Products that are locally designed and made help battle blazes around the world.
By Sherri Buri McDonald
The Register-Guard
Published: September 21, 2008
Across the nation, 4.71 million acres of wildland have burned since January. And more goes up in smoke every day from fires continuing to smolder in Oregon and California.
As it has for years, Lane County does its part to help put out those fires, by sending people to fire sites via wildland firefighting contractors based here, and by sending products that are designed, made and sold here.
Over the past two decades, the Eugene-Springfield area has become a hotbed for companies that serve the wildland firefighting market.
Clusters of firms with the same focus can be found in other Oregon communities, such as Bend or Medford, but “I think Eugene is probably one of the bigger ones that supply not only the logging industry but firefighting,” said Kermadine Barton, regional contracting officer for fire procurement for the U.S. Forest Service.
A sampling of local firms in this market include Western Shelter Systems, National Fire Fighter Wildland Corp., Terra Tech, and Baker’s Shoes and Clothing. Owners of those businesses speculate that Lane County became a center for wildland firefighting supplies because of its proximity to Northwest fires, its strong, longstanding ties to the forest industry and its stable of firefighting contractors that draw seasonal workers from local colleges and universities.
The national wildland fire season, which usually starts in early spring with blazes in Florida and other parts of the South, can continue through October in the West.
The season isn’t over yet — the Royce Butte Fire that broke out on Wednesday east of Highway 58 near Crescent Lake Junction attests to that. But so far, wildland fires haven’t devoured as many acres as last season, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center, based in Boise. Nationwide, 4.71 million acres of wildlands burned from Jan. 1 to Sept. 19, compared with 8.06 million acres over the same period last year.
“Until recently, it had been a fairly calm fire season in the Pacific Northwest,” said Ryan Davidson, national sales manager for fire at Western Shelter Systems, a 20-year-old Eugene company that makes protective clothing and portable tents for wildland firefighting.
“The amount of fire activity has been down from the norm,” he said. “However, California was a firestorm.”
A global market
Most of the local firefighting suppliers serve the national — and sometimes international — market, so it doesn’t matter where the fires are burning. Many locally produced goods helped fight the string of wildfires in California earlier this year.
Name a wildland fire in the United States, and chances are good that Western Shelter Systems’ products are there.
The company’s expansive 83,000-square-foot factory off West 11th Avenue churns out the wildland firefighter’s fire-retardant uniform — green or khaki brush pants and distinctive bright yellow shirts — as well as the large white tents that sprout up at firefighting base operations and command centers at hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Western Shelter Systems is owned by Paul Bennett and James Moore.While leading a recent tour of the 115-employee factory, marketing director Peter Powell passed by dozens of sewing stations on his way to the warehouse.
“We normally keep more inventory than this,” he said, gesturing to the massive shelves. “But, frankly, (Hurricane) Ike and the fires are keeping us busy. Things are moving right out of here.”
Sales of mobile shelters for rescue, medical, military and disaster response generate the bulk of Western Shelter’s revenues, President Paul Bennett said. The wildland firefighting side of the business accounts for approximately 15 percent to 18 percent of annual revenues, he said. The company does not disclose annual financial figures.
But Western Shelter’s roots are in the firefighting industry. Bennett previously owned National Fire Fighter Corp. before he founded Western Shelter in 1988.
Today, Western Shelter’s durable, octagonal tents, which are easy to transport and set up, support government and private relief and research efforts around the world, from the Arctic to the tropics.
From the beginning, Western Shelter focused on producing top-of-the-line, highly certified clothing and shelters, Bennett said.
That strategy has paid off. About 80 percent of shelters used for fire operations management are Western Shelter products, he said. The company controls about 50 percent of the market for wildland firefighting clothing worn by non-federal firefighting personnel, he said.
Western Shelter’s Crew Boss™ brand of clothing made of Dupont’s Nomex™ and Kevlar™ fire-retardant fabrics is recognized as “the quality leader,” Powell said.
“For us, we only buy the best stuff made,” said Lee Jurasevich, 27, owner of DustBusters, a wildland firefighting contractor based in Eugene.
“The Crew Boss pants and shirts are ... the best in the world,” he said.
Wearing Crew Boss clothing “increases our performance and safety,” Jurasevich said. “It can make a difference in what you can do out there, and if you have limited capability, you just can’t serve the people as well.”
With the shift of the U.S. textile industry to lower-cost producers in Asia, it’s rare these days to see the “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But that label appears on every Crew Boss garment.
