Behind the Scenes: Frijoles Fire Food Unit

At the height of the Frijoles Fire, there were over 1,000 firefighters assigned and over 3,500 meals served per day. Firefighters burn a lot of calories while working for up to 16 hours a day, doing physical, exhausting work often under hot and sunny conditions. The job of the Logistics and Food Unit section is to figure out how to feed all these hungry firefighters with good quality, fulfilling food three times a day.

The contracted food caterer working on the Frijoles Fire has set guidelines that ensure firefighters get enough calories to meet their daily needs (approximately 4,400 calories per firefighter/day). Guidelines require that they serve hot breakfast, a sack lunch, and hot dinners.

Feeding firefighters gets even more complicated when you have more than one camp where firefighters eat, sleep and report. On the Frijoles Fire, in addition to the Incident Command Post at Camel Rock Studios, there was another camp, called a Forward Operating Base (FOB) at the Santa Cruz Lake Overlook Campground. The Food Unit section, in conjunction with the contracted food caterer and a food delivery company, delivered between 400-600 hot meals/day to the FOB during the busiest days of the fire.