A Booming Business in the War : Maps: Everyone wants what a Santa Barbara company has: geographic charts of the Gulf region.

The office looks like an Army command post, with street maps of Baghdad and strategic maps of the Middle East scattered about, and employees on the phone negotiating with military officials and foreign embassies.

Since August, when the Persian Gulf crisis began, employees at Map Link have been thrust into the center of the Persian Gulf crisis. Because Map Link is the largest general map distributor in the country--with access to street, topographical, satellite and a number of other Middle Eastern maps--it has been deluged with orders.

When Iraqi tanks first rolled into Kuwait, the U.S. Army called Map Link and ordered 1,500 road maps of Saudi Arabia. The Kuwaiti Embassy ordered 30 maps of their country to distribute to military analysts. Television stations nationwide ordered detailed maps for evening newscasts; newspapers ordered maps for the next morning’s paper.

For months, employees scurried to meet the demand for Middle Eastern maps, and just when sales began to level off, American planes began bombing raids on Iraq. Map Link was inundated by another round of calls from military historians and reservists, who expected to soon be deployed.

“The phone was ringing off the hook and people were frantic,” said Bob Alford, general manager of Map Link. “They wanted any kind of map on the Middle East, and they wanted it now.”

Map Link employees are not accustomed to working amid the tension of an international crisis. Their Santa Barbara office, the top floor of a warehouse a block from the ocean, is filled with surfing posters and travel postcards. On a recent afternoon, a sales representative roller-skated through the warehouse looking for maps to fill a telephone order.

Before the Persian Gulf crisis, employees spent their days accepting routine orders from map shops, travelers and amateur cartographers they call “map geeks.” Now their files include invoices from the U.S. Army base at Ft. Benning, Ga., the Spanish and Kuwaiti embassies in Washington and other official agencies.

Map Link’s business these days is linked to the ebb and flow of missile attacks and missile interceptions, bombing raids and bombing delays. After Tel Aviv was first hit by a Scud missile, for example, orders for Israeli maps began pouring in, Alford said.

“Exactly two minutes after that Scud attack, we got a call from the owner of a Burbank map store, who said: ‘Give me six maps of Tel Aviv, six maps of Jerusalem and six maps of Israel,’ ” Alford recalled. “We got calls from TV stations . . . and people with family over there.”

Even though military censors would not release the exact location of the missile attacks, there was a big run on Tel Aviv street maps. Now the greatest number of orders are coming from family members who have relatives in the military in Saudi Arabia. Most do not know exactly where family members are stationed, for security reasons, but they want the maps anyway.

“Just having a map of the general area makes you feel a little closer to a relative over there,” said William Tefft, a manager at Map Link whose brother is stationed in Saudi Arabia. “A map is like a photograph in some ways . . . it’s something you can touch and look at and imagine.”

Even before the Persian Gulf crisis, maps of the Middle East were in short supply. The Middle East is “the most closed part of the world,” and no Arab government sells maps of its country, said Map Link’s owner William Hunt.

And there was little incentive for map-making companies to print their own because the restrictive travel policies of many Arab countries near Kuwait limit tourism.

After the Iraqi invasion, map stores and bookshops quickly sold out their limited supply of Middle Eastern maps. Because Map Link is the largest general map distributor in the country and has access to map makers throughout the world, many dealers immediately placed orders with the company, said Steve Forsyth, president of the International Map Dealers Assn.

The company has sold street maps of Kuwait city; Mideast “crisis maps” with sticker packets included, so military analysts can designate troop location, ballistic missile sites and airfields; city maps of Baghdad, so detailed they include public swimming pools and the local Sheraton Hotel, and declassified CIA maps that track all the oil pipelines in the Middle East.

These maps have sold so fast that printers can’t keep up with the supply, and the Santa Barbara distribution firm does not have a single regional map of the Middle East left. To keep up with demand, the company has had to print its own maps. Hunt recently bought the rights to a Middle Eastern map from a Hungarian firm, contracted with a Colorado firm for printing and sold all 15,000 of them--before they were printed.

The one positive factor of the Persian Gulf crisis, Hunt said, is that it has forced Americans to confront their “geographic illiteracy.” A Gallup survey two years ago disclosed that 75% of American adults could not find the Persian Gulf on a world map. There is no doubt, Hunt said, that the percentage has changed.

In addition to regional maps of the Middle East, the map of Kuwait has been a big seller. But the London firm that prints the map recently sold out.

“We were getting a lot of requests for the map, so we called London and asked when we could get some more copies,” Tefft said. “They told us they had 4,000 copies left . . . but they were all in Kuwait city. They said we were welcome to the maps . . . if we could get them.”