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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
DISASTER: Sisters
company worked
tirelessly for weeks
Continued from page 1
wildland firefighting crews
across the West (including
the Milli Fire here in Sisters)
and set up multiple base
camps in Texas and Florida in
response to Hurricane Harvey
and Hurricane Irma. At those
camps, they fed, slept and
showered thousands of first-
responders. In addition to the
large-scale operations, they
conducted dozens of small
response missions across the
disaster zones.
With the dust just start-
ing to clear from an intense
summer, GFP Response and
Eclipse Global founder Don
Pollard sat down with The
Nugget last week to describe
how a company based in
Sisters reaches out into distant
regions of the country in their
moments of acute need.
The companies hold con-
tracts with states in the Gulf
Coast region, including Texas
and Florida, to respond to
disaster events, providing
distribution warehouses, full-
service base camps and other
critical services to support
first-responders. The compa-
nies provide mobile shower
units; laundry facilities; toilet
and garbage service; dining
tents and kitchens; lighting;
generators and more.
Pollard recalled that he
had several wildland fire-
fighting crews committed
when GFP Response spun
up in August to respond to
Hurricane Harvey, which was
bearing down on the Texas
Gulf Coast. Harvey hit Texas
with a hammer blow, drop-
ping unprecedented amounts
of rain.
“Texas around Houston
was pretty bad,” he said. “A
lot of flooding.”
GFP Response conducted
some 208 separate response
missions. Some were as small
as providing a shower unit
to a rural church, where the
local community could gather
and take care of their needs.
Others were on a massive
scale, like constructing a base
camp for 1,500 first-respond-
ers in Beaumont, Texas.
In he midst of firefight-
ing and responding to Harvey
in Texas, Hurricane Irma
slammed into the Florida
Keys and ripped up the pen-
insula’s west coast. Again,
PHOTO COURTESY HARRY POLLARD
A GFP Response base camp has a big footprint.
GFP Response hit the scene,
constructing seven large, full-
service base camps. Their
efforts won accolades from
William G. Estep, incident
commander of the State of
Florida Incident Management
Team:
“The entire IMT (incident
management team) wishes to
compliment the superior job
performance of GFP, their
staff and leadership. If we
were going to hand-pick a
PHOTO COURTESY HARRY POLLARD
base camp provider, GFP and
this particular team would be GFP Response reaches out from Sisters to help across the nation.
it.”
Pollard attributes some a massive demand.
set up and operate camps. The
of his team’s proficiency to
And it all made for long, work is ongoing. Though the
an up-close-and-personal long days at the GFP Response effort in Florida was expected
understanding of the needs of Emergency Operations Center to wrap up this week, Pollard
first-responders.
in the Sisters Industrial Park expects to have missions
“They are, themselves, as the team worked out intri- underway in Texas until some
first-responders, most of cate logistics and timetables.
time in November. While the
them,” he said of the GFP
“There was about 10 of us, work is extremely demanding,
Response team. “So they’ve and we didn’t sleep much for everybody who works for and
got a natural empathy for the the first two or three weeks,” with GFP Response has the
people they’re serving.”
Pollard said.
satisfaction of knowing that
The scope of the mul-
He relied on Sisters Market they have made a significant
tiple responses tested GFP and The Depot Café to keep difference in people’s lives
Response with the most his team fueled.
when they need it most.
intense pace of operations
“We had them cater-
“It’s pretty rewarding
they have ever faced.
ing every day, because we when you can do so much for
“I’d say it was the first time couldn’t leave the office,” he the public good,” Pollard said.
I started thinking our capa- said.
For more information
bilities were starting to get
Many of Pollard’s team visit http://ellipse-global.
pressed to the max,” he said. hail from Sisters and Central com/emergency-support/
Pollard said that the Oregon, and they deployed to gfp-response.
demands of multiple mis-
sions meant GFP quickly
“blew through” the equip-
ment that they own outright,
which meant that he had to
rely on an assiduously culti-
vated network of subcontrac-
tors. Pollard calls them allies.
Having built that network and
having agreed-upon prices for
equipment is vital to both a
timely and effective response
PHOTO COURTESY HARRY POLLARD
and to a company like GFP
staying healthy in the midst of Sleeping tents serve first responders working in disaster areas.
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