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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (245356)	4/11/2008 11:19:04 AM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793905

I like Ike and what a great President he was. Your good fortune to have met Mat Dodge as a child certainly must have been a great inspiration toward your career as a forester. This is an account of Mat Dodge's heroism I think you will enjoy. From the Leadership Development Cabinet Desk by Rob Schrepfer Wag Dodge: Leadership through Innovation or the Evolution of a Failed Leader? mbaa.fuqua.duke.edu Wag Dodge was facing the moment and the decision of his lifetime. Dodge had just turned to face the wall of flame racing up the dry bank of Mann Gulch. Fed by winds in excess of 40 mph, the fire raced towards Wag and his fire jumper crew of 15; Wag quickly realized that, unless he took action, he and his team would be overtaken in less than ninety seconds. Mann Gulch is located in a rugged region of central Montana; the area was named Gates of the Mountains in 1805 by the famous northwest explorer Merriweather Lewis. In such remote and inaccessible areas, fire is always a danger. The arid summer of 1805 had baked the brush and grass in Mann Gulch to a crisp brown. In the early afternoon hours on August 5, 1949 a brief lightning storm moved through the bone-dry region and easily ignited several fires. At 2:30 pm Dodge, the thirty-three year old reticent crew chief with nine years of fire jumping experience, and his 15 man team boarded a C-47 and headed for the Gulch. The team was made up of tough, resilient men, several were World War II veterans, some were college students volunteering for the summer and others were career firefighters. By 5 pm the team had gathered on the ground and packed their equipment: shovels, picks, saws and begun moving towards the fire on the south ridge of the Gulch. Although they were without a map (which had falsely been assumed to be in the hands of a firefighter in the region) and a radio (broken during the parachute in) the men felt confident that they would have the fire under control by 10 am the next morning. As Dodge moved out ahead of the group to scout the fire he quickly saw that the high winds were dangerously feeding the blaze and blowing the flames down the south ridge toward his team. He quickly retreated and instructed the group to move down the north ridge towards the Missouri river, where the team could fight the fire with the safety of the river at their backs. Dodge briefly relinquished the lead as he continued retreating, back to the landing spot to gather more supplies, as his team moved on towards the fire; at times, the team drifted apart by as much as 500 feet. Resuming the lead at 5:40pm, it took Dodge nearly 20 minutes to regroup his men after he caught up to them near the mouth of the Gulch. And here Wag Dodge made an alarming realization. The fire, fed by the high winds, had jumped to the north ridge and had blocked the group's escape route to the river. Even worse, the blaze had begun moving towards the team at an alarming pace. Dodge, realizing the danger, immediately turned the team around and led a retreat back up the Gulch. Yet, slowed by the 50 pounds of equipment each man shouldered, the group struggled to move up the steep embankment. With each passing moment the fire accelerated towards them; best estimates suggest that the blaze may have moved up the north ridge at nearly 30 mph. Within minutes Dodge recognized that the team could not outrun the fire. Over the deafening roar of grass fire and exploding superheated tree sap he ordered his men to shed their gear; something they were taught in training never to do. The men, either unable to hear him or unable to break convention, ignored his order. Wag then turned to face the inescapable flames that were about to encompass the group. In a moment of creativity Wag discovered an escape that seemed both defiantly impossible and absurdly simple. He quickly lit a match from his pocket and started a fire on the ground in front of him. Then, as his tiny fire spread, he stepped into the area that the fire had cleared and called to his group to do the same. Wag covered his face with a cloth and pressed himself to the ground as the wall of flame in front of him roared past. As he had expected, the firewall rounded both sides of the cleared area where he crouched and raced toward the others, leaving him unscathed. Whether his crew did not hear his order or simply could not comprehend his motivations, 13 members of the jump crew ran past Dodge and his escape fire only to be burned seconds later by the raging blaze. It was the worst fire-fighting disaster in Forest Service history to date. Today, the Wag Dodge's escape fire is standard education for every fire jumper in the world. As amazing as Wag Dodge's innovation was, the life-saving concept did not achieve its intended purpose. Why didn't Dodge's well-trained team heed his instructions? Some argue that in the jump crew's eyes Dodge had lost credibility during their two hours on the ground. For starters, Dodge had left his post at the front of the group early in the fire fight; later, when he instructed the team to drop their equipment, he failed to realize that he was asking them to give up a significant part of what defined them as a fire jump crew: their uniform; ultimately, some argue that Dodge's historically soft spoken leadership, his desire to lead by example, impeded the group's ability to understand their leader's thought process and realize what he was intending when he lit his innovative and life-saving escape fire. The Wag Dodge Mann Gulch incident not only illustrates the relationship between panic and performance (the idea that the crew, as they neared Dodge's escape fire, were too panicked to process new information correctly), but also demonstrates the importance of recognizing leadership as a dynamic interaction, one that is sensitive (with the potential to deteriorate) to a changing environment. * * *