If You Can’t Stand the Heat
Illustrations by Nicole Rifkin
It was September 2019, and I’d been slow-roasting in a small Southern Oregon town for a couple of weeks, waiting on a big one. A wildfire. An opportunity. A chance to prove myself useful and, preferably, profitable. This was the pre-coronavirus era, a simpler time.
From the South, I had driven out West in hopes of embedding with workers at a “fire camp,” the catchall phrase used to describe the base of operations during any major wildfire. Fire camps—many established in the middle of nowhere—are where frontline containment is coordinated, resources are mobilized, personnel are sheltered and fed. These are usually federally led operations, with anywhere from 150 to 2,000 people on-site.
Devastating wildfires have become a regular feature of life in the American West. The cost of fighting them currently burns through 53 percent of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget, compared with 16 percent in 1992. Even the Department of Defense has declared climate-change-related wildfires a national-security threat. The summer and fall were traditionally prime fire time—with fire camps following the blazes like circuses on the harvest-festival circuit. But now scientists, journalists, and government officials have christened extended, seemingly year-long fire seasons “the new normal.”
Every fire camp is a mini city, albeit a temporary one. My plan had been to report on what the new normal of months-long fires looked like from the center of such a city. I wasn’t particularly curious about the much-glorified firefighters, the distraught victims, or the anguish over the loss of inanimate structures. Nor did I want to engage in hand-wringing about climate change. I just wanted to know about the people laboring at fire camp.
This kind of job didn’t really have a name way back in 2019. But during the pandemic, we (the media, the public) began referring to these behind-the-scenes operators as “essential workers.” Before anybody cared, however, you’d just call them “grunts.”
I assumed previous occupational experience in the hospitality industry would give me a chance to get in on the action. While failing to be a respectably employed journalist, I often moonlight as a kitchen grunt. I’ve worked in slop joints, shopping-center fusion, hippie shacks, and fine dining. It’s a fallback career I’m forever falling back on, and just one of the reasons the food-service industry, I think, provides the truest glimpses of where we are and where we’re headed as a culture. Follow what’s happening in the food world, and you don’t just have a finger on the pulse of society; you have an ear to its stomach.
I made inquiries about becoming a laborer at a national-disaster site, working full-time for a company that caters, quite literally, to mass emergencies—one of the 16 companies that run 29 federally contracted mobile food-service units (MFSUs) specializing in fire-camp cuisine. I called all the western-based MFSUs, offering my services. In return, they offered zero promises. The thing about most restaurants, though, is that there’s high employee turnover. I figured I could show up unannounced with a modicum of experience and eventually a kitchen would give me a shot. Sure enough, a couple of MFSUs warmed to my proposal.
A manager of Stewart’s Firefighter Food Catering said I could come hang out on the lot of its MFSU kitchen in Lakeview, Oregon, a warehouse on a flat expanse of gravel behind a car dealership. Camping would be free of charge (the company put me in a cozy trailer) and should a major fire break out, I’d be right there from the beginning.
I showed up and waited, using my time to catch up on the doorstop-size federal contract, the “Blue Book,” that spelled out the rules and regulations for emergency mobile food service at great length and in exacting detail. The many specific requirements and compliances would be enforced, it said, by the food-unit leader—part of Overhead, the government’s on-site management team at fire camp.
In the mid-20th century, the Forest Service tackled wildfires as its forefather the Army had, as a military campaign—total domination. In and out. Everything run in-house. Latrine duty and field rations. Engaged in an endless War on Fire over the past few decades, the government has turned to private contractors for most aspects of fire suppression. In 1973, five private companies formed the National Mobile Shower and Catering Association. A cobbled-together industry quickly professionalized and standardized. Around that time, a man named Tom Stewart was running a family grocery in Lakeview, where Overhead teams had been purchasing supplies. In 1977, they struck a deal no longer than a few contractual pages. His first call was that summer. Stewart’s Firefighter Food Catering grew in size, as did the number of disaster businesses and the thickness of the Blue Book.
[See: Australia’s bushfire catastrophe in photos]
One of the few disaster-catering companies still under original ownership, Stewart’s retains its retro logo and is now a family business in its third generation, with the fourth occasionally pitching in.
The days in Lakeview dragged by; the fire season itself had been unusually slow that year. Occasionally, a few of us would pile in a truck and drive out of town, park high above a ridge, and look for smoke signals in the beige distance. The boredom and ennui were palpable.
On September 5, clouds started forming. That night there was lightning. The next day’s sky, however, was peaceful and picturesque. I turned in early. , I told myself, . Freelance journalism wasn’t paying the bills, and I began resigning myself to the likelihood that I’d return home in search of regular kitchen work. Maybe as
