The Link Between War and Wildfire

By Scott Poniewaz, 8-25-05

	Dustin Gage, a member of the Lolo Hot Shot Crew, shows Fire Information Officer Justin Dombrowski a PDA used to test alertness in a diet study. Photos by Scott Poniewaz/New West

Wildfires are a bit like war -- soldiers and firefighters alike toiling day after day, far from home, dirty, tired and worn.
But in reality, what do firefighters searching for hot spots in Montana have to do with the foot soldiers in Afghanistan on the long-forgotten search for Osama Bin Laden?

Indeed, they are two kinds of soldiers fighting different battles worlds away. But researchers from the U.S. Army and University of Montana are finding that they do have something in common: Both are working in highly stressful environments and need a diet that keeps them energized and alert.

Because of that similarity, one of the elite crews of firefighters in the nation, Montana’s Lolo Hot Shot crew, has teamed up with the University of Montana and the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) to study a new military food ration that may be able to help soldiers perform better in places like Afghanistan or Iraq. “It’s a way to use firefighters as a model for our soldiers,” said Scott Montain, a research physiologist with USARIEM.

Brent Ruby, a professor and researcher in the Department of Health and Human Performance at the University of Montana, has worked with fire crews like the Lolo Hot Shots since the late 1990’s doing research on high-output workers and endurance athletes. For this study, he wanted to look at ration strategies and it ended up correlating with a USARIEM study on a new concept of “First Strike Rations” or FSR’s, a first for Ruby and the University of Montana.

“New will always be better, but we need to see which is the better working of the two,” said Cory Baker-Fulco, a Research Dietitian with USARIEM. Ten firefighters are voluntarily participating in the five-day study. Broken up into two, two-day tests, one with the Meals Ready to Eat, more widely known as MRE’s, and one with the FSR’s.

The difference between MRE’s and the new FSR’s is that the MRE’s generally give a full, sit-down meal, whereas the new FSR's are formulated to help workers on the go, Montain explained. Both diets provide about 2,800 calories, typical for the U.S. soldier.

According to Ruby, “The idea is to strategically feed them like any other endurance athlete.” After eating a full-sit down meal, it can be more difficult to return to work, often times cutting into awareness and efficiency levels. With the new rations, soldiers are encouraged to snack throughout the day, ideally making for a more evenly distributed caloric intake throughout the day. The FSR's contain special recipes that take the typical sandwiches, bagels and other high energy foods into highly condensed packages that are shelf stable for up to two years. (Slightly less than the MRE shelf life of three years.) Each day’s ration is packaged to be just larger than a brick, offering soldiers a more manageable size and weight for the number of calories, imperative to traveling long distances with only a pack.

Justin Dombrowski, an information officer on the I-90 Complex said the middle of the afternoon is when many of the firefighter’s begin to fatigue. And typically, that time of day is also when most of the fire action picks up with winds and lifting inversions, both of which supply oxygen to fuel the fires. Take for instance the afternoon of August 10 was when the fires ran four miles in a matter of hours -- a blow up that forced three firefighters to deploy their fire shelters as the fire broke through containment lines. With a daily briefing every morning at 7 a.m., many of these firefighters had already put in a 9-hour workday by about 4:20 p.m., when the blow up happened.

On the fires, there is no whistle for a lunch break or the end of the day. Firefighters battle until things cool down. Much like in combat, certain things can be expected, but firefighters have to be ready for anything. If a soldier steps into combat late in the day, he can’t ask his opponents to stop shooting. So it is imperative that firefighters and soldiers alike have fuel that can keep them working when the unexpected happens.

“It’s far more complex than any other study we’ve done,” Ruby said, partially because the Army was able to step in and give the study tools to actually measure the performance of the firefighters.

The Army supplied several gizmos and gadgets to help study different aspects of the firefighters’ performance – each with a different purpose and strapped to the already lugs of packs firefighters carry.