Powell said Western Shelter “continually looks at the advantages to offshore (production), and we don’t see it as an advantage. We have a highly trained crew that has been with us a long time, and that’s hard to replicate.”
The company also can respond more rapidly to shifts in demand by manufacturing in the United States, Powell said. Western Shelter can add another shift and boost production immediately, instead of waiting weeks for containers to arrive from a manufacturer in Asia, he said.
Western Shelter sells its Crew Boss clothing only through distributors.A major one is National Fire Fighter Wildland Corp., a Eugene-based catalog and online retailer of wildland firefighting gear that serves customers in North America, South America, Europe and Australia.
The 11-employee business is owned by brothers Brent and Bob Laing, who also own Industrial Source, which sells welding supplies and metal fabrication equipment. National carries only Western Shelter’s Crew Boss brand clothing — National’s top-selling product — plus a full range of backpacks, hand tools, foam, pumps, fire shelters and helmets, said Shannan Odum, National’s sales lead.
National also operates a four-person shop that builds “mobile attack units” or “slip-on units,” which slide onto the back of a truck and have hoses, reels and pumps.
“Their lives are on the line”
Terra Tech, based in west Eugene, makes and sells its own line of sewn goods, such as backpacks, and other tools and firefighting supplies. The company also is a distributor of Western Shelter’s Crew Boss clothing.
Terra Tech started out in 1976 selling forestry and reforestation tools, and “that’s still a big part of what we do,” General Manager Todd Hedberg said.
The wildland firefighting segment of the business usually accounts for about 20 percent of annual revenues, which average about $1.5 million to $2 million, he said.
Terra Tech was already serving loggers and reforesters, so when federal timber sales declined — in large part because of the federal government’s move to protect Northern spotted owl habitat — the company diversified.
“We’ve evolved along with the market,” Hedberg said.
Historically, many of the crews who planted trees in the West from December through April also fought fires in the summer, and a good number of those workers were based in the Willamette Valley, he said.
“It was the same customer base for us, so it was a kind of a no-brainer,” he said. “It’s not like we had to go out and re-establish ourselves.”
Several firefighting contractors, including DustBusters in Eugene, PatRick Environmental in Springfield and Menasha Forest Management Services in Eugene, send Lane County crews out to fires all over the country.
In May and early June, lots of those workers stop by Baker’s Shoes and Clothing shop on Roosevelt Boulevard in Eugene to buy sturdy boots certified by the National Fire Protection Agency. The store stocks a range of brands from Red Wing logger-style boots to top-of-the-line White’s Smoke Jumpers, owner Gene Baker said.
“We’re kind of the destination store for wildland firefighters,” he said.
ome of those “guys come in, and they’re pretty green,” Baker said. “They’re wearing footies or flip-flops,” he said, referring to the thin, ankle-high sports socks or flimsy sandals many young people favor. The store’s salespeople take the time to show them the protective socks and boots they’ll need to do their job and prevent blisters, he said.
“Their lives are on the line out there, and that’s something that we’re passionate about — helping them help themselves,” Baker said.
In the past five to seven years, sales of boots to wildland firefighters have surpassed sales of boots to loggers, Baker said. The family-owned shop has supplied foresters and loggers since 1957.Quality firefighting boots range from $200 to $400 a pair.
“We’ve tried selling less-expensive boots, but basically the boots fall apart,” Baker said. “The heat from the fire deactivates the glue that keeps the soles on.”
Jurasevich, owner of contractor DustBusters, agrees it’s worth paying for quality.
“Your boots are your lifeline out there,” he said. “The abuse is just extreme on them. You just need the highest quality you can get.”
Every summer DustBusters’ crew surges to about 120 workers — at least 70 percent of them local college students, Jurasevich said.
Firefighting can be a lucrative summer job. An 18-year-old just starting out can earn $5,000 in a summer; a college senior with several seasons under his belt can earn $35,000, he said. Of course, that’s working an average of 14 hours a day — sometimes longer — seven days a week, Jurasevich said.
He said he has another theory why Lane County is home to a number of businesses that supply wildland firefighters.“Historically, it probably started with servicing the Willamette National Forest,” Jurasevich said. The Willamette is one of the largest national forests in the country, with 1.68 million acres extending from the Mount Jefferson area east of Salem south to the Calapooya Mountains northeast of Roseburg.
“You can have 100 acres in the Nevada desert burn,” he said, “but 100 acres in giant timber is a lot more valuable to the land, so they fight the fires more aggressively and with more people.” |
