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DASA 2019-2

Diesel engine Jor which they didn't have fuel. So they sent somebody
down with a can to get some fuel and found that the gas station pumps
were all knocked out because they all operate with electric power,
And somebodyhad to struggie over to New Jersey, where the lights
were still burring, to get a couple of gallons of gas and come back so
that they could get back on the air. You can see how complicated
this ir and how subtle these things are. But it was a horrible feeling
to be listening to these reports of the power going out first in one
city and then in another without an explanation,
SPEAR: With respect to that point about the electric gasoline
pumps, I recall a very interesting moral, Fock inthe early days of
Federal Civil Defense, when we were trying to anticipate all of the
things that could go wrong, we stumbled upon this problem of electrically-driven gasoline pumps, in which case there might be plenty
of gasoline in underground tanks, but with the power off it would be
inaccessible. We presented this problem to the major oil companies
and asked them to solveit. Only one of them came up with a recommendation to its dealers that, in addition tu the usual array of electrically-driven pumps, they should have in each station one oldfashioned hand-cranked pump for emergency purposes, The recommendation wasn't too popular because it involved an investment they
really didn't think they were going to need and one that would never
reaily pay for itself, and not much was done.
In 1955 I happened to be up on Cape Cod at the time when the hurricane had just hit and power was out all over the Cape. As I drove
along that afternoon I sawthat every filling station had solved this
problem ina variant of a single way. You take a plate off the front
of the pump and inside there's the electric motor and a belt for the
' pump drive. In some cases there were small boys on jacked-up bicycles with a rope activating the pump wheel. In other cases they had
old power lawn mowers hooked up to the pump and they were in business and selling gasoline. The moral to this story for me is that if
you want to solve a technical problem, don't go to the executive, go

to the guy that operates the gadget! ( Laughter]

HEMLER: Going back to the question you were addressing here
earlier, and that's how soon people would know, In the case of the
blackout, people knewthere was a blackout; they knew about that instantaneously, What they didn't know were the spc .“:c details of

howit had occurred.
AYRES:

And when it would be over.

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