Local contract fire crews diversify to survive the lean years

Log Springs: Intense, but short-lived work for firefighters. photo by Dave Vitelle When fall rains came last month, Central Oregon residents breathed a sigh of relief for surviving another summer wildfire season. But for two Sisters area companies that provide fire fighting crews and equipment to state and federal agencies, the rains marked the end of a long and painfully slow period.

GFP Enterprises and Bear Mountain Fire are two of only a few Central Oregon private companies that hire, train, and equip firefighting crews for public agencies to hire in controlling major wildfires anywhere in the country. After several extremely busy summers of fire fighting, 2004 was a very slow year for all private companies.

Private wildfire firefighting has become a growth industry, particularly in the Pacific Northwest with Oregon and Washington supplying about 90 percent of the crews in the entire country. Today, there are 97 contracting companies in Oregon. Over the past five years, the number of 20-person crews tripled to about 250. Business peaked in 2002 when Oregon companies earned an estimated $91 million, much of it from the Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon, Oregon's largest fire in modern times.

But 2004 was a different story. After controlling fires on over 96,000 acres of private and state forests in 2002, the Oregon Department of Forestry fought fires on just over 6,000 acres this year, less than one-third of a 10-year average. The department estimates that private contractors will earn just $9.6 million this year.

Recently, owners of GFP Enterprises and Bear Mountain Fire talked about their experiences of the past few years and how they are working to survive the slow seasons.

Don Pollard, managing partner of GFP Enterprises, sees diversification as the answer to getting through the lean years and keeping good personnel working.

"We originally started out as an equipment company with wildfire engines and then moved into hand crews," Pollard said. "Today, we have six engines and four 20-person hand crews. We had some busy fire years, working on the Eyerly Fire, B&B Complex, the Davis Fire, and most other major fires."

GFP has made some major investments with their facility located in the Sisters Industrial Park. Their new 12,000-square-foot building includes a 3,000-square-foot training room.

"We've made a sizable commitment and we know that every year is not going to be a 'fire year.' But when there is a bad year, we want to be part of the forces that put out the fires," he explained.

All employees receive required training in fire control methods, safety, and organization before they go on the fireline. GFP has 120 personnel with 110 of them seasonal workers. Most are from Central Oregon with 35 of the seasonal employees and eight of the yearlong ones from the Sisters area. Over the years, GFP crews have worked in every Western state and several Eastern states.

Two GFP crews were national contract crews stationed this summer at GFP's compound at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for fires in Idaho and Montana.

"But the Idaho crews got only 10 days of work each," Pollard said. "One of our two Central Oregon crews got two days of work and the other got 10 days."

The answer to these slow years has been finding other forestry and emergency work. This has included thinning contracts close to home on the Deschutes and Ochoco national forests. Crews also just returned from doing home inspections in Florida after the hurricanes. They had three crews in Texas for 34 days on the recovery project after the space shuttle Columbia crash.

GFP will be expanding its work as accredited assessors with individual homeowners creating defensible space and they also are looking at Homeland Security contracts.

Dave Vitelle, general contractor and owner of Bear Mountain Fire in Sisters, has faced the same challenges. He came to Sisters in 1997 from Yakima, Washington where he had started in the firefighting business in 1991. He can provide seven to eight firefighters and an engine for fires anywhere in the nation.

Bear Mountain Fire has worked in Washington, Nevada, Montana, Florida and other states.

"We worked on the Eyerly Fire, Cache Mountain Fire, Davis Fire and the B&B Complex in the past," Vitelle said. "This year we had two weeks work on the Log Springs Fire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

"However, we have been able to find work doing fuels reduction work on individual homesites in Central Oregon," Vitelle said. "We are accredited assessors... I enjoy being able to help homeowners protect their properties by making them fire-safe. One of our challenges has been to ask owners to be patient while waiting for our crew to do their work when we are out fighting fire."

Bear Mountain Fire advertises their services in hazard tree topping, thinning for defensible space, debris hauling, and other lot improvement work throughout Central Oregon

"We usually chip everything we cut and remove it, so the owner is not left with anything to clean up."

Vitelle also helps his employees find fill-in work in construction, winter work at ski areas, and other jobs to keep them in the area and available for his needs in the summer

No one knows for certain what 2005 will bring, but these two Sisters companies want to be sure that their crews and equipment will be here and ready to roll if they are needed.