During the last week of August, the entire country held its breath as Hurricane Gustav churned through the Caribbean. Would it broadside the Gulf Coast? Would it destroy thousands of homes and displace thousands of people?

In St. Paul, the team putting together the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) was asking the same questions - and many more. Would they have to shuffle the agenda? What about the food, transportation, and other services already lined up? Would delegates from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas want to go home? Would President Bush cancel his scheduled appearance? Would the entire convention have to be postponed?

Actually, that last question was an easy one. Mark Miller, the RNC's director of operations, remembers watching a commentator on CNN talk about pushing the convention back a week. "I said, 'You don't postpone it for a week,'" Miller said with a dry laugh. "You don't even delay it for a couple of days."

No postponement. One issue down. But everything else had to be dealt with on the fly.

A Really Big Show
Your average national political convention is a massive affair, requiring epic coordination and supreme concentration even when a Category 3 storm isn't threatening to blow your program off the front page. The 2008 RNC, which ran from Monday, Sept. 1, to Thursday, Sept. 4, at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, was no exception. There was seating for 20,000 people on the main floor. Two surface parking lots were outfitted with workspace for the 15,000 media personnel in attendance. The Secret Service was everywhere. At any given time, according to Greg Lane, national project director for Freeman, the RNC's general services contractor, 30,000 to 35,000 people were on the convention site.

"It's one of the most unique events we do," Lane said. "For one thing, there's always politics involved in any kind of business, but this involves real politics. So, besides the politics of putting together the logistics of an event, there is the influence of what's going on in the political world during that time that affects what we do and how the event is designed."

Lane is based in New Orleans, but he had already been in St. Paul for a month - the set-up for the RNC took five weeks - when Gustav appeared on the national radar. "I think when we really got serious about it," Lane said, "was probably the middle of the week before" the convention. Added Miller: "I was kind of naïve at first. It began to come up that there would be some consideration of altering the program if it did hit."

And it did. Gustav made landfall along the Louisiana coast on the morning of Sept. 1 - the first day of the RNC.

Stormy Monday
The convention wouldn't - couldn't - be postponed. But could its timeline be adjusted forward or backward? No. Late on Sunday, Aug. 31, word came from the McCain camp that "we'd start and end more or less when we planned," Miller said, "and what we did in between could be flexible."

As it turned out, New Orleans was spared completely, and the rest of the Gulf Coast, while hammered in places, largely escaped a horrific onslaught. But RNC planners didn't know that until late on Monday. Meanwhile, they implemented a series of measures that kept their program moving - and, where appropriate, focused attention on those in the storm's path, including:

Hurricane center. Realizing that everyone attending the convention would want to keep tabs on Gustav no matter where the storm went, RNC officials had Freeman construct a "hurricane center" on the floor of the Xcel Energy Center. Freeman partitioned off and carpeted a 40' X 50' area, and added computer stations with Internet access as well as TVs broadcasting live coverage of Gustav. "People could go there and get an updated report," Lane said, "and go on a computer and get updates and contact their relatives."

Schedule. With Gustav coming ashore on Monday, and with appearances by President Bush and Vice President Cheney scheduled for that evening looking increasingly doubtful, the decision was made on Sunday night to scale back the opening day's agenda. Instead of the original plan, Lane said, which called for morning and afternoon business sessions, culminating in Cheney's and Bush's speeches, the RNC opted for two-and-a-half hours of bylaws revisions and other official party business, from 2:30 to 5 p.m., followed by adjournment.

"It's pretty dull according to media standards," Miller said, "so the decision was to go ahead and get that out of the way on this day when you don't want to have a television spectacular, in deference to the hurricane." It was a juggling act, but a manageable one. "It's a lot easier to cut something back that you've planned and shift it around a little," Miller said, "than to add something you never planned.

After Monday, things more or less settled down. "After the storm made landfall and they had an assessment of the damage," Lane said, "the other speakers were able to continue with their commitments. The program didn't change much after Monday" - an exception being Tuesday night, when the schedule was reconfigured to allow Bush to appear via satellite.

Logistics. Even just scaling back Monday's program produced ripple effects throughout the event. Travel schedules were reworked for governors, senators, and other high-profile speakers. The transportation service slated to run late into the evening was shortened. Food for the boxed lunch that was going to be fed to 5,000 delegates and alternates was donated to local charities. "We're by nature an anal lot of people who like to be able to plan and stay on a plan," Lane said, "but we also by our nature realize that we work in an industry where things change on a minute-by-minute basis."

Compassion. RNC officials and Freeman also offered support to those affected by Gustav - on-site and along the Gulf Coast. On Monday, First Lady Laura Bush and Cindy McCain, Sen. John McCain's wife, took the stage to open the convention and urge attendees to support hurricane-relief efforts. The McCain campaign also chartered a plane to transport Gulf Coast delegates who wished to return home on Sunday.

Similarly, Freeman offered the 35 members of its 60-person team who were from New Orleans the opportunity to go home. Only three did so. "It's a mental burden on you - you're not there, and you feel guilty because you're not there," Lane said. "But having gone through it a number of times, I don't want to say it's just a mundane, routine thing, but it's not something new for us."

Crisis Take Away

Freeman's Greg Lane and the RNC's Mike Miller have some tips for dealing with a Gustav-style crisis:

Don't overreact: "Truly remaining calm and considering the facts and working off of what you know and making sound judgment calls," Lane said, "is what keeps everybody grounded in these sorts of situations."

Be flexible: "A person phrased it this way to me a long time ago - 'tactical flexibility,'" Miller said. "As much as you've planned to do something, you have to be just as prepared to do something else."

Set an example: "How you react and handle yourself has an effect on the people who are working for you," Lane said. "They're looking for you to set the tone for how things are."

Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.