*OT*
Funny you mentioned Bellevue - before I worked for IBM I worked for a firm that sold turnkey computer systems for the health industry. Turns out I was part of the team that installed the software for Bellevue's first computer system. I know that Santa Claus from Miracle on 34th Street was taken to Bellevue for a psychiatric exam, but when I was there, admissions to the ER on weekends were more like the 'Saturday night knife and gun club'. By the way, here is the article on the eclipse....
John
An English County Draws Up Plans
To Combat a Pending Solar Eclipse
By CHARLES GOLDSMITH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ST. MABYN, England -- Make no mistake, the eclipse czar warns the
civic elders: Next summer's plunge into darkness requires readiness as if
for war.
"We are the first landfall of the eclipse," bellows retired Brig. Gage
Williams. "This will put Cornwall on the map, but it must be done right."
On the morning of Aug. 11, for two minutes and six seconds, the skies will
darken over Cornwall, a slender finger of land in southwest England, the
reputed home of the legendary King Arthur.
It will be the only English-speaking place in the
Western world to witness the event, and Brig.
Williams says there could be one million visitors.
As the man charged with making it come off
smoothly, he is leaving nothing to chance.
Up every morning at 5, the eclipse czar tells
police, farmers, bankers and the local coroners to
mobilize or face chaos. "To dilly and dally will cost
lives," says the brigadier (the U.S. equivalent is
brigadier general), who in his military days
invented a remote-control system to illuminate
airborne bombing targets from the ground.
After undertaking a "military appreciation" of the eclipse situation, he
devised a 14-page battle plan to deal with what he terms "the fog of war"
-- the uncertainties of an unprecedented situation. Warning of everything
from possible water and cash shortages to overburdened hospitals, the
report was a call to arms that jolted the sleepy county of 485,000 people
into action.
"His paper was alarmist, but rightfully so," says Cmdr. Mike Gilbert,
harbor master for Cornwall's big port at Plymouth. "It definitely sparked
off the planning."
Brig. Williams has his hands full. Because Cornwall has just three decent
roads, its traffic stands to be gridlocked, so he has set in motion a broad
counterassault. Military helicopters have been sequestered to carry the
"walking wounded" to hospitals. A special FM radio station will handle
communications. The local gas company, heeding the brigadier's advice on
alternative transport, plans to use motorbikes and perhaps even jet skis to
check on reported leaks. Police vacations have been postponed; road
crews will suspend their usual work and turn instead to removing
broken-down vehicles.
Contingency plans are afoot for temporary body-storing equipment in a
region served by just two morgues; procedures for issuing death
certificates have been streamlined for the peak period of July 30 to Aug.
23. War games, in brigadier's parlance, are scheduled for March, so
dodgy defenses can be reinforced.
"We've got to plan for the worst-case scenario," says the brigadier, who
followed generations of his family into the Duke of Cornwall's Light
Infantry, "and that requires some old-fashioned leadership. We can't just
duck out of this and say, 'Oh, this is all such a bloody nuisance.' "
Still, it's sure to be at least that. Though not alone in next summer's
blackness, Cornwall is expecting a particularly big influx because of the
region's unique geographical situation.
The eclipse begins in the North Atlantic off Nova Scotia, then sweeps
across broad swaths of Europe and central Asia before disappearing over
the Bay of Bengal. It will be visible in countries with a total population of
1.8 billion. But this is the first total eclipse of the sun to touch mainland
Britain since 1927, and it will be the last until 2090. It will be visible only in
Cornwall and the neighboring county of Devon, so hordes are expected
from London and other United Kingdom population centers. As the first
point of landfall, Cornwall also is expected to attract loads of U.S.
astronomy buffs, and to be a global media mecca for about 6,000
journalists.
Brig. Williams's biggest challenge may be finding accommodations for all
those visitors, who are being encouraged to come early and stay late.
(That will give them time to spend money in Cornwall and, more to the
point, ease road congestion.) Because Cornwall has only 100,000 beds in
hotels, vacation rentals and guest houses, and 150,000 camping slots, the
brigadier is working with farmers and a campground developer to create
temporary campsites for 500,000 or more.
"That cornfield will be ripped out and reseeded with grass in April, so it'll
be ready for campsites by the summer," says tenant farmer Martin Harvey,
whose muddy Land Rover takes Brig. Williams on a tour of his rolling
fields, past hedges of bramble and blackthorn. Large campgrounds first
require planning approval, though, and the eclipse czar is locked in combat
with local environmental officials concerned about overloading the
infrastructure.
"Some people say, 'If we build campsites, people will come.' I'm saying
that people will come, come what may, campsites or not," Brig. Williams
tells a group of Red Cross organizers. "The guy in Birmingham who just
bought a new telescope is not going to be deterred from a
once-in-a-lifetime experience by a lack of beds."
Onboard Ogling
Then there are the cruise ships that are expected to visit the area, as well
as 2,000 or so pleasure boats. "Ships to compete for eclipse view," blares
a headline in a local paper, the Western Morning News.
Particularly unpredictable are the roving bands of druids, numerologists
and various New Age devotees who will want to see what John
Parkinson, a professor in Sheffield, calls an "end-of-the-world
experience." After all, what could be more irresistibly cosmic than the
millennium's last full solar eclipse, at 11:11 a.m. on Aug. 11, in a remote
land immersed in Celtic lore and legend? "An eclipse is like nothing people
have ever seen before, and will never see again," says Prof. Parkinson, an
enthusiast who once traveled 86 hours by train to Siberia from Moscow to
see one. "Birds pack up and go to bed. You feel it getting colder. To see
shadow bands moving across the ground makes it look like the earth is
heaving and shaking."
Brig. Williams even foresees a baby boomlet on the big day, figuring that
surely some couples will have timed pregnancies so that births will occur
on or about the day of the darkness.
With jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes, Brig. Williams looks younger
than his 52 years. A graduate of Sandhurst, Britain's West Point, he had
34 postings in 14 countries. He served in Cyprus, the Falkland Islands and
Northern Ireland before retiring in 1995.
Cornwall Roots
After leaving the military, he got a stockbroker's license and now heads a
company that does investment research. Married and with three children,
Brig. Williams saw the Cornwall eclipse post as an ideal way to get
reacquainted with the region where his family first settled in 1590. Such a
heritage gives him a key advantage in dealing with a notoriously insular
Cornish population, some of whom still refer to "the English" as if they
were some distant race.
"Cornish people react well to Cornish people," says county
emergency-planning chief Steve Winston. "But Gage is also a born
organizer."
Despite his birthright, the brigadier acknowledges that nobody really
knows what to expect next summer. "We'll look rather foolish," he
concedes, if the crowds fail to materialize, but that leaves him undaunted: If
there's one thing he learned in the army, it's that overpreparation is forgiven
far faster than the alternative.
"In the military, they say that you have two courses of action," says the
brigadier, glancing at battlefield maps of proposed campsites, "and the
enemy always chooses the third."
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