Notes from day one

My oh my oh my oh my.

Greetings from day one here at what I can only describe as a "JIC Super Center." Not that you'd think this, with the press reports that the response is a disaster.

The JIC itself has about 50 people in it, maybe more, and is spread out in the building the Emergency Operations Center is in, and also out in the field. The units are: Logistics, Media Center, Field Operations, Liaisons, DMORT, Special Projects, Research/Writing, and Media Monitoring. I am working in the Logistics section.

When I arrived, I expected to be sent to the Morgue, but I got re-assigned immediately to logistics, and have been running around doing everything from getting supplies out to the field (DVDs, a couple of Blackberries, a banner from Kinkos, and a dozen other things). I also set up mailboxes in the JIC, which they don't have. This place is just humming and buzzing and people are running around everywhere.

The JIC is of course just a teeny part of the whole Emergency Operations Center. The whole EOC is set up in an old building which was totally gutted and is now a maze of temporary cubicles and sections for every branch of the government you can imagine: FEMA, EPA, Department of State, Army Corps of Engineers. There are firefighters from all over the country, walking around in sqauds, getting briefed and trained, and military units--Coast Guard, army--and lots of police. The offices are spread out over four floors and everyone's rushing around, running and walking up and down the escalators and stairwells. There was no electricity--no nothing--in this building, and it's dirty and dingy and really a dump. The folks who set it up somehow managed to string electricity all over the place, and the system got taxed from all the computers and phone lines and copiers, and about an hour after I got here yesterday (and was standing in my 10th line for processing), smoke started to fill the building and the firefighters evacuated the building because of an electrical fire. So we milled around outside for an hour and then went back in. But I digress. It's just a huge, huge operation.

I got lodging at a base camp about ten minutes away--it's a big field belonging to the DOT, and been turned into a small military-style-looking camp. There are about eight huge tents for sleeping, each with about 100 cots. I'm in an all-women tent, but there are co-ed and men-only also. A woman I was talking to last night from Army Corps of Engineers said she was in the co-ed tent and everyone was so tired when they got back at night they didn't care if they undressed in front of each other. The camp has three meals a day--so far I had dinner last night (Chinese food!) and breakfast this morning (the whole works, but I declined for a nice bowl of All Bran and fruit salad, because I have a feeling you could really go to pot in this environment). There are hot showers, a laundry facility (yay!), and of course a hundred port o potties! Thrilling, huh? I got my own cot, and froze my butt off last night. Although it was 90 degrees out at 9pm, it was 50 degrees in the tents. I shivered for hours, and several times wanted to just get up, but figured I needed the sleep and tried to just lay there. I was pretty excited, actually, to get to the EOC this morning and find out what I'd be doing.

So, so far, it's pretty interesting, even though I'm nowhere near any "action." It's a real education, let me tell you. It's just so large in scope and you don't see any of the behind the scenes like the JIC operation on tv, of course. 12-hour days, 7 days a week. I'm curious to see what shape I'll be in two weeks!