Months of Preparation Compressed Into Hours : Mad Scramble: Show Goes On

When White House advance men descended on a sports arena in a Maryland suburb about 7:30 p.m. Sunday, they found an ice arena, complete with penalty boxes, that had served as the site for a National Hockey League contest the night before. The next event scheduled was a National Basketball Assn. game Monday night.

Would the cavernous sports complex do, they wondered, as a substitute home for a hastily redesigned, scaled-down, presidential inaugural parade?

A little later, a team was checking out the Rotunda of the Capitol, to determine if the public reenactment of President Reagan’s inauguration could be moved from the bitter cold on the Capitol’s steps and into the warmth of the chamber--while trimming the guest list from 140,000 to 1,000.

The answer to these questions was “yes, it could be done.” And for security agents, parade participants, television crews and logistics specialists on the White House and Presidential Inaugural Committee staffs, a mad scramble was on. The mission: to rewrite in about 18 hours a script that had taken more than two months to prepare.

Sleepless Night for Some

They met the challenge. And the arctic blast that brought the decision to move the swearing-in ceremony and the parade indoors meant, in the end, a sleepless night for some but warmer toes, ears and fingers for most.

“There are very few people who had anything to do with the inauguration who’ve had very much sleep,” said John Buckley, a spokesman for the committee organizing the ceremonies.

For the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue--the avenue of presidents--10,578 marchers, float passengers and equestrians had been signed up. But the throng, minus the equestrians’ horses, was diverted to the 20,000-seat Capital Centre sports arena in Landover, Md.

When did the crew that worked Sunday night to prepare the arena finish? “They’re still there,” Buckley said at 11 a.m. Monday.

The floor in the arena--at 1 Harry S. Truman Drive--was hurriedly put in. It worked well enough, but at one point the plywood sheets drew apart under the pressure of dancing feet, revealing the ice from the hockey game surface.

At the Capitol, a team that included representatives of the Secret Service, the Capitol Police and Capitol architect’s office and the sergeant-at-arms gathered at 10 p.m. Sunday in the cramped suite of offices assigned to the House Rules Committee on the third floor.

“We’d already rehearsed it outside. We had to start over again,” said John Chambers, executive director of the Joint Inaugural Committee.

Earlier Sunday evening, “people were still pushing and shoving for tickets” to the ceremony on the Capitol steps, although 140,000 guests already had been invited.

The ceremony, Chambers said, had been planned as “a great public outpouring in which the audience was the main participant.”

Suddenly, “we had to strip away the audience,” he said, and the guest list was pared to include just the 535 members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet secretaries, no more than 300 friends of the President, the diplomatic corps and state governors.

Until the decision to make the switch was made, everything had been under control. Buckley had taken a few hours off. At 4:15 p.m., he was swimming in a health club pool when he was told to report to the White House.

At the same time, Reagan’s key logistics aides were conferring across the street during a reception at Blair House. They had spoken with three physicians who counseled them on the dangers of conducting the ceremonies outside. The President and his wife, Nancy, readily accepted their recommendation that the swearing-in and parade be moved inside.

“The health and safety of those attending and working at these outdoor events must come before any celebration,” Reagan said in a written statement Sunday night.

For the television networks--which planned their Monday broadcast schedules around the inaugural events, beginning with their morning news shows--the shift meant a scramble to make sure they could get sufficient cameras into position in cramped quarters.

As it turned out, the move inside caused considerably fewer problems than an outdoors broadcast would have created.

Cold-Weather Gear Purchased

Sharon Metcalf, an NBC spokeswoman, said the network spent $20,000 Sunday on cold-weather gear and purchased 40 electric blankets to drape over electronically delicate cameras to prevent lenses from becoming fogged. They were not needed in the toasty warmth of the Capitol.

CBS anchored its coverage at the National Gallery of Art, where a large window offered a panoramic view of the Capitol. But the condensation on the inside of the window gave the scene the feeling of an impressionistic painting, despite technicians’ efforts during commercial breaks to wipe the window with squeegees and paper towels.