Wednesday afternoon Lorrie, Vicky, Ching Lee, Takeo, Sara and I flew on Marine One to the landing pad behind the office. I wanted to spend a little time with the boys, Jenny and Marcie before I left for the South East Asian conference. I made up for being away. After the conference I was going to spend the following weekend at home, and possibly Monday as well.

            Air Force One picked me up at midnight at Morton Field and then began the long flight to Manila. It was a twenty-hour flight. Because of the international date line crossing, I would arrive in Manila on Friday at 2000 or so – depending on the winds – an hour or two either way. The first meetings were Saturday morning after an international breakfast. The meetings had been extended to Wednesday.

             All the staff was going with me as well as the military chiefs. There were big happenings after the conference that would complete the agreement for our use of the former military bases. That was happening on Thursday or Friday, depending on the conference timeline.

            It was 10,300 miles from Morton to Manila International Airport. Inflight refueling would take place just pass California. I could have landed and refueled on the ground at one of the military bases in California, but it was a time thing. If I landed, it would have required all kinds of meetings with political leaders and military leaders lest they would feel slighted.

            I would land on the way back to refuel, shake all the hands and salute the right officers. There would probably be a trip to Camp Parks and to look at some of the low-income housing that was being built to end the homeless problem that was no longer making news print.

            After reading all the updates marked urgent, I went to the rear of the plane. I took a hot shower and went back to bed on the king size bed, listening to the hum of the turbines.

            I slept very well; even the change in the turbines to slow down for the refueling didn’t wake me up. When I woke up, I noted we still had ten hours to go as I went to the cafeteria for breakfast. Yes, Air Force One has a kitchen and cafeteria. I had fresh cooked eggs, scrapple and pancakes.

There were now eight hours left and just a couple until we crossed the International Date Line. I went to the flying ‘Oval Office’ and started my day as usual, reading today’s updates. I was happy with several of them.

            The USS Missouri had been dredged free yesterday. A repair ship was inspecting the hull and making sure it was watertight for the tow through the Panama Canal to Chesapeake Bay, then to Annapolis. The West Coast states were screaming, wanting it on the west coast somewhere – anywhere on the west coast.

            Their senators and representatives had proposed all kinds of bills, motions and resolutions for that affect, some of them threatening the Navy Department. It was all set and decided and there was no changing it. It was a done deal.

            McLean Contracting was already at the Naval Academy, dredging and driving heavy sheeting, creating a place to berth the USS Missouri. The dredge materials were going to the Poplar Island restoration project just a few miles away from the Academy.

            They were going to run heavy electric service to the berth so there would be the possibility of moving the turrets and possibly a light show the same as the North Carolina. It was a popular tourist attraction. The light show simulated a night battle.

            While it’s on its way to Annapolis, the Missouri was doing a stopover at NNSB docks at Navy Yard for hull painting and upper structure cleaning and painting to repair the damage to the ship from all the volcanic ash that was on it for so long.

            The New Jersey had painting and hull work just a few years before at the Philadelphia Ship yards. The experts from that exercise were going to assist NNSB to properly positioned the ship in the drydock since they had a more recent experience.

            I had learned there was a lot more to putting a battle ship in a dry dock and pumping the water out. Blocks had to be positioned to properly support that tremendous weight. They had to be placed at strong points built into the ship during construction so the ship would not bend or sag as the water was removed. The barbettes, turrets, magazines and armor surrounding them weight thousands of tons.

Weights had to be properly positioned on deck so she settled on the keel blocks evenly. The stern was the lowest part and the heaviest. Without that as the dry dock was drained of water there was the potential that the bow would slam down hard on the keel blocks and do all kinds of serious damage to the ship.

The other note was on the removal of the artifacts from the Arizona. Initially they were going to pump the cofferdam around it dry, but smarter minds prevailed. Now they were going to lower the water level one deck at a time and remove everything of historical value on that deck.

Everything removed would be submerged in plastic crates filled with sea water until the items could be properly dried, preserved and restored. The process was going to take time – a lot of time and cost. But without it, all would be lost forever and that was close to happening now.

The National Park Service employees had watched over the Arizonia for decades. They had done many dives around the ship documenting decay and discovering new things from the attack and were on hand to assist.

Every artifact was to receive special handling as well as any remains that were found. Over a thousand had perished on the Arizona, how many were vaporized from the massive explosion was an unknown.

 How many remains would be found was another unknown, was there enough DNA to identify them, would the dog tags still be around the bones? The final resting place for them would have to be decided in the future, return them to their families or to intern them altogether at Arlington National Cemetery?

