Logistics chiefs: The firefighting lifeline that often goes unnoticed

Scott Sonner

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2000 | 2:16 a.m.

WINNEMUCCA, Nev. - It's a Friday afternoon, and Mike Whalen expects he'll be packing up and heading for Montana by morning. Or maybe not.

"We have no clue. It may change on us," Whalen said. "Right now the heavy action is in Montana but in a few days it could be California."

He does know that when he goes, wherever he goes, his worries will be less about flames and smoke than about water and ice.

Whalen is one of the logistics chiefs who organize the vast firefighting effort. The details he must tend to go almost beyond comprehension - everything from supplies, equipment, transportation and fuel to sleeping arrangements, showers, kitchen units and drinking water.

"You have to make sure the outhouses are downwind from the kitchen and make sure the guy who services the outhouses doesn't come to pump them out at dinner time," he said. "There's just a lot of odds and ends to keep the crews functional."

In most cases, by the time a logistics officer gets involved, the fire has escaped the initial attack and gone beyond the local crew's ability to deal with it. Manpower is running short and supplies shorter.

"It's the first time they realize they are in over their head," he said.

It means telephone calls in the middle of the night and a quickly packed bag to jump a flight to who knows where. The latest comes from interagency fire officials in Boise who were organizing a new area command team in Montana.

"Logistics seems to be the thing killing everybody. Right now supplies nationwide are being drawn down at an incredible rate," said Whalen, a fire ecologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Winnemucca whose biggest assignment to date has been the 1988 fires at Yellowstone.

"It's worse than 1988," he said. "Right now, we are begging and borrowing and stealing to get whatever we can."

First-aid kits, radios and other communication equipment are among the things they are running out of fast. When the government-issue equipment is gone, the horse trading begins.

Whalen remembers when Marines were sent in from Camp Pendleton in Southern California to help with the fires at Yellowstone 12 years ago.

"They didn't have any cold-weather gear and it would get down to 20 degrees at night," he said. "It got to the point I was trading hand tools and radio kits for sleeping bags and ground pads."

Similarly, local caterers have to be called on sometimes to meet the food demands of a large fire team.

"A local caterer who is used to doing weddings and receptions can get overwhelmed when they try to feed 300 people out in the desert 60 miles off the pavement," Whalen said.

A lot of a logistics chief's job involves the little things not apparent on the front lines, like deciding who gets to eat first and scheduling transportation of crews and equipment, water supplies and hand tools.

"You can't carry the tools with the crews. Metal and bodies don't mix when you have a wreck," Whalen said.

The biggest fires attract crews in excess of 2,000.

"By the time you get to 2,000 or 2,500 people you are managing several camps and two or three kitchen units and a number of medical units," he said.

"When you get a city of 2,000 people, you sure enough are going to get upset stomachs, flu and some bad toothaches besides the normal fire-line injuries," he said.

"Back in 1985 when we were in Custer County, Idaho, we had a saying that we were the biggest city in the county - and all of our people were employed."

Command chiefs are only supposed to work 12- to 14-hour shifts.

"They want you to get rest so you are reasonably cognizant," he said. "But this year, there have been a lot of 16-, 17-, 18-hour shifts, especially at the initial stages of a fire."

Sometimes a double command team is sent in to work two shifts, around the clock. But in many cases, it's not possible to fight fires in the dark, especially in "steep country, when it's burning in timber and you can't see the snakes coming as it burns through."

A Northern California native who grew up near Red Bluff and Susanville, Whalen got his start as a seasonal firefighter for the California Division of Forestry in 1967. He's been in the business ever since, having moved to the BLM in Winnemucca in 1989.

Married for 26 years, he has four children - three of whom are in the business. One is a dispatcher in Salt Lake City, one mans an engine with the Forest Service in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Markleeville, Calif., and another works in ground and supply support.

He first became interested in logistics when he was fighting a fire in California and complained to his boss about a shortage of supplies getting to the front lines.

His boss said he had a solution - volunteering Whalen for logistics training.

"It's kind of a thankless job in a lot of ways because when things go right nobody notices but when things go wrong, you know right where the breakdown occurred," Whalen said.

"In terms of the fire operation, you can blame the weather, the fuels, the topography, the fire behavior-type stuff. But logistics, you know right where the problem is," he said.

On the other hand, "there's some good satisfaction when you feel you've pulled another one off."

Although he's known for making huge purchases of supplies and ordering them on a minute's notice, Whalen said his wife does most of the shopping at home.

"We have a Costco card but I hardly ever use it. I hate to go to Costco and stand in line to save $6."

End Adv for PMs, Aug. 29