A Tent Town At Tum Tum Firefighters Work 1,200-Acre Blaze From Temporary Settlement
For 422 firefighters working the 1,200-acre fire near Tum Tum, Wash., home is where you eat dinner standing up, shower in a trailer and go to work before the sun does.
Since Thursday night, Long Lake Campground off Highway 291, has served as the base camp for the sooty crew - a mix of state, local and private firefighters, and prison inmates.
It’s a temporary boomtown, where paychecks come from ash and flame. It sprouted in a few hours and - if all goes well - should disappear sometime this week.
At the entrance to the camp is a sweltering green tent where Steve Jennison works.
Jennison is the Department of Natural Resources’ spokesman on the fire. His regular job is in Olympia managing shellfish. Geoducks occupy a lot of his time.
“A lot of us at the DNR wear more than one hat,” he said.
State employees who usually sit behind a desk all day - from budget planners to secretaries - are working the fire.
On Monday, with the fire in the mop-up phase, Jennison and DNR’s Jim Hurst showed off the camp. There are showers in a blue-and-white semi-trailer, a medical tent in the shade of a pine tree, a white, air-conditioned van packed with computer equipment sitting in the sun.
Dozens of tents are scattered, ranging in size from 20-person wall tents to dome tents for two. During the day, while crews are on the line, the camp is empty and quiet except for the hum of generators and sound of flyswatters smashing yellow jackets.
When wildfires become big and dangerous, Hurst’s job is to direct the set-up of the camp. He’s essentially a city planner for a town that must feed, shower and house hundreds of people in the middle of nowhere.
The DNR has drawn up plans for setting up fire camps across the state. When the wind-driven Tum Tum fire got brash Thursday afternoon, Hurst grabbed a thick, three-ring binder containing plans for a command post at Long Lake Campground.
In the binder, he found a map telling him where to put the showers, sleeping tents and kitchen. There were also numbers to call to marshal Porta-potties and telephone service in the wilderness. Hurst ordered the camp set up while in a plane headed to the fire.
The camp’s restaurant is a pair of open-air tents. Inside are green-topped, chest-high tables. There are no chairs, benches or stools.
To encourage firefighters to move through the grub line quickly, everyone has to eat standing up.
But the food’s plentiful and the first night always features steak.
“It’s a tradition. A kitchen that didn’t serve steak the first night would probably be run out,” Hurst said jokingly.
Monday night’s menu: pork chops, hashbrowns, vegetables, cherry pie, rolls and a variety of drinks.
In the morning, a 20-gallon pot of coffee is warmed by a giant propane burner. The fuel tank stands nearby, tall as a man. The coffee bag inside the pot is the size of a small pillow. “We gotta have our coffee. It’s a pretty big deal,” Hurst said.
He should know. It’s also his job to wake everyone at 5 a.m.
What’s it like to rouse 400 aching firefighters who work 16-hour days? “It isn’t too bad. Most times if I get a grunt, I figure I’m doing OK,” Hurst said.
One of the most important spots in Fireville is “the bank.” It’s a white trailer with walk-up teller windows. Every evening, firefighters line up and turn in their time cards.
Inside, a small crew led by Diane Smith, a DNR office manager from Olympia tap on computer keyboards, making sure everyone gets paid.
Before the computer system, such accounting created nightmarish heaps of paper, Smith said.
Her office is the nicest place in town. It’s air-conditioned.
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