All these people were staying on a Navy ship anchored closely off shore and traveling by small craft back and forth. The broken Memorial had been lifted onto a barge for transport to Annapolis along with many other pieces of the ship for the new memorial.

There were some that even wanted the two halves of the ship brought to Annapolis as part of the new memorial. For the time being I was against it. When it was thoroughly searched, everything documented, then the decision that all of the possible artifacts had been found – even in the mud around the ship – I was for pulling for sections of the cofferdam to be removed to reflood and cover what was left.

Rains, wind and hot tropical sun was making an eerie landscape out of Hawaii. The volcano was still belching smoke and lava rivers from its summit and earth quakes were still registering on all the equipment. The experts were saying there were no signs of another major eruption building. But then again, the experts had missed all the signs of the initial pending eruption.

Bodies were still being exposed in some areas as the winds and erosion were changing the landscape. There was a graves unit on one of the ships to handle those issues. I closed that section of notes and updates to move on to the next group.

The next reports were on the electric infrastructure issues as my experts said there would be. Rolling blackouts were still continuing in the north-west and in some areas of the mid-west and south-west, although not as bad. The winter had was cold but had not been terribly cold.

 Coal and natural gas plants that had been idled or shut down were being put back online. Natural gas plants were coming on faster that the coal plants. In fact, all the gas plants were already back online. Also, most of the coal plants would be online by the end of the year.

 But nowhere near enough were saved to handle the continuing crisis created by the volcano. The real crisis was going to start during the summer heat.

 Of course, the green groups were screaming, demanding the solar panels be replaced immediately instead putting the fossil fuels back on line. The problem was that there were still no serious manufacturing plants in the US. China had the market covered and had increased the price a thousand percent.

What was first estimated to replace all the damaged solar panels was at a trillion dollars, was now at ten trillion and growing. The estimated time was now fifteen years and growing before the replacement would be completed.

Then there was the problem of what to do with the fifty million tons junk solar panels. Many were past their half life service or at the end of their service life prior to the ash damage. Now the special glass was damaged and no longer recyclable. I closed that report and moved on to the next one.

The next one was the final report on the damage to the wind power that was scattered through-out the region. The failure rate was increasing, there were two main reasons for that.

One was that the volcanic ash acted like sandpaper with the blades turning in the wind for the weeks the ash was a problem. The result was the blades no longer had the structural strength they were designed to have and now they were failing.

 Many simply broke off, throwing the unit out of balance and causing the supporting tower to crash to the ground, in some cases taking others with it.

The second cause was that ash was sucked into the generator portion of the tower. Generating electricity created heat – a lot of heat. To control that heat, fans were built into the unit to pull and push air through the fields and armature. Those fans filled the unit with ash that filled every winding, every gap or hole. All that stopped the needed airflow to cool the unit.

Because of the height of the towers, there were no air filters installed on them. There would not be any dust that high to cause any problems. The experts never figured on the one in a thousand storm scenario.

The next piece of the puzzle was that the gear boxes were humongous to hold the speeds, torque and horsepower that was developed at moderate wind speeds. Those gear boxes were filled with hundreds of gallons of gear lube that was pumped under pressure to all the bearings in the gearbox.

That oil also had to be cooled by hydraulic coolers that were made out of aluminum to reduce weight. They were not designed to be used in areas where the air contained abrasive particles. The result; the fins that were not filled with the grit were quickly worn away and the aluminum coils were worn away, then they began leaking oil. That oil spray was starting fires.

Those fires were two hundred feet and higher above ground and unable to be put out. The result was that tower loses were seventy five percent in some areas, fifty percent in most areas.

As soon as the experts were predicting this kind of failure during the eruption, I ordered a task force made up of energy supply experts. Their direction was simple; find the fastest solution to the rolling blackouts.

Those orders and the work they had done were beginning to bear fruit. One hundred Cat, Cummins and MTD2000KW and 3500 KW diesel generators had been located in a world- wide search from mining, oil and factory locations.

They had been given maintenance and testing and were being install at major substations on the transmission lines. Pole buildings were being built to give them shelter. Twenty-five were going online this week, another twenty-five the end of the month. Next month the other fifty were to be in service.

They were a drop in the bucket to what was needed, but every little bit helped.

Their big brothers were coming, the first were to be installed in two months. Monster diesel generators. Kawaski was delivering ten 10MW diesel generators. GE was delivering two used 25MW natural gas units from South Africa.

GE was also completing the build on two 50MW gas turbines to be delivered by June, according to the report. I hoped all of this would make a difference.

But I knew bigger things were in the works for the latter part of the year for next winter.

I closed the report and walked to the cafeteria for a refill, listening to the celebration. We had crossed the international date line, we had gained a day and would then lose it on the return trip.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.