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Afunile zoom toioord Surf on its way into space. A marine kelps Mrt. John Martinez with her children at they hurry away from their home during evacuation.
The Town
That Runs
for Its Life
Photos and Text by JAMES JOSEPH
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A Aouwn board a but the Navy ed
(o take Surf resident out of missile range.
Worriedly, a housewife in tiny Surf,
Calif., scans the horizon. It's not rain
she fears as she readies to hang out the fam
ily wash ; it's missiles.
Due north of Surf loom the missile launch pads of Van
denberg Air Force Base, the West Coast's Cape Canav
eral. She smiles, noting that the towering gantries
plainly visible from her bedroom window are empty.
"Today," she sighs with relief, "we won't have to run."
There have been other days more than 160 of them
since 1958 and, during last October, nine days running
when Surf's 40 residents fled for their lives, leaving wash
on the line, suppers unfinished, and beds unmade.
Tiny Surf a railroad community lying in direct line
of fire of every missile lobbed into polar orbit southward
over the Pacific Missile Range lives closer to the missile
age than any town in the world. The thunderous roar of
missiles overhead is as common as the raucous cry of sea
birds, but in deserted Surf evacuated before every fir
ing there is none to hear save assistant trainmaster Bob
Wolfe and a telegrapher, who, moments before a missile
is launched, barricade themselves in a hillside bunker.
Familiar to Surf's main street is the military cadence
of white-helmeted security police with their urgent door
pounding and hurried warning: "Evacuation, ma'am in
exactly one hour!"
"We try to give a day's warning," says a security offi
cer at the Navy's Port Arguello Missile Facility, which
supervises down-range ground safety, "but many of Van
denberg's launchings unlike Canaveral's are under the
strictest security. Sometimes we're not notified ourselves
until a few hours before a firing."
"We haven't really unpacked for more than three years
now," says Mrs. John Martinez, whose telegrapher hus
band usually stays at his key, along with trainmaster
Wolfe. "The kids and I just head for buses the Navy
has ready. For the kids, it's more fun than a circus."
As guests of the U. S. Navy, Surf's families are treated
to a picnic if it's a daytime launching.
For night "shoU," Surfs half-dozen families get what
one 13-year-old girl calls "the royal motel treatment a
big splashy pool to swim in, breakfast in bed if we want
it, and even the morning paper delivered to our door."
Despite such free, holidays, not all Surf wives look for
ward to being routed from their homes on a moment's
notice. "But," says one resignedly, "we've come to expect
the unusual having the whole town run for its life."
Surf, Calif., becomes a
ghost town when missiles
thunder overhead from
the nearby launch pads
of the West Coast's
Cape Canaveral
19 5
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This is the shelter where Trainmaster Bob
Wolfe (above)stays during missile firing.
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