SOUTH DAKOTA – Feeding hungry wildland firefighters is not for the faint of heart. Since July 2021, despite food supply chain challenges that would have stopped some caterers in their tracks, the Boxelder Job Corps Mobile Kitchen has served up breakfast, lunch and dinner to personnel responding to three separate fires burning on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.

Boxelder’s mobile kitchen is known for serving a range of entrees that appeal to firefighters. It arrived at the Cougar Rock Complex in early July before moving on to the Pioneer Creek Fire and finally the Trestle Creek Complex. The kitchen is in high demand because of the service mindset of the students and staff who ensure its smooth operation.

On these three fires, Boxelder culinary arts students and staff overcame what could have been debilitating food supply chain issues. Short of employees, food distributors have simply stopped many food deliveries. So, on top of their regular duties of supplying food and water to the entire incident, kitchen staff drove two hours one-way to a Costco warehouse every two or three days to purchase the food and utensils necessary to feed everyone on the fire, adding hours to their already long days.

“Job Corps mobile kitchens are a resource that the Forest Service will not find anywhere else,” states Acting Job Corps Fire Program Coordinator Justin Abbey. “I have never seen anything like what the Boxelder Mobile Kitchen has had to overcome to ensure these firefighters are fed. The sheer tenacity of these crews were amazing and humbling, and it made me for one very proud to work around people like this each and every day.”  

It takes a lot of food to properly feed wildland firefighters who can spend up to 16 hours working on the fire line. The food items must meet the strict caloric intake a firefighter needs, appropriately distributed between proteins, fats and carbohydrates. It required extra-ordinary effort, but for the lucky personnel on these three fires, the Boxelder Job Corps Mobile Kitchen staff were happy to hand select quality meats and produce to prepare fresh, made-to-order meals.

Mobile kitchen staff have a wide range of duties outside of preparing and cooking meals. When not serving breakfast and dinner meals, mobile kitchen staff kept busy preparing lunches for the incident personnel working at the Incident Command Post, in spike camps and on the fire line. They are also responsible for setting up potable water deliveries, Gerry water disposal, propane and diesel fuel deliveries, and maintaining washing stations, porta potties and showers.

The crew’s evaluation from the Cougar Rock Complex fire reflects the quality service they provided. “The crew has worked through many adverse situations and supplied terrific meals,” reads the evaluation. “They have had many changes to the numbers fed and managed it every time. Would really like to have them on any fire.”

A Trapper Creek Job Corps camp crew was also deployed to the three fires to provide general organization and maintenance support across the fire camps where needed. The same attitude and work ethic exhibited by students staffing the mobile kitchen, have also made Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center camp crews a hot commodity at fire camps.

Mobile kitchens are not the only way Job Corps has been supporting Forest Service wildland firefighting efforts. The Boxelder, Curlew, Columbia Basin, Ft. Simcoe and Trapper Creek Job Corps Centers also partnered with Fire and Operations and the National Technology and Development Program earlier in the year to build 500 shelf-stable food boxes. The boxes, which can support two firefighters for 72 hours, were shipped out across the western United States to firefighters in spike camps and on the fire line. This has allowed crews to enjoy meals in self-contained modules outside the typical Meal, Ready to Eat or MREs.

Although not currently mobilized, the Job Corps program recently acquired two additional, state-of-the-art US MK 53 mobile semi-trailer kitchens. Due to the pandemic, Civilian Conservation Centers are hard at work rebuilding their student population, but the Job Corps program looks forward to future mobilizations to support wildland firefighting efforts in the near future. These kitchens will be mobilized out of Trapper Creek Job Corps in Darby, Montana and Timber Lake Job Corps in Estacada, Oregon.

As of August 30, 109 Job Corps students, working as wildland firefighters, dispatchers, camp crewmembers and in other logistic support functions, were supporting wildland fire operations across the states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Arizona. Their efforts directly support the Forest Service strategic goal of sustaining our nation’s forests and grasslands and delivering benefits to the public.