barrow sat atop the world’s largest oil field did not mean fuel came cheap. To the contrary, gas cost more in Barrow than anywhere else in America. Once drilled, the oil had to go all the way to Southern California for refinement into gasoline only to be tankered back to Alaska and then flown to Barrow aboard special aircraft. At three dollars a gallon in 1988 (the national average for unleaded was then ninety-five cents), it cost two hundred dollars a week just to keep a car running. Stealing a car wasn’t a problem. There was nowhere for a thief to take a stolen car as the town had no roads out of it.

  Whereas Geoff was curious to find out who was carrying the television camera, Craig was more interested in the reporter. When they pulled up alongside them, Oran introduced Russ Weston and Julie Hasquet, the KTUU correspondent. After sizing up Russ, they focused on his attractive but obviously uncomfortable companion. She looked as if she had fallen off a spaceship and landed on the wrong planet.

  As strange as Barrow looked to her, her designer jeans, bright red ski parka, and blow-dried hair looked every bit as strange to Barrowans. She asked Russ to let her get back on the plane before it left her stranded in Barrow. If she missed it, she would be stuck there for the night. She wondered whether she could handle much more than fifteen minutes in Barrow. She ran to the check-in counter to see if she could still board the plane. She hurriedly climbed the stairs to the plane, thrilled that her short visit to Barrow would not turn into something worse.

  When Oran told Geoff and Craig that Russ had come to town because of the whales, Geoff looked knowingly at Craig. Could they both be thinking the same thing? If the whales were news in Anchorage, then the Coast Guard might be more receptive to their request for a ship to break them out. Fifty feet from where they said good-bye, Geoff and Craig’s truck vanished in the thick ice fog as it pulled away. The only proof of its proximity could be heard, not seen. Against a blank-white backdrop, the clear sound of the tires crunched crisply upon the snow-packed road. Oran realized he forgot to tell them that the whales were becoming a national news story, but he was reluctant to reveal too much of his excitement to Weston. Caudle tried to pretend as though the arrival of an outside TV crew under direct network auspices was not nearly the big deal he knew it to be.

  It was Oran’s job to escort outside media. The reason Barrow built the state-of-the-art television production and broadcast center was not only to ensure local’s access to the same television programming seen elsewhere but also to improve the town’s somewhat grimy image. Barrowans used their broadcast center to paint a portrait that relayed two images: a prospering Arctic community working hard to better itself while taming its hostile surroundings as well as a town with profound social scars that necessitated massive infusions of state aid to keep that model alive.

  Helping outside news agencies report on stories from Barrow was one of the NSB television studio’s most important functions. Was there anywhere else in the world where a news crew fly in and find a state-of-the-art studio and transmission facility ready for their use—absolutely free. As Oran drove the half mile up Momegana Street past the already frozen and litter strewn cemetery, Russ marveled at Barrow’s hard scrabble existence. He followed Oran into the broadcast center. A familiar but incongruous sight took him by surprise.

  “Oh, this,” Oran remarked. “Welcome aboard the Arctic’s only elevator.” Before leaving to fetch a cup of coffee, Oran told Russ to feel free to walk around but not to touch any of the equipment—realizing only after he had said it that Russ probably knew the equipment much better than Oran did. It was a habit. Weston seemed not the least fazed.

  When Oran returned, Russ asked him where he should stay. With a comforting wave of his left hand, Caudle motioned all would be well as he used his right hand to dial the number of the Top of the World Hotel.

  “No problem,” said the Colombian woman at the switchboard in her Spanish accent when asked by Caudle if there were any rooms and what they might cost. “A hundred dollars cash per night and that includes running water.” When Russ asked Caudle if he could pay with his American Express card, Caudle repeated the question. From the grimace it was clear to Weston he had been rebuked. Barrow was a cash-only town.

  In a place where some things, like construction, can cost up to a hundred times more than in the Lower 48, Oran realized the Top of the World was an outright bargain with rates only three times more expensive than those charged for a similar one-and-a-half star roadside motel in the Lower 48. In part, the motel kept costs down because it stood on stilts above the frozen ground. Instead of digging an entire foundation, the construction crew saved millions of dollars by drilling holes just large enough for the stilts. The newly refurbished thirty-five-room Top of the World Hotel was by far the biggest of the three motels in town. North Slope lodging at its finest.

