Chapter 25

Morning brought better news. Two fleet carriers from California and four more assault landing ships were off the coast of Oahu. Admiral Petty now had one hundred twenty landing craft to rescue people from the island.

The landing crafts were carrying them to the assault ships for evaluation and then those that needed medical attention were the first to be carried to the carriers.

The hospital ship Mercy was to arrive on the scene later today. The Mercy has 1100 beds and five hundred medical people aboard to add to the doctors and staff. When it arrived those needing medical would be transferred to it.

The east coast hospital ship ‘Comfort’ was going to be a month or more. It had to undergo repairs before it could be used. That I was infuriated was an understatement. My new Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense were going to be called to my office for a very unpleasant talk on their part.

Just to make sure they understood things, I sent a memo to SECNAV, a daily report was to be sent to the White House listing all Navy ships unavailable for immediate service, the reason why and an expected date they would be ready for service. The Air Force was sent a memo requiring the number of aircraft mission ready to be sent to the White House.

It also finalized my decision on what was going to happen to the USS Thomas as soon as the new nuclear-powered Thomas was ready for service. It would be the hospital ship the ‘Thomas’ and would be home ported in the Gulf for quick dispatch to either ocean. The Navy had already placed it on the SINKEX list to be sunk as a target.

Another deck could be built on the aft half of the flight deck adding hundreds of beds. The hangar deck could all be hospital rooms and the same with many other decks.

There were huge rooms for storage, it already had plenty of operating rooms and plenty of electrical power. It could travel to an emergency at thirty -five knots - twice the speed of the current hospital ships. It was the perfect ship.

When the helicopters were not needed for emergency medical transport, they were shuttling people to the carriers, which had enormous space in the hangar deck for cots.

Two of the cruise ships, ‘Silver Spoon’ and the ‘Golden Nugget’, had arrived at 1100 and began taking on the civilians from the carriers that the doctors deemed well enough to go. Helicopter flights from the carriers to the single helicopter pads on the cruise ship were continuous. It was anticipated that the Silver Soon and the Nugget would leave for California at 1600 with eight thousand survivors on board.

At 1630 two more cruise ships had made the journey ‘The ‘Pacific Wave’ and the ‘Catalina Bay’ were taking on passengers. At 1700 we had today’s planning session with all the departments. Reports from all the services at Hawaii gave a bleak picture; the volcano was still erupting but showing signs that it was possibly ending.

The lava output had dropped but the steam and gasses had increased. There were fears from the experts that a deep-water fissure had opened, allowing sea water to enter the core of the volcano. if that was the case, the lava flow would be cooled allowing it to solidify, possibly sealing the vent and temporally stopping the eruption, allowing it to build tremendous explosive pressure again.

The other possibly was it would open up an underseas path for the lava to escape. There was also the fear that a new volcano or volcanic island was in the making.

We had serious decisions to make regarding the survivors on the ships. It was determined that as soon as the cruise ships were filled to capacity, each would return to San Diego, unload and return. Camp Parks had thirty thousand empty cots. These would be used initially for the survivors. The hunt was on for places to house thousands long term.

A lot of the homeless that had been sent there had found jobs and recovered enough to be in housing other than the camp. The empty tents were still there; It wasn’t the Hilton, but they were going to have to put up with it - at least until we knew and understood the extent of damage to Hawaii.

They were going to need long term housing, but the big question was - how many survivors were there and where were we going to find it?

There were already those quietly saying the island of Hawaii would have to be abandoned and that it could be years before Oahu could be fully inhabited again. There were more questions than answers. I gave all those departments heads a list of questions I wanted answers to for tomorrow’s 0800 briefing. Troy had requested an hour at 1000 for a news conference.

To improve the possibility of finding survivors on island of Hawaii, there had to be a method of scouting the island and deal with the deep ash. The Seabees at the California Marine base had been ordered to deploy yesterday against opposition from the brass. They were a day away from arriving.

With breaks in the ash, steam and clouds, the satellites were able to collect some data. It was determined that the ash was between six feet and eight feet deep in places. MRAPS and tracked vehicles as well as helicopters were currently out of the question.

The only way to do a reconnaissance was going to be with front end loaders moving ash while making paths where the streets were thought to be. The consensus was that we had to deal with the ash like it was snow. Given the depth, front end loaders and bulldozers would be needed and the Seabees had them.

The Army and Marine troops were still using the bunkers on Oahu. Generals were wanting them withdrawn. I ended that thought; as long as there was food and sanitation, I wanted them to stay and not take up precious space on the rescue ships. Another thing was they were going to be needed to help search the island.

After the briefing my staff began the task of preparing for our vacation next week. Lorrie had left a block of two weeks that all the rental units would be empty for staff, security, Secret Service, limited media and our families.