The Silver City Interagency Dispatch Center is the beating heart of the Gila National Forest, and as an interagency resource, it is also central to the success of incident response for the Bureau of Land Management Las Cruces District, and lands managed by the State of New Mexico Forestry Division.
“The Silver City Interagency Dispatch Center serves seven counties and 19 million acres of southwestern New Mexico from Las Cruces west to the Arizona State Line and from Quemado south to the U.S./Mexican border,” said Dispatch Center Manager Chris Hedgeman. “It is one of five interagency dispatch centers in New Mexico, and 11 in the Southwestern Region.”
“A lot of people on the Gila don’t think about the fact that our dispatch zone includes a lot more area than just the national forest,” said Dispatcher Ricardo De La Torre. “When the monsoons come, they think fire season is over, but dispatch is still in the midst of chaos because the desert areas are still hot and dry, with fires burning.”
Each dispatch center operates independently within its zone, and all of the dispatch zones within a region operate under the umbrella of a Geographic Area Coordination Center. Ours is the Southwest Coordination Center, one of 10 in the nation, which are linked through the National Interagency Coordination Center. Together, the local, regional, and national centers track the number, size, and location of incidents and availability of firefighting and support resources and their assignments. The centers fill orders for supplies, crews, and aircraft and provide support as a clearinghouse for predictive services, such as weather and fuel moisture, and other logistical information. National coordination is especially important when multiple incidents occur simultaneously at a national scale, so that a limited set of fire and aviation resources are prioritized and shared appropriately.
The Silver City Interagency Dispatch Center also oversees aviation assets at the Silver City Tanker Base at Grant County airport, adding another layer of complexity to the job. The dispatch center works their magic, tracking aircraft arriving, passing through, or in use on an incident, as well as establishing temporary flight restrictions and working daily with regional military bases to ensure that firefighting and military aircraft are not in conflict. Dispatchers share weather information, such as air temperature and pressure, so that tanker base employees and pilots can calculate the amount of water, retardant, and fuel weight that an aircraft can carry on any given day.
Last year, the center responded to 751 incidents across its landscape including wildfire, law enforcement, prescribed fire, and other miscellaneous incidents. All told, the center filled resource orders for 9,008 individual firefighting resources and supplies.
Dispatch is a high-stress environment. Dispatchers are a critical link in the chain of communication that keeps all responders safe. They are constantly working toward providing the supplies, firefighting resources, and logistics for each incident within their zone over the next 24, 48, and 72 hours. In an office that is about 20 feet long and 15 feet wide, multiple dispatchers may be taking calls and managing resources for multiple incidents at once, creating a noisy, confusing, fast-paced atmosphere. When an urgent incident occurs, such as the 2023 Rico Fire, which produced a highly visible smoke column and was obviously close to residences, a quiet afternoon can suddenly turn frenzied, with hundreds of phone calls coming in the first hour.
Dispatch is central to every incident. From receiving the initial call, to sending out local resources for initial attack and size-up, and placing orders for extended attack, including crews, aircraft, and supplies, dispatch can make or break an incident.
“I remember one time when I was on a fire with my Hotshot crew, I was really upset because the chain I ordered for my chainsaw didn’t come in,” said Hedgeman. “Now that I work in dispatch, and I consider the chain of events that needs to occur – from the firefighter scribbling the order on a general message form and passing it to his incident commander, who refers the order to dispatch, who works with incident business management to purchase the item, who hands it off to a driver to make the delivery, I realize it’s amazing a firefighter is ever able to get the proper saw chain delivered to the fire line at all.”
But the mission includes more than just fire and law enforcement. In addition to taking emergency response calls, the dispatch center also tracks regular field-going employees for the Gila National Forest. At the start of each shift, crews and individuals call dispatch by radio to report their destination for the day and expected time of return. If an employee fails to report back with dispatch by the projected time, a dispatcher checks in to make sure they arrived back safely, or initiates search and rescue if the employee is unable to be contacted.
In order to have that level of accountability, dispatchers begin their shift a half-hour earlier than the resources they will be tracking so they can get their computer and applications up and running. Their shift also ends later, so that they can ensure all of their daily reporting requirements are met. Dispatchers are always on call, so that during holiday, evening, weekend, and overnight hours, if a call comes in it is answered.
“It can be hard to achieve work-life balance,” said De La Torre. “When we’re on call, we have to stay in cell phone range, which can make it difficult to go anywhere with all of the gaps in service. It can make it hard to enjoy your day off or spend time with family on holidays and weekends.”
Plagued with several vacancies since 2019, Forest Service positions in the Silver City Interagency Dispatch Center are now fully staffed, bringing welcome relief to De La Torre and others who have stuck with it through thin times. The Bureau of Land Management is working on filling a Logistics position at the dispatch center, and the State of New Mexico Forestry Division provided interns during peak season last year. The center also brings on a few experienced “call when needed” dispatchers to help out during the peak fire season, expanding the dispatch center for 24-hour, 7-day coverage.
Considering the long hours, the sacrifices to family and work-life balance, and the stressful job conditions, why do they do it? It’s about being a part of something bigger. It’s about making the job successful for on-the-ground resources, whose boots they have worn, figuratively speaking. Many of the dispatch center staff, De La Torre and Hedgeman included, began their career as Forest Service firefighters, giving them an insider’s understanding of what the needs are from the crews on the ground.
Hedgeman hails from Socorro, New Mexico, and originally came to Silver City to attend Western New Mexico University. He fell in love with fire during his days as a student, eventually working his way into Hotshot crews in New Mexico and Arizona before settling into the world of dispatching several years ago, after injuries ended his firefighting days. While fire took him away from Silver City for many years, he always wanted to come back home to the Gila. De La Torre is a third-generation Gila National Forest employee, born and raised in Mimbres, New Mexico. His grandfather managed range on the Wilderness District and constructed many of the stock tanks in the Gila Wilderness, and three generations of his family are documented in the Mogollon Baldy Lookout log book as having packed in supplies to the lookout.
Both men agree that the Gila is a special place, whose identity is firmly rooted in history and wildness. The vastness of the landscape, the ability to experience solitude both within and outside of designated wilderness areas, the clean air, stunning sunsets, dark night skies, and sense of community are some of the reasons they stayed with or returned to the Gila family. For more information contact Maribeth Pecotte at 575-388-8211 or Maribeth.Pecotte@usda.gov .