  The Top of the World was one of the first businesses to hook up to the $300 million Utilidor municipal water system started in the early 1980s. Because of the arduousness and expense of the project, only about half of Barrow’s homes were able to take part in the Arctic miracle of indoor plumbing. It was by far the most expensive and sophisticated water system ever built. Never before had such an ambitious construction project been undertaken in the Arctic. Special graphite pipes carrie
d waste and drinking water thirty feet below the ground in tunnels that could not simply be dug into the ground. They had to be dynamited through the permafrost.

  The tunnels were so deep to prevent the permafrost from thawing and the pipes from freezing. If the permafrost did melt, the buildings above it would collapse into a morass of sinking earth. Oran asked Russ if he wanted to join him after the news for some tacos next door at Pepe’s North of the Border. Mexican food 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle? Preferring indigestion to starvation, Russ agreed to go along. After Caudle checked Russ in at the hotel, it was nearly time for NBC Nightly News. Caudle wasn’t about to miss his debut on national television. There was a big television set in the small but tidy lobby of the Top of the World.

  It was already a little past six. KTUU tape-delayed the newscast so that it aired at 6:30 P.M. throughout the state. The Aurora I satellite beamed the Anchorage stations to all Alaskan villages as part of the statewide Rural Alaska Television Network, known as RATNET.

  Oran went next door to Pepe’s to excitedly announce to folks milling about the lobby that Barrow “was going nationwide.” As the newscast progressed, more and more people gathered around the set. The program’s first and second blocks reported on the presidential campaign. The third segment was devoted to the Middle East, and the strategic arms talks between the U.S. and USSR in Geneva, but nothing yet on the whales. Oran was starting to worry. He sure would be mighty embarrassed if, after all his boasting, the whales didn’t make the news.

  With Tom Brokaw’s words “And finally tonight,” Oran Caudle exhaled a giant sigh of relief. Brokaw introduced the video by reading a sentence from the teleprompter. “In Northern Alaska, winter comes early. And for three California gray whales it may have come too early this year.” With the words “gray whales,” the NBC technical director ordered the technician to “roll tape.” Oran’s first pictures flashed onto the screen of millions of television sets throughout the country. The audio engineer in the control room of NBC’s New York studio turned up the sound of the first whale struggling to breathe in the middle of the frozen Arctic Ocean.

  In the few seconds it took for the zoomed-in lens to capture the whale’s head coming out of the water and exhaling a lungful of air and water, the three trapped whales were no longer alone in the remote frozen waters off Barrow. They were now national news. Because of the four-hour time difference between the East Coast and Alaska, the stranding was already old news in the Lower 48. Stung by NBC’s first blow, every other news agency in the country immediately put reporters on the story. The Top of the World Hotel was immediately deluged with calls from news agencies trying to book rooms for the following night.

  Todd Pottinger called Russ to tell him that NBC News had assigned Don Oliver, a veteran correspondent, to come to Barrow to cover the whales. Oliver was regarded by his peers as one of the industry’s best reporters. He covered the 1975 fall of Saigon where his furious outbursts earned him the nickname “El Diablo.” Oliver’s risibility was complemented by the more mild-mannered approach of his sidekick, producer Jerry Hansen. After flying all night and most of the next day from Los Angeles, Oliver, Hansen, and their technical staff of four arrived in Barrow around midday Friday, October 14.

  A week to the day after the whales were discovered, an American television crew was walking down the sturdy but loud aluminum steps that would allow them to descend from the elevated airport hanger to plant their feet squarely on the frozen tundra. When the first blast of cold air hit them, they knew they would be in for a rough ride. It wasn’t that they left behind what they should have brought, it was that they didn’t own what they should have had, nor did they even know how to get it.

  When their NBC producers in New York and Los Angeles sent them to Barrow, Hansen and Oliver had no idea how long they would be there or under what conditions they would be forced to operate. There was nothing unusual about that. Such was life for the vagabond television news fraternity. Their job required them to be ready to go anywhere, anytime. More often than not, the “anywhere” was someplace strange, often violent and frequently remote, and the “anytime” was now.

  After more than twenty-five years in the business, Oliver kept learning that just when he thought he had covered about all the kinds of stories there were to cover, another one would come his way to prove him wrong. As he gazed out at his surreal surroundings, Oliver instantly knew he was in for another unprecedented adventure.

  Unlike Russ who had worked in Barrow before, the NBC crew assumed that there would be no broadcast facilities on site. So they brought virtually an entire TV station of their own packed tightly into twelve large and heavy metal cases. The cases were filled with cameras, waveform monitors, vectorscopes, batteries, cables, editing equipment, and camera heating pads.

