Instead of hot and full of eggs to order for 600 hungry firefighters, the 18-foot griddle space in one of the company's three kitchens was being cleaned.
"I'm not complaining - and this year is nothing like 1997 when we only took in $65,000 - but we need
Six months ago, all the indexes pointed to a record fire season in the West. The tourism industry from Glacier National Park to Hamilton braced for another summer of hazy skies and empty parking lots. Yet week after week lightning failed to strike, sparks never hit the dry grass. The forests didn't burn, and then August arrived, rainy and cool.
The businesses that feed off fires in the West have multiplied in recent years. Because of Missoula's importance as a regional center for the U.S. Forest Service, the city and its surrounding valleys have become a focal point in the
$1 billion wildfire industry.
Then come summers like this one, and the industry folds in on itself, said Bruce Suenram, president of the Northern Rockies Wildfire Contractors Association.
"No doubt, some companies will go out of business," said Suenram, who owns Fire Logistics Inc. in Belgrade. NRWCA represents about 45 companies. The total number of employees is hard to track down. Suenram's company has about three year-round positions, but in a busy summer that number may rise to 20. He has no doubt, though, about the impact of fire on the state's economy.
"It's big," he said.
In 1991, about 20 private fire engines vied for fire contracts in the state. This year there are about 700, Suenram said. That doesn't count water tankers, bulldozers and other operators such as Big Sky Mobile Catering.
"A lot of that equipment was bought on speculation," he said. "The problem is that fire is cyclical. You can't plan on a lot of fire revenues."
"I made a major mistake. I put all my eggs in one basket. It was a stupid thing to do," said Joe King, a former U.S. Forest Service fire boss who is now the chief of operations and training at Montana Wildfire Inc. in Bozeman. He sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into expansion, counting on the predictions.
"From my perspective, this summer has been a disaster," he said. "It's the worst year I've ever experienced."
King said he averaged 30 days of contract work per year. This year he didn't get one call. He got caught between the slow summer, the rising number of contractors and his own over-exuberance. He said he is fighting to save his company and his home. He's desperate, he said.
"The government bails out the airlines. It bails out farmers. Why can't it recognize what we bring to the economy and help us out a bit?" he asked. The help could even come in the form of promotion, he said.
"Go out and sell these people," he said. "Export our well-trained people here, get people on fires out of state."
Suenram sympathized with King's predicament, but said the contractor's association had no plans to lobby for help from the state or federal government.
Gordon Belcourt, director of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council in Billings, said a quiet fire summer devastates tribal economies.
Unemployment on Montana's reservations hovers around 70 percent, he said. In that environment, a lot of people lean heavily on firefighting.
"I wish there were other opportunities, but there are only a certain amount of jobs available. You don't want to see the forests burning, but it generates a lot of work for our young people," he said.
For many Montana businesses, though, the major-fire summers only provide a boost.
Ron Ehli, who owns Bitterroot Laundry and Cleaners in Hamilton, said his laundry gets overflow business in the big fire summers, but a slow summer doesn't really hurt.
"I don't rely on it," he said.
Doug Homer, manager of Costco in Missoula, told a similar story.
When the fire business is hot, the discount box store assigns a business development representative full time to cater to the "beck and call" of fire contractors, he said.
The fire window is short but "it impacts our sales," Homer said.
"We sell everything from truckloads of water to Gatorade, lots of prepared foods, snack foods. We also do quite a bit of business in fresh meats and produce, and even some of our baked goods go out as well," Homer said.
A fire season that doesn't happen just means he's ahead on his orders for next year, he said.
In years past, a slow fire season might have hurt some volunteer fire departments in the area, but some rural departments have begun to ease away from reliance on the seasonal work, said Jim Knapp, chief of the Corvallis Volunteer Fire Department.
"It's become a strange market," Knapp said. "It's getting busier. A lot of private contractors have surfaced. It's starting to get so that so many people are trying to do it that you can't count on it."
Last year Corvallis voted to approve a mill levy to increase funding for its fire department. The levy will decrease the department's reliance on wildfire contracts.
"You float into a season like this year, and you're in trouble," Knapp said. He also said that as long as firefighters in his department want to continue contracting, he will support the practice.
Nelson at Big Sky Mobile Catering has no plans to get out of the contracting business. He has been in it for years, and he loves it. Sometimes the business has 100 employees on the payroll. The pay ranges from about $150 to about $300 per day. Each of the three kitchens costs about $300,000. This year the company spent extra money to upgrade the facilities, which are hauled in trailers behind semitrucks, to meet new federal guidelines.
"It fluctuates. We have years that are better than average, and then there are times when you coast through," he said.
Reporter Robert Struckman can be reached at 523-5262 or at rstruckman@missoulian.com
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