Mann Gulch and the Missing Links

The Mann Gulch tragedy is an event every wildland firefighter should study in depth, but few do. The lessons gleaned from that one incident altered the course of wildland fire. While conducting research for the 2020, I came upon a statement by Sylvia Ann Hewlett about "gravitas" (how you act) that flung me headfirst into today's blog on the missing link from Mann Gulch—Wag Dodge lacked gravitas, the very essence of  command presence:

These qualities connote gravitas, that weightiness or heft that marks you as worth following into the fire. - Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Executive Presence

Sylvia contends that executive (command in our world) presense rests on three pillars:

• How you act (gravitas)
• How you speak (communication)
• How you look (appearance)

Using Sylvia's framework, let's take a look at the leadership actions of R. Wagner (Wag) Dodge. We don't know a lot about Dodge, but books and articles do not describe a leader with strong command presence. On the day of the tragedy, his gravitas and communication were definitely questioned.

We cannot oversimplify the case; there were a host of contributing factors. this "team." I use the term lightly because this team definitely lacked cohesion.

• Who was in charge—Dodge, the foreman, or Earl Cooley, the jumpmaster?
• Can we call this group a team? Did any aspect of cohesion exist? Did they trust Dodge? (Trust is the foundation of command presence.)
• Dodge performed a new tactic (starting an "escape fire"/burnout in the line of the escape route). He asks us to drop our tools and says, "Follow me!" Who is this guy and what does he mean? I'm out; I'm on my own.
• Is there a sense of urgency? (Dodge is eating dinner. A crew member is snapping a picture.)

After setting a clump of bunch grass on fire, I made an attempt to start another one, but the match had gone out and upon looking up, I had an area of 100 feet square tht was ablaze. I told the man nearest to me that we would wait a few seconds to give it a chance to burn out inside, and then we would cross through the flames into the burned area... - R. Wagner Dodge, Board of Review testimony

All these things in and of themselves were contributing factors and are not to be taken lightly, but the story repeats itself over and over again whether it be South Canyon or Thirty Mile. We throw teams together and ask them to perform one of the riskiest jobs on the planet, many times without proper team building.

I can go on and on, but challenge you to do the research yourself and then discuss your findings in our private group on Facebook. We are theorizing here a bit because we really don't know Dodge or if a strong command presence would have made a difference, but it provides a base for discussion. After all, it was the "marks you as worth following into the fire" part of the quote that was the inspiration for the blog. I took the leap [pun intended].

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Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper

• Become a member of our private Facebook group.
• Take a moment to read the Fire Rescue 1 article "Fireground leadership must make sense - To lead effectively is to communicate effectively, long before a situation goes critical" by Linda Willing
• Read Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire.
• Read Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’tBe Won by Richard C. Rothermel.
• Watch the movie Red Skies over Montana
• Questions to ponder:
• How do we form teams in short notice? 
• How can build a culture where deference to expertise is embraced? 
• Why do people follow leaders with a strong command presence even though they may not like them?
• How can we develop our command presense? 

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Pam McDonald is a writer/editor for BLM Wildland Fire Training and Workforce Development and member of the NWCG Leadership Subcommittee. The expressions are those of the author.