Citizen Soldiers

At precisely 1:09 p.m. on Feb. 26, all but four of the 2,670 traffic lights in Miami--Dade County, Fla., went dark. A blackout, sparked by a fire, crept up the state, affecting 4 million people. Traffic choked the roadways. The nuclear reactors at the Turkey Point power plant shut down. As air-conditioning faded on an 84°F (29°C) day, thousands wandered into the streets.

Coincidentally, on the very same day in California, the other state that understands what it is like to routinely plunge into near and total catastrophe, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was announcing a quiet revolution. Stunned by what he had recently seen in his own state--neighbors saving one another from wildfires, an oil spill that drew thousands of unsolicited, underutilized cleanup volunteers (above)--he created a new cabinet-level post to manage volunteers.

As with universal health care and greenhouse-gas caps, Schwarzenegger and California are once again doing what the rest of the country shoulda coulda done but didn't. After Hurricane Katrina, the secret was out that government alone would never be able to manage big disasters. First responders like firefighters and police make up less than 1% of the population. They cannot be everywhere--or even most places. So the vast majority of rescues are done by regular people. The problem is, regular people have almost never been intelligently engaged in emergency planning--until, perhaps, now. "It's a brilliant move," says Wendy Spencer, head of Florida's volunteerism commission. "Others will pay attention. You'll have mayors, emergency managers saying, 'Wow, if it's that important to the governor, maybe we need to look at this.'"

In Florida the power was mostly back on by evening. But when the Big One shakes down California, people will be on their own--in the preindustrial sense--for three to five days: no electricity, gas, running water or phone service. Everyone will be a volunteer, which will be a euphemism for survivor. "The first person who is going to help you is your neighbor," says Karen Baker, California's new secretary of service and volunteering. "So we want your neighbor to know how."