Firefighters staying in Merced set its economy ablaze

By DIANA MARCUM
THE FRESNO BEE

E-Mail

Comments (0)

Text Size:

tool goes here

MERCED -- Joe Lee has seen firefighters all over town this week.

"They're at the hotel, in the restaurants," says the visiting Texas businessman. "They must be having a convention or something."

But it's conflagrations, not a convention, that made Merced a magnet for thousands of on-call firefighters in recent days.

While U.S. Forest Service firefighters battle fires in remote areas and sleep on cots or the ground in camps near fire lines for weeks at a stretch, California state firefighters, usually protecting structures (and represented by a labor union), work 24-hour shifts, then head for a hotel.

The influx of freshly showered firefighters downing shrimp-and-steak dinners in Merced is what happens when urban and wilderness fire agencies team up, something that's happening more and more often as homes are built closer to wilderness areas.

When wildfires threaten development, the agencies work together. But they don't sleep in the same place. The Forest Service sticks with tents; California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection looks for the nearest city with enough empty hotel rooms.

It can be a boon to local economies, and a (mostly) good-natured bone of contention between firefighters.

"Real firemen don't sleep in hotels, even on their day off," said a retired Forest Service firefighter who answered the phone at a U.S Forest Service office in North Fork, but declined to give his name. "Real firemen don't drive two hours for fun and frolic, a pool and a Jacuzzi. They sleep and eat at camp."

Trudy Tucker, spokeswoman for Sierra National Forest, is more diplomatic about the different accommodations.

"It's because of the different lands we manage. It's hard to find a hotel in the middle of the wilderness, and where are you going to put a fire camp in a city?" she said.

"Our guys do tease. But the truth is ... when a fire is creeping down to Oakhurst or other homes, we sure like to see those red and yellow and white trucks joining our green ones. It doesn't matter if their firefighters go sleep in a hotel."

Merced was the closest city to the Ponderosa basin fires -- which so far have burned almost 4,500 acres -- with enough hotel rooms to house hundreds of firefighters. It's an hour to the fire camp and another hour to the fires.

There are fire engines and firetrucks in almost every hotel parking lot.

For a week, more than two dozen rooms at the Vagabond Inn were taken by firefighters.

One night, the Denny's next to Highway 99, the eighth-busiest Denny's in the country, according to Eric Pacheco, whose family owns the franchise, served 60 firefighters at once.

"They all ordered steak and shrimp," he said. "Or T-bones."

Maria Saldana, 25, a hotel clerk at the Hampton Inn, said her girlfriends have been abuzz about the firefighters, who are mostly young and male.

"But I'm always working, so I only see the ones who need a shower and to go to sleep," she said.

Helped a slow tourism season

Karen Baker of the Merced Visitor's Bureau said the firefighters rented more than 2,000 rooms over the past two weeks -- $154,000 in revenue.

"Restaurants, gas stations, laundromats, drugstores, all that sort of thing also benefitted," she said.

Like a lot of towns, Merced has been suffering in the bleak economy. Sales tax revenues were down 8.3 percent in the first quarter of the year, the state Board of Equalization said.

"Tourism has slowed down a lot," Baker said. "The firefighters helped us. And everyone was thrilled to have them here. They all worked so hard."