Until late afternoon, it looked fairly clear that the House would pass a three-week continuing resolution, the Senate would approve it — possibly without a vote — and President Barack Obama would sign it, since it would at least be better than a shutdown. White House aides were paying attention to their vote, but not with a lot of suspense. Some were already making their weekend plans.

Then the House fumbled its funding bill, and suddenly White House and DHS officials were running around trying to figure out the next move.

By late Friday night, the sense of crisis passed as it became clear that the solution — such as it was — would be a one-week continuing resolution to keep the department’s doors open, for a while. The House passed the one-week bill around 10 p.m., less than two hours after the Senate approved it. Obama signed the seven-day bill before midnight.

That outcome means the White House and DHS will have to be prepared for another crisis in just a week. But it allowed White House officials to keep their response low-key for now, since they long ago concluded that the DHS funding mess is the Republicans’ problem and they need to solve it themselves. They didn’t have to send Obama out to scold Republicans from the briefing room podium; they just kept all of the action behind closed doors.

Late Friday, Obama and top aides met with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan in the Oval Office about the crisis, according to a statement by White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Obama also called Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi by phone.

DHS 0fficials have more on the line, and the wheels were already in motion Friday night to prepare for the funding to run out. The department posted an updated, 47-page shutdown plan that details the procedures for winding down some functions, as well as which workers will be sent home — roughly 30,000 out of the approximately 225,000 DHS employees.

“We just have to wait,” DHS spokeswoman Tanya Bradsher said earlier Friday, after watching the failure of the House bill on CNN. “We’re just waiting to see what else might happen between now and midnight. We’re prepared for all contingencies, as we have to be in this kind of scenario.”

At the White House, some Secret Service agents — who would have to work without pay for an uncertain length of time if DHS shuts down — weren’t aware of the House vote until a reporter told them about it. When they found out, they laughed in exasperation.

“Only D.C. Only D.C.,” one muttered.

If Congress hadn’t come up with the last-minute save before midnight, the department would have had to begin a partial shutdown.

It would have affected mostly administrative offices, since most workers at critical agencies, like the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would be declared “essential” and would have to stay on the job. But approximately 30,000 DHS employees would have been sent home until the department was funded, according to DHS officials — and nearly 195,000 others would have had to keep working without a paycheck.

That could still happen a week from now, if Senate and House Republicans can’t get on the same page with a longer-lasting solution.

Earlier Friday, Earnest said Obama would have been prepared to sign the short-term House bill if it were the only alternative to a shutdown.

“If the president is faced with a choice of having the Department of Homeland Security shut down or fund that department for a short term, the president is not going to let the agency shut down,” Earnest said. “It represents an abject failure of leadership on the part of the new Republican majority to not get this done.”

As soon as the House bill failed, Senate Democrats rushed out with statements urging House Republicans to pass the long-term, clean funding bill the Senate approved earlier Friday.

“Today, the Senate threw Speaker Boehner a life preserver; it’s time for him to take it,” Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement.