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John Hollenhorst ReportingWildfires are big-time trouble for lots of people, and bad news for taxpayers because of the firefighting expenses. But they are great news for the bottom line of a Utah restaurant owner and his family.
You know how hard it is to plan a menu for a family meal? Imagine doing it for 300 people, and then suddenly cranking it up to a thousand on a few hours notice. That's what the Houston family of Kanab does every summer.
When firefighters have to pack in the protein and cram those carbs, they know it's available. Three squares a day. Nobody counting calories.
Beau Jackson/ Firefighter: "I love the food. I think it's really well done."
Well, yeah! 400 pounds of steak! And that's just one breakfast, when you