Firefighters moved in and out of the East Zone Complex Fire Camp throughout the summer, but some people stayed in the camp for much of its 10-week existence.

Employees from the Rickaby Shower Services of Chico, Calif., stayed the longest at the camp, but overcame downtime at the camp by making numerous trips to McCall, exercising and challenging the different fire fighting crews to chess matches throughout their 56-day stay, Rickaby employee Briana Ellis said.

Lifting weights and chess became the wad. Rickaby employee Vince Fries passed the time at the camp when he was not cleaning the camp's shower facilities.

Fries started challenging people in the camp to friendly games of chess on a makeshift cardboard chessboard he made. Later, he upgraded to a real chess set he bought in McCall.

Fries usually lost his chess matches against the various firefighters at the camp.

Ellis enjoyed the camp's close proximity to McCall.

"We normally aren't this close to a town, so it was a special treat to take a couple of hours a day away from the camp in McCall," she said.

Monotony at the camp was also relieved by new firefighting crews arriving about every two weeks, Fries said.

Rickaby Shower Services works on forest fires from May through October, but the year ended early, as they expected not to be called after leaving the East Zone Complex last Friday. The outfit had worked fires in Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho this year.

"This was the longest fire camp I've ever been in," said Ellis, who has been working at the camps for 10 years.

Ellis and her father will spend the winter maintaining their equipment for the next fire season. Fries will go back to California to work in another industry until the next season.

The shower service drove its 2,100-gallon tanker truck to McCall each day to collect water. The 16-shower unit could shower 1,275 people per day and ran on 11 instantaneous water heaters. Water from the truck was delivered to water bags that fed the system. They also provided 16 sinks for firefighters.

Round-the-clock food
Employees from the catering division of Cattlemen's Meat Co., of Kevin, Mont., had no time to be bored as the food service operation worked round the clock to deliver more than 170,000 meals to weary firefighters, Cattlemen's unit manager Carla Walls said. Not only did the catering service's 18 employees provide two hot meals per day and a high-calorie sack lunch at the base camp, but they also served up to 300 hot meals to the spike camps each day.

"It's been a challenge with the spike camps," said Walls, who has worked for the company for eight years. "I hate to see it end, but it's a good thing the fires are out."

The catering service arrived on this fire on Aug. 4 and served 20,000 meals a week in late August and early September.

Breakfast deliveries to the spike camps left the base camp at 4 a.m. so that firefighters in the forest could eat by 7 a.m.

For firefighters located away from the spike camps, cold breakfasts of sandwiches, cereal and fruit were also delivered.

The spike camps received the same meals that were served at the base camp, she said.

The outfit worked at three fires this year, but the East Zone Complex Fire was the longest stay for the catering service at 48 days.