Working the graveyard shiftown

  • Published
  • By Nick Stubbs
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  The hot Florida sun falls in the Gulf and another day at MacDill Air Force Base gives way in a final sizzle. Tiny bats feed on mosquitoes in an insectivorous frenzy, the headlights of those working past dinner zigzag through the streets, until they square up on the exit gates, as the long, slow cooling of the blacktop beneath them begins.

It is an end, but also a beginning, while most of the workforce of a vibrant and bustling Air Force Base is heading home for the night, the night hawks are just getting started.

Among them are members of the 6th Security Forces Squadron, the fire department, the watchdogs in the Command Post, all of whom are on the clock until the sun is up. Others, like those manning the Air Traffic Control Tower, are working well into the night before calling it quits. The satellite communications flight of the 6th Communications Squadron is a 24-7 operation. Together they make up the graveyard shift, working in what one called the "different world of MacDill at night."

It's a bit before midnight on a Friday night when Staff Sgt. Sergio Creco, 6th Security Forces patrolman checks in at the security forces headquarters. The Reservist from Miami has been busy patrolling the dimly lit streets, looking for anything out of place, a light on where it shouldn't be, a gate ajar an noises that don't belong. It's pure police duty without the attendant distractions of the day.

"You can focus on the job more," he said. "It's more about the duty and less about the politics."

By politics, Sergeant Creco meant the prerequisite encounters with members of the daytime workforce, mini briefings with virtually anyone, including supervisors and officers, including of his own unit, all of which are part of working when the sun is shining.

Tech Sgt. Jerrod Klein, assistant flight chief of 6 SF's Delta unit, knows just what he means.

"Its more pure police work in the traditional sense," he said. "You are focused on the job at hand and doing what cops do."

For all security forces members, the hours are long. Many work as many as 70 hours a week, perhaps 80 if there is training that has to be completed. Days overlapping and blending into nights, rotating in and out of 12-hour shifts, it can blur one's sense of time and place and mess with internal time clocks.

"We don't do what we do for the money," said Sergeant Kleine, adding it's "about who you are here," while slapping his palm to his chest where his heart is.

The Delta team, and the other flights, have a unique bond of brotherhood that helps a lot.

"We're a tight-knit, good flight here," said Sergeant Klein. "You have to realize that we are with each other here more than we are with our own families."

The duty calls for bucking up and getting it done, and after a while the long hours, including graveyard shifts, come natural.

"I love it," said Sergeant Creco of working at night. "It's something you get used to after doing it for a while."

It can be a little spooky. Sergeant Klein recalls many nights at the dark, southern extremes of the base, where there is just woods and swamp, George Noory's Coast to Coast AM show playing on the radio. The show, which focuses on alien abduction tales, ghost encounters and big foot sightings has a way of getting under one's skin in the inky black at the lonely, isolated end of MacDill, he said.

Like police, firefighters are on call 24-7 at MacDill. Members of the 6th Civil Engineer Squadron's Fire Department are always on duty. They bunk on base at the fire stations, and with the exception of dispatch are not working through the night unless there is an emergency, but there are a lot more "emergencies" than one might imagine. Most end up being false alarms, but firefighters "have to respond, because if you don't, that's when it turns out to be the real thing," said Kenneth Ploense, chief of training and operations officer on duty Friday nights. It's about 11:30 p.m. and he's getting ready to bunk until 6 a.m., but he takes time to show a sleepy reporter around the crash station near the south end of the air field. It's a relatively new building, complete with kitchen facilities, two-man bunkrooms, classrooms and a gym. It's designed to support the crew on site, so they are never caught away from their stations in case of an emergency. Sitting in a large series of bays is the rolling hardware of the trade, shining red and chrome in a sodium vapor glow. Crash trucks, ladder and pumper trucks, ambulances and trailers equipped for hazmat scenes. Fire suits, gloves and oxygen masks are in neat piles, ready for firefighters to scoop them up as they scramble to the appropriate vehicle. Now, they sleep, but up and alert with multiple computer screens, phones and radio surrounding him is Ed Warwick, emergency dispatcher. On one LCD screen is a map of the base, several of the buildings lit up in green, blue or red, indicating alarms, fault signals. All have been accounted for, and false alarms are common in Tampa, where electrical storms play havoc with the systems.

The job is black and white, he said. Rarely gray. It's either quiet and uneventful, or everything is busting loose, which few nights in between.
"It can change in an instant," he says, adding that he likes the night shift. After eight years on the job, he's gotten used to it.

One of his primary jobs is to answer 911 calls. Because callers near, but outside the base may connect with the cell tower at MacDill before a city or county tower, many calls for help off base arrive at MacDill first, he said. Those are quickly relayed to the appropriate city or county agency, Mr. Warwick said. The city and county does the same for MacDill if either receives an emergency call.

'During storms it can get pretty busy (due to alarms being triggered) with responses," Mr. Warwick said.

While many can be sorted out as mistakes, it's the general, or full alarms that get all the attention, said Chief Ploense.

"We have to respond," he said. "There is no taking chances on a full alarm."

Other times the dispatcher gets calls that defy how to respond.

"We got a call from a lady at the Fam Camp once that a manatee was being attacked by a shark," recalled Mr. Warwick. "We weren't really sure how to respond to that one."

Over at the Command Post, the nerve center of the 6th Air Mobility Wing, "everything that goes on at MacDill passes through us," said Staff Sgt. Chris Ramseur, senior emergency controller. Like everyone at the Command Post, he shares graveyard shift duties. As of late, the rotation calls for three months on nights, followed by three months of day shifts, both of which are 12-hour stints.

The job is very different at night, as there is less activity, particularly flight missions, but it can heat up quickly, said Sergeant Ramseur, which means the controllers have the unenviable task of waking up the wing commander - even if it is 3 a.m.

"We're the bearers of bad news sometimes," he said. It's part of the job.

The function of the Command Center is essential to the operation of the base.

"We are the eyes and ears of the wing commander," said Sergeant Ramseur. "We gather information and then we disseminate it to the appropriate parties."

Emergency dispatches, monitoring radio traffic, flight following (tracking flights through their missions), mission alerts for air crews and dozens of other tasks fall to the Command Post. And there's no letting up just because the high levels of activity during the day give way to the quieter nights.

"It's usually quiet, depending on the flying level, which is pretty much what determines how busy we are," said Sergeant Ramseur. "But things can change in a heartbeat (if there is an emergency or operational need)."

During those times, the Command Post becomes "the" hub, monitoring all activity and serving as the conduit of information.

It's the critical nature of the job that makes it important to be alert and ready for action, said Sergeant Ramseur, who added that he and others try to adapt to the shift into working nights within three to five days. Once acclimated to the hours, it's not bad, he said.

"It's definitely an adjustment," he notes. "After you've been doing it for a while you accept that it's just part of the job."

And as that job winds down each night, a new work day for the majority of people at MacDill begins.

They're the regular folk - the day timers - many of whom don't notice the headlights heading off base as they head on, while the bats are at roost, and the cool blacktop starts to heat up.