Rooster Rock Fire is winding down

Fire camp is a bustling city

Sitting in the base camp canteen with a heaping plate of chow, Chiloquin firefighter Brandon Friend devours his ribeye steak and baked potato with his five-person team and reflects on their time on the line. Friend is attached to a Type 3 heavy engine crew.

"We've been hitting it pretty hard," he said, setting his fork down for a second. "Our division did mop-up 300 feet within the line. Looking for heat and smoke, gridding in a uniform search for stump holes and ash pits with water and hand tools. It was a good day."

Out front, spokesman Earl Cordes returns with a media crew in a dusty truck.

"There's a lot going on and they chased us out. It's starting to get a little dicey," he says, slinging his pack onto the grass and silencing his radio. "Nobody's going back up there today."

Sisters Middle School has been the official command post for the Rooster Rock Fire since Tuesday, August 3, and temporary home to a peak level of 945 wildland firefighters, Forest Service personnel, Deschutes County deputies and fire officials in a well-organized task force.

It's a mini-city encampment of supply trailers, water tenders, event canopies and hundreds of camping tents all set up around the school's lawns and grounds.

The Chiloquin crew wolfed down the rest of their high-calorie meal and joked about the prospect of rinsing off while there was no line at the shower trailer. As evening set in, more crews trickled into camp, weary and ash-stained. Most went directly to the handwashing station and up to the kitchen window for their dinner. A separate tent houses the beverage and salad bar area where you can choose from chocolate milk, grape or fruit punch and sweetened tea. Federal studies show a firefighter must replenish an average of 5,000-6,000 calories per day, and the hefty portions reflect that.

Paper plates are piled high for their two hot meals of the day, breakfast and dinner. Lunch is a brown-bagger. No alcoholic beverages are allowed and smoking is not permitted on school grounds.

Supply trucks come pre-loaded at Redmond Air Center from a U.S. Forest Service cache to refurbish firefighter needs for each operational shift: hoses, pumps, fire tools, gasoline and chainsaw parts. Crew members are allowed to bring a "red bag" to firecamp that contains up to 35 pounds of clothes and personal items.

Nomex protective gear can be changed out through supply.

Bathing is optional and sometimes dependent on the tolerance of your crew as to its frequency. A laundry unit is only brought into camp in the event of an extended incident. Eighty-five portable toilets dot the grass.

"Guys in camp work just as hard as those on the line," said information officer Heather Fisher, herself a wildfire veteran. "They're runnin' and gunnin' all the time. Always prepared for the next day."

This was Fisher's first time not being on the line, and she was itching to be out in the woods with her friends.

Inside, a science classroom with dinosaur maps and solar system models serves as the post's information center, where media tours get organized and daily updates are composed by the incident staff. Down the hallway, rooms once filled with eager young minds are now fortified with computers and converted to command units for finance, medical and tactical operations requirements.

"Quiet" signs drawn on construction paper hang from bannisters, reminding everyone that the night shift is snoozing upstairs.

Traveling up to the lines, an eerie landscape of smoldering earth and scorched tree limbs emerges. Yesterday's spot fires have burned themselves out, robbed of remaining fuel. A thick haze blankets the horizon, partially obscuring bulldozers and tankers roaming the containment perimeter, searching for hot

spots.

Hunched silhouettes materialize in the distance, threading their way through charcoal-painted trunks, laden with heavy coils of hose, trudging along the grey ash and dirt. Handcrews march along methodically.

At noon, dayshift firefighters gather around their engines or climb into the beds of crewtrucks on a blackened road, eating their bag lunch of sandwiches, energy bars and dried

fruit.

They lay hose and grapple with the fire all day before loading back into their engine or transport vans, relieved by the fresh night crew after 7 p.m. Many will forego a shower after dinner, opting instead for that extra half-hour of precious sleep. Firefighters can work 14 days straight before a mandatory 48-hour rest period, although in extreme cases that can be stretched to 19 days.

Crews alternate in two 12-14 hours shifts until further notice during the highest states of alert. In addition to a line gear backpack and lunch, firefighters must each carry a minimum of 64-ounces of water.

"Dehydration is a huge problem out there," said Fisher. "A firefighter standing out in the flames can get zapped pretty fast."

Inside their vital line gear is 30 pounds of equipment to get them through the day. Contents may vary, but generally include a radio, a six-pound reflective fire shelter, side water bottles, a military MRE, first aid kit, sunscreen, survival knife, headlamp, GPS device and a Rhino firetool.

There's a mass of logistical mobilization behind putting each firefighter on the line.

Logistics deputy Steve Bigby put it plainly: "It's a big family here and our main function is to provide for the firefighter and focus on his personal safety and job. They work hard and

deserve it."