JOHN CARR
Firehouse.Com Contributing Writer/Photographer

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Suppose you decided to throw a party for 3,000 of your closest friends. You pick a scenic but remote location away from crowds. You call your caterer and explain that not only must they bring all of the food, they must also bring electricity, water and phones. They must also arrange for housing and supply all of this in less than 24 hours. Most likely your caterer would laugh, before hanging up the phone.

Such is the dilemma faced by our nation’s wildfire managers. “Wildfires” by their very nature generally do not occur in areas that can support thousands of firefighters. Fire management teams must have in place systems that can handle their fire team’s needs. Fire support must be comprehensive and also be able to deploy at a moment’s notice.

At its peak the Williams Fire, burning in and around the Angeles National Forest, near Los Angeles, California, burned more than 36,000 acres. It burned in areas protected by the U. S. Forest Service, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the State of California. More than 3,500 firefighters were mobilized.

The first hurdle faced by the unified management team of Ron Raley (USFS) and Gill Herrera (LACoFD) was coordinating the massive interagency response. Agencies from The U.S.F.S., L.A.Co.F.D., California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), 50 engines, 20 handcrews, the California Department of Corrections (CDC), 650 inmates, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) 260 engines, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) all responded.

A partial deployment list includes:

• 3377 firefighters
• 296 overhead staff
• 339 engines
• 85 handcrews
• 23 helicopters
• 60 water tenders
• 10 bulldozers
• 14 fixed wing aircraft

The base camp for all fire operations was located in a Los Angeles County Park, several miles from the fire. There were no facilities to handle to needs of the camp.

With a fire raging nearby that threatened to burn as many as 10,000 homes and businesses a fire management team needs to concentrate on fire business, and not on the catering business. Yet feeding, housing and supplying such a massive firefighting force is enormous. All of the details for providing this support must be worked out in advance, and be in place in short order. Agencies such as the Forest Service must make arrangements to activate such a massive response, well ahead of its occurrence.

A mini city needs to spring up literally overnight. There must be accommodations for the firefighters. They will need electricity, telephones, toilets and water. They will need a place to sleep and often times the place to sleep in. Firefighters must be fed. They must be showered. They need supplies and tools, and clothing. Crews will need security and medical attention. Managers may need as many as 40 office trailers to house the various branches of incident command and the various interacting agencies. They will also need all of the support and equipment to carry out their mission. Overhead must produce maps and plans, and make thousands of copies of their action plan to distribute to fire crews. Often times they even need to make the roads that lead to the camp itself.

AAA Mobile Showers is a national fire contractor. AAA provide tents, and mobile showers and laundries. They are completely self-sufficient. When they arrive at a fire camp they set up their shower trailers and portable hand wash stations. A tank truck begins shuttling potable water and filling large rubber bladders. Each mobile shower trailer is equipped with a diesel generator for electrical power and a propane fired boiler to heat that water. As firefighters shower, the gray water is collected in designated bladders where it is pumped by another truck and then shipped for treatment.

Dave and Joy Watkins, Jim and Laura Turner and Jim and Edie Gregg are retired, and husbands and wives. They work for AAA all fire season. They spend 12-hour shifts dishing out towels, soap, shampoo and smiles to weary crewmembers. When the fire season ends they spend their winters traveling around the country.

Dick Pettersen owns the Bear Valley Saw Shop. He works with his nephew Kelly Perry. They repair chain saws. They also sharpen and make new chains. Pettersen pulls his mobile shop on wheels behind his pickup, which also serves as his hotel room. Dick and Perry worked the McNally Fire in California for 46 straight days. They have had few days off this summer. They are open for business at least 18 hours every day, seven days a week. They overlap their 14-hour days to insure all of the work is done. They are really looking forward to the end of fire season, which may be months away.

Bruce Ungari is a member of Ron Raley’s Incident Management Team. He is the Food Service Branch Manager. His job makes him either one of the most popular men in base camp, or the most hated. He must arrange for all of the ordering and oversight of all food and food supply operations. Caterers must feed fire crews three meals a day. The meals must be diverse and good tasting. Meals must contain 6,000 to 7,000 calories daily. Breakfast and dinner is served in the camp, while brown bag lunches are prepared and handed out in the morning, or delivered by truck. A caterer makes $45 per firefighter, per day to prepare meals.

At the Williams Fire, management spent more than $150,000 each day feeding troops. In addition to food services, Bruce Ungari must also provide many other staples to the fire crews. Bottled water, sports drinks, fruits and snacks are also part of his job. Firefighters were drinking more than 20,000 bottles of water and 8500 bottles of Gatorade every day. Bruce is planning a trip with his wife Kathy to New Zealand, to celebrate the end of this year’s long fire season.

Sue Sappok is a member of Hope Crisis Response. Her husband Tim is a Division Chief with CDF. While he is off fighting fires she takes their German Sheppard, Chief, and visits the fire camps and evacuation sights. As part of Hope Crisis Response’s mission Sue and Chief help evacuees deal with the stress of their ordeal. She also enjoys seeing the smiles that Chief brings to the many worn-out firefighters’ faces when they meet. Such interactions with the public at fire camps prove to be invaluable in helping keep up firefighter’s moral. Sue and Chief also worked at Ground Zero.

Perhaps the most well received addition to the Williams Fire camp was the sleeping trailers. This was one of the first times they were used. Similar to Pullman cars on the railroad, tractor drawn trailers are modified into sleeping births. Each 50-foot trailer contains 42 bunks. Bunk beds are stacked three high, 21 beds on each side of the trailer. The interiors of the sleepers are sound proofed, and climate controlled. Each bed has an air vent and a light. Rather than forcing weary firefighters to sleep in the hot sun they are invited to sleep in relative luxury. Five trailers housed more than 200 firefighters in up to 12-hour shifts.

Fighting a fire that is destroying or threatening people’s homes and livelihoods is a major undertaking. Coordinating the operations of numerous agencies in that firefight make matters even more complex. When you add to the mix having to provide for thousands of firefighters, success can be daunting. Fire management teams have really learned to manage more aspects of the firefight than just putting out the fire.

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