	A crew member wearing a shoulder Ambulatory Vigilance Monitor on their backpack strap.

Clipped to the straps of the firefighters’ backpacks is a pager-looking device, the Shoulder Ambulatory Vigilance Monitor, which beeps or vibrates at various times during a three-hour interval in the afternoon. The firefighters respond to the alert by pushing a button and their reaction times are recorded. The firefighters will push a button when they consume any food. Then there’s a pod in the firefighters’ chest pockets that can record work output throughout the day. The third gizmo is a heart rate and activity monitor that records through electrodes stuck to the firefighters’ chests. The fighters also carry a Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA, to test reaction speeds. A game pops up on the screen and the firefighters have to try to hit a black target. They also are asked to rate how hungry they are throughout the day, their satisfaction with the foods and are asked to notch how many snacks they have.

Once they return to camp for the night, the firefighters fill out questionnaires about the day and turn in leftover food so a total caloric intake can be calculated. Researchers also test the firefighters’ urine to test hydration and give the fighters a tracer before the test begins that tracks the water turnover. A saliva sample is taken to measure their cortisol and testosterone -- both indicators of an individual’s stress level.

The firefighters even give researchers important information while they’re sleeping. Each firefighter wears a sleep monitor on their wrist each night. Ruby and several of his graduate students work alongside USARIEM researchers to collect the samples, then do testing that can last late into the night depending on when the Lolo Hot Shots end their workday.

One of the testers and crew members, Dustin Gage, said the tests gave him a little more excitement for his typical day on the line, “It’s fun having all the gidgets and gadgets to mess with,” he said.

The tests also gave Gage a little insight into what his body was going through.

“I thought I slept horribly the other night, then they pulled it up on the computer,” he said. The researchers were able to show Gage exactly what was going on through that night’s sleep.

After the first two days, Gage was disappointed he was stuck with MRE’s, but would take a day off that is meant to be a “wash out day,” then eat the FSR.

Fellow crew member, Chris Stout, on the other hand, had the FSR for the first two-day test period. Stout said that while the First Strikes were good, he and Gage still admitted, they would rather have real food.

“I miss fresh food,” Gage said, “Just being able to make my own salad would be nice.”

Since the crew was essentially in their backyard during the I-90 Fires west of Missoula, they were heading back to their own beds the night after the tests and the conversation kept going back to dinner. Stout wanted the Depot Deck and Gage was thinking Taco Del Sol.

Fire camp caterers work to provide the food and nutrients firefighters need to perform. Steak, prime rib, chicken fried steak, and other high protein, high-calorie foods being the norm for dinners. Breakfasts are typically the staples: eggs, sausage, bacon and potatoes. For a day on the fires, firefighters get a sack lunch filled with juice, a deli sandwich, bagel and cream cheese and a few snacks like candy, cookies or peanuts. Though steak and prime rib sounds great, many of the fire crews eat this same mass-produced food day in and day out and it’s bound to get old.

Baker-Fulco also has been trying to demonstrate the importance these studies can have in the future, “It’s really important that the subjects realize we’re not here to sell anything, we’re out here to benefit them.”

Ruby also pointed out that their goal is to get this research back to the end user through groups like the caterers and the firefighters, “We can’t make the changes, we can only make the suggestions.”

While USARIEM is still in what Baker-Fulco refers to as their developmental stages, from the three menus they’re testing, the leaders will work to develop more menus and once those recipes are figured out, they move into an improvement stage to see how they can better. She also pointed out that, while more compact and perhaps giving better performance, they are more expensive to produce and probably won’t be replacing the MRE’s. Instead, they will work as another feeding strategy for U.S. soldiers.

As the FSR's continue to be developed, they will probably never find a way to supply the thing many of the soldiers and firefighters like Gage and Stout yearn for while out on the front lines.

“A good beer would be nice,” Stout said.

“Yeah, just one,” Gage said with a grin.