Day that put hearts in mouths

The typed envelope addressed to Helen Clark, The Prime Minister, looks like any other in the mailbag that arrives in Clark's Beehive office about 8.30am on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister's records officer slices it open and puts the two-page letter aside with the others.

At 10am he gives the opened mail to the private secretary of correspondence and she begins to sift through it.

Fifteen minutes later, she is the first to read the claim that foot-and-mouth disease has been released on Waiheke Island.

She realises she has a crisis on her hands. She takes the letter to Clark's principal private secretary, Alec McLean, who rings the diplomatic protection squad at 10.17am. The squad is in the office in minutes.

The letter is put in a plastic folder to protect it from further fingerprints and copies are made. At 10.27am McLean advises the Prime Minister's chief-of-staff, Heather Simpson.

A copy is given to the chief executive of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Maarten Wevers, and things really swing into action.

By 11.10am, when Clark returns from an interview at the Newstalk ZB studio, Wevers has launched ODESC procedures. It's the official equivalent of a red alert. The ODESC - the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination - is the top brass of security and intelligence.

It is summoned in crises, such as the September 11 attacks.

Calls go out to the chiefs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), the Defence Force, the Ministry of Defence and the SIS, the Government Communication Security Bureau, police, the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, the Treasury and others.

Up on The Terrace, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry director of biosecurity Barry O'Neil is leaving his first floor office in MAF headquarters for a meeting about exotic diseases when he is stopped by his secretary, Nadine Hall.

MAF director-general Murray Sherwin needs him urgently. Sherwin has just got off the phone with Wevers.

On the seventh floor, New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) executive director Andrew McKenzie is already in Sherwin's office when O'Neil arrives. They briefly discuss what to do, then, with Peter Thompson, Biosecurity New Zealand's director of post clearance, they hurry to the Reserve Bank at the bottom of The Terrace, where the ODESC has gathered. ODESC and MAF staff form a plan.

Just after noon a delegation including O'Neil, Sherwin, Wevers and Police Commissioner Rob Robinson leaves the ODESC meeting and walks to the Beehive, where Clark, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen and Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Jim Sutton are waiting.

The public servants want to impose control measures on Waiheke and notify trading partners and the media. The ministers quickly give the go-ahead.

Almost immediately two MAF staff from its National Centre for Disease Control in the Hutt Valley board a plane to Auckland.

MFAT chief executive Simon Murdoch sends a cable through the classified message system to overseas diplomatic posts asking them to contact chief veterinary officers.

MFAT, MAF and NZFSA staff call their contacts in trading nations. They will work through the night.

In Brussels, Chris Kebbell, veterinary counsellor attached to the New Zealand Embassy, is woken with the news. It's 4.30am in Belgium, 2.30pm in New Zealand.

Meat Industry Association chief executive Caryll Shailer is in her office on The Terrace preparing board papers at 3.53pm when a confidential, embargoed email alert comes from the Government.

It's not altogether unexpected. A media advisory from MAF at 3.25pm had invited journalists to a press conference "to announce a significant issue" - so word had got round that something was up. Two board-members have already called Shailer.

Moments before 4pm a MAF senior official rings to say a public statement will be made on the hour. Within minutes Shailer emails the association's board. She and her staff will brief their contacts by email throughout the day and night.

Mark Jeffries, chief executive of marketing body Meat and Wool New Zealand, is talking biosecurity in Invercargill with the Alliance Group meat company. A secretary comes into the room with an email about the press conference.

Sherwin calls on Jeffries' cellphone. Jeffries rings his office in Wellington and they call Meat and Wool directors and its offices in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Brussels and London.

At 4pm O'Neil fronts the press conference at MAF's headquarters. Grey-faced officials look nervous. The media's reaction is crucial.

But O'Neil is a natural. He appears genuine and direct. The first story goes out at 4.10pm.

At the Affco meat company in Hamilton, chief executive Tony Egan hears the barest details of the alert. He rings Shailer and she fills him in. Sales staff contact some customers overseas and field calls from others.

The news flies round the world. By 5pm the kiwi dollar and the sharemarket have weakened a little, and the two MAF staff are on the ferry to Waiheke. Operation Waiheke has begun.

Like the others, O'Neil works late into the night. He is back in his office by 4.30am on Wednesday. Mexico has imposed light restrictions. There is no lasting damage to the markets or currency.

O'Neil is relieved. The damage-control operation is holding.