When Tom McCall turned out the lights

Russell Sadler

August, 2005. Katrina has just slammed into the Gulf Coast. The stories from New Orleans and Mississippi are filled with terror and tragedy.

As if Hurricane Katrina’s damage isn’t tragedy enough, the media melodrama surround gasoline supplies is very likely talking the country into lining up at the gasoline pumps again A crippled transportation system is understandably creating shortages in the hurricane-stricken area. The Bush administration is displaying the same incompetence it has displayed in nearly everything they have touched for five years, bungling their way through the hurricane’s aftermath.

If Americans panic over gasoline prices and swarm to the pumps to fill their tanks, the transfer of stored gasoline from the distribution network to vehicle tanks will produce spot shortages that will trigger panic buying and lines at the gas pumps far from the area affected by the hurricane, where shortages understandably exist.

Oregon has more experience successfully coping with panic buying and gasoline lines than most states.

Let’s go to the videotape. Rewind to 1973, aka “The Winter Gov. Tom McCall Turned Out The Lights.”

Even before the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, a prolonged drought threatened the West Coast with an hydroelectricity shortage. In Oregon, Gov. Tom McCall urged everyone to conserve electricity since most homes and business were heated with electricity, and the approaching winter was the season of peak electrical usage. McCall issued a constitutionally dubious, but very effective executive order prohibiting the use of electricity for “nonessential” purposes. This included very visible uses like billboards and electric signs.

The Oregon Department of Transportation dimmed some street lights at freeway interchanges. Stores and gas stations pull the knobs off the hot water faucets in public restrooms -- a dubious strategy from a public health standpoint, but very effective publicity. The public responded in their own homes and places of business. Oregon darkened as the lights dimmed. Utilities reported significant drops in electricity consumption.

In late October, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries prohibited sale of crude oil to countries that sided with Israel in the Yom Kippur War. This boycott quadrupled the price of crude oil from $3 a barrel in 1972 to $12 a barrel in 1973. The Arabs’ action triggered panic buying in the United States. The shift of stored gasoline from tank farms and gas station storage tanks to vehicle tanks triggered spot shortages that triggered more panic buying and long lines at the gas pumps.

While the Nixon administration dithered over whether to impose national gasoline rationing, Oregon’s impulsive, decisive Gov. Tom McCall acted. Following a meeting with dozens of angry, bewildered gasoline dealers at the Capitol, McCall held a meeting with his staff to come up with an plan to control and contain the long lines at the pumps. The staff erupted with ideas -- including flying green flags when the station had gasoline to sell, red flags when their tanks were dry and yellow flags announcing sales only to regular commercial customers. But it was a young staffer from the Oregon Department of Energy who came up with the idea McCall finally announced to the public. “We could cut the lines in half overnight,” the staffer assured McCall. “People whose license plates end in an even number can buy gas today, people with odd numbers can buy tomorrow.”

McCall had as much visibility in the National Governors Association in 1973 as did California Gov. Ronald Reagan. McCall’s odd-even plan was so simple to administer, so free of bureaucracy that a number of governors adopted it in their states and the need for national gas rationing just melted away. The Arabs ended their embargo in March, 1974.

Fast forward to late August, 2005. The media, -- especially the cable “news” channels -- with their 24/7 “news cycle,” bilge-blathering talking heads, and melodramatic coverage of “crippled oil production” that is creating the climate that will once again trigger panic buying and the return of the long lines at the gasoline pumps.

Outside the Gulf Coast, there is just as much gasoline available today as there was before Katrina hit. It is in transit from refineries to oil distributors’ tank farms to the underground tanks where you fill up.

Most Americans let their gas tanks get close to empty before they fill up, so most gasoline is stored in the distribution network, not in vehicle gasoline tanks. But if the melodramatic media convinces enough people shortages are imminent, Americans will line up to top off their tanks. This will shift much of the nation’s stored gasoline from the distribution network to vehicle tanks, triggering spot shortages that will produce media coverage that will trigger more panic buying and the long lines will reappear at the pumps as it did in 1973.

If that happens, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and other state governors can simply impose McCall’s odd-even plan and reduce the number of drivers bellying up to the bar to fill up by half. There is no need to trouble the incompetents in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

By Russell Sadler Sept. 02, 2005