  But buried in the safest catacomb was the Los Angeles bureau’s newest piece of equipment. They had been waiting for it for years. Only when both protagonists in the eight-year-long slaughter known as the Iran-Iraq War started attacking unarmed oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in late 1988 did the NBC Bahrain bureau agree to transfer their portable $17,000 gyrostabilizer back to the states.

  Attached to the outside of a camera, it allowed steady pictures to be taken from a flying helicopter. When Oran Caudle casually pulled out his own gyrostabilizer the next day, Don Oliver nearly fell out of the open-doored chopper. Barrow’s gyrostabilizer was even more sophisticated than the one Oliver liked to brag about.

  Before leaving Los Angeles, the producer Jerry Hansen checked to see that someone at the assignment desk would take care to assure accommodations and ground support were arranged once they arrived in Barrow. Hansen had one request. He wanted his own room. Don Oliver may have been a great reporter, but his snoring was too much to bear. Luckily they were the first to Barrow; had they arrived any later, Hansen would have been forced to use the snoreproof earplugs he packed just in case. The town’s eighty hotel rooms were going quickly. To allow for late-arriving competitors and the rising value of a warm bed, the hotel started renting beds, as opposed to rooms.

  This wasn’t the first time NBC News reported from the Arctic. But they had never before done it with so little preparation. As he was walking out the door of his Burbank, California, office Jerry glanced up at the map on his wall. Just where was this place Barrow? As he squinted to better familiarize himself with the little speck on his map it finally started to sink in. Barrow really was at the top of the world. When he stepped off the plane, a blast of Arctic air hit him square in the face with the force of unexpected exhilaration. Barrow was the top of the world and he was here.

  Even though there were only four miles of total road in the town, Jerry, Don, and the rest of the crew still needed a way to get themselves and their heavy gear around Barrow. To Hansen, the answer was obvious enough: rent a car. He thumbed through the seven-page Barrow telephone directory several times before he finally realized that there were no rental cars. The hotel manager suggested Hansen call the folks over at the North Slope Borough, the local government. The NSB owned most of the town’s vehicles. If anybody had extras, it would be the NSB.

  When word spread through the new all glass NSB building that NBC News was in town, everyone just assumed they were in town to cover the North Slope Mayor’s Conference, then taking place in Barrow. But that seemed odd. Who cared about that? Locals were even more taken aback when Hansen told them that, in fact, he and his crew were in town to cover the stranding of the three whales.

  “The whales?” one astonished Eskimo asked, “What whales? What is so newsworthy about whales?” “I don’t know,” Hansen answered. “People just love them.” The man at the NSB gave Hansen a list of names of people who might have cars to rent. Not many people in Barrow may have heard the word “chutzpah” before, but they sure seemed to have it.

  The first local he talked to wanted a thousand dollars a day for a 1975 Chevy Suburban. Hansen burst out laughing … but the last laugh was on him. The best deal he co
uld find was with a hooded character who wore sunglasses at the NSB, who agreed to rent him three old pickups for just six hundred dollars a day each. The ruddy-faced owner said he couldn’t remember when he came to Barrow or exactly why, but after meeting the likes of Jerry Hansen who was willing to pay six hundred dollars a day in cash for a broken-down heap, he didn’t regret his decision.

  No one anywhere else would have paid half that amount to buy them. In between his grimy exhalations of cigarette smoke, the man gave Hansen the keys and told him never to drive on the ocean—as if that occurred to Hansen—and never ever to turn the car off.

  “Never turn the car off?” asked Hansen. “When is this dream going to end,” he inquired in a failed attempt at shock himself back to reality. That’s when the white-haired Hansen remembered the surreal sight of a line of empty parked pickup trucks, all with their motors running as he walked out of the airport terminal.

  The NBC Burbank desk asked Russ Weston to stay an extra day to produce the Friday story for NBC Nightly News. Weston jumped at the chance. Producing a story for the network news was an opportunity he wasn’t about to pass up. But to get the story, Weston had to see the whales. He saw everyone in town transporting themselves on the back of whining ski machines. Surely this was the best way there. But when he tried to rent one, he ran into the same problem Hansen had. The first man Weston found willing to rent a ski machine asked the same thousand dollars that Hansen was quoted for a car just hours earlier—except the thousand dollars wouldn’t give him access to the ski machine for the day; it would buy him one round-trip out to the whales.

  Weston turned to Oran in disbelief. Could Caudle find him a ride to the whales? Oran suggested getting in touch with the North Slope Borough’s Search and Rescue (SAR) department that operated a fleet of helicopters and small fixed-wing aircraft. Perhaps they could arrange to take him up in one of their helicopters for some aerial shots.