OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- At 11 a.m. on March 15, Offutt stood-up the first Commander’s Action Team meeting in response to impending flooding.
The base immediately went into 24-hour operations and the team agreed to meet again in three hours, giving key players an opportunity to come up with a plan of attack.
“In that time, a matter of hours, we already had a good 15-to-25 inbound trucks from various locations in the United States coming in for support,” said Staff Sgt. Luis Stump, 55th Contracting Squadron commodities flight chief.
With a very small window to prepare for a flood that would eventually take over one-third of the base, the 55th CONS and the 55th Comptroller Squadron got to work purchasing preparation supplies that would help fortify key infrastructure.
Within a 16 hours, the pair accomplished 22 contract actions totaling $650,000. Among the purchases were 45 tons of sand, 460 barriers, 235,000 sand bags and 16 pallets of water.
What they couldn’t get from inbound trucks, they went out and got themselves.
“Since a lot of companies were closed, Friday evening and into Saturday morning, at 2, 3 o’clock in the morning, finance came in with cash,” Stump said. “We sent a member of our team with a paying agent from finance and they were literally driving all around Omaha and parts of Iowa.”
Staff Sgt. Nikkolas Tessier, 55th CPTS, said the local business were very welcoming.
“All the businesses in the community were so supportive and we had a nice contracting team that did most of the legwork so were just driving around, loading up and paying people,” he said. “It saved us a lot of time.”
Stump echoes his sentiment.
“There were some stores who said we could take whatever we wanted for free,” he said. “We can’t do that, so they were giving it to us at bare cost to help out the base.”
For many of the 55th CONS and 55th CPTS team, this was the first instance they were working together in the field.
“It was a lot different because we normally just push documents electronically to each other,” Tessier said. “Now you are running around with them. It was nice.”
As the water recedes and the base turns to recovery mode, the work has slowed slightly but the purchases related to flood will continue for quite a while.
“In a situation like this, money has to keep moving so we can get the base back up,” said Master Sgt. Brandon Franklin, 55th CPTS, who also filled the role of paying agent during the flood preparations. “We are preparing for recovery now which will take time.”