Winter working: Braving the cold

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Cortney Paxton
  • 341st Missile Wing Public Affairs
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. --  The first week of February brought several inches of snow and frigid temperatures - temperatures that dropped to 54-degrees below zero with wind chill Feb. 6. But even with snow under their boots and red, wind-blown cheeks, Airmen across Malmstrom Air Force Base continued their work supporting the wing's deter and assure nuclear mission
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The mission of the 341st Missile Wing is often overlooked and may sometimes be taken for granted; it's also a mission that must remain successful every hour of every day. No matter the day, no matter the time and no matter the weather, it has to be done.

Every day Airmen step outside into the winter air, they become subject to numerous amounts of hazards. Everything from slips and hypothermia to frostbite and traffic mishaps can happen in the cold, unpredictable Montana winters.

"The winters are, for the most part, harsher than what most people are used to," said Tech. Sgt. Brandon Sutliff, 341st Missile Wing ground safety technician. "A lot of things that we specifically see... here in the winter are traffic mishaps. We can have icy roads and reduced visibility - a lot of people over-drive the winter conditions."

With a 13,800-square-mile missile complex, driving on icy roads, as well as in fog and heavy snow is a real possibility for Team Malmstrom members. Although mishaps do, unfortunately happen, almost all of them are preventable.

Although zero mishaps are the goal for the Airmen on base, accidents do happen. Fortunately, to combat the number of traffic mishaps, several prevention processes have been operating on base for years. Included in these practices is a color-coded road grading system, which identifies roads within the missile complex and codes them by conditions: green for good road conditions, yellow for potentially hazardous road conditions and red for non-drivable road conditions. All vehicles are also equipped with a radio that can

communicate with the on-base Transportation Control Center, missile alert facilities and numerous other agencies. Other safety protocols exist to keep the Airmen of Wing One safe while driving, and, on top of all of it, the wing safety office briefs on traffic safety and the need to be prepared.

"The biggest thing you can do is prepare and plan for a trip," Sutliff said. "Although there's a one in a million chance of happening, it only takes that one chance for a mishap, due to ill-preparedness, to be deadly."

It's commonly known that winter presents various risks to the Airmen on the ground, but there are hazards in the sky that the members of the 40th Helicopter Squadron must be aware of too.

"Weather doesn't normally affect us much unless there's a lot of snow or it's really cold," said Capt. Jason Pettengill, 40th HS UH-1N pilot. "When the temperature reaches [65 degrees below zero], we can't fly anymore... and 45 knots [51.75 mph] is our wind factor for starting and stopping. When we get into heavy snow conditions, we start to have some troubles - we could get into some icing issues."

Extremely cold temperatures or ascending to higher altitudes can cause icing on the aircraft. If icing becomes present during flight - and descending to a lower altitude doesn't relieve it - the crew must land, shut down and ultimately wait for the ice to melt because the squadron doesn't have any anti-icing equipment.

Helicopters are an essential component of the base's mission - they provide security for a moving convoy - so if they are unable to fly, a scheduled convoy may not be able to proceed.

"If there's bad weather, we will normally slow down as we fly into it to see how bad it is," Pettengill said. "If it's too bad to continue, we'll turn around, alter our course to go around it or land and wait it out. When there's bad visibility, we use crew resource management, or CRM for short - the pilot up front tells the crew what [he or she] is seeing and then the crew looks out the sides and back of the helicopter, constantly looking for escape routes if needed. When there's good visibility out of one of the sides or the back of the aircraft, the crew will tell the pilot and it will be used as an escape route."

Vehicles and helicopters may play a large role in the success of Malmstrom's nuclear mission, but it's the people that are essential to the completion of it every day. And just as the winter weather can take its toll on the gas-powered machines on base, snow, cold temperatures and wind chill can have significant effects on those who are exposed to it - if not properly prepared.

"A lot of people don't realize that when you get both below-zero temperatures and then the wind chill on top of that... within five minutes you can start to see frostnip, which is the first stage of frostbite," Sutliff said. "Also, if you go outside and start working up a sweat, that's the worst thing you can do, because it drops your core temperature. You sweat in order to cool your body down, and then on top of that you have these very cold temperatures - you can have the first stages of hypothermia set in very quickly."

Hypothermia and frostbite can be prevented by wearing the appropriate cold-weather gear and implementing work-rest cycles. Based on the temperature and wind speed, bioenvironmental engineering will recommend the appropriate work-rest cycle, which is period of work followed by a warming period. The work and rest cycle durations vary depending on the actual weather conditions at the time.

"There are four categories of frostbite risk level - low, high, severe and extreme," explained Maj. Brian Clarke, 341st Medical Operations Squadron Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight commander. "For example, a temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit and 30 mph winds will result in a 19-degrees-below-zero Fahrenheit on the wind chill temperature index and a high frostbite risk level. The wind makes it feel much colder; that is why it is extremely important to follow preventive measures, such as wearing cold-weather gear and implementing the recommended work-rest cycles to decrease frostbite risk."

Cold weather conditions present many unforgiving hazards to Airmen on Malmstrom. But instead of staying inside and watching the snow fall, they put on their uniform, bundle up, plan their days and step outside. There are plenty of reasons to stay inside when the weather looks unpredictable, but for Team Malmstrom members, there's no excuse - with such a significant mission, every job is important.

"I don't really mind [the cold] - I've kind of gotten used to it," said Senior Airman William Nelson, 341st Security Forces Squadron entry controller. "We have heaters out here [at the gates] that work very well, and last week, I had every piece of winter gear I had on. We're the first line of defense for the base; we do this to protect the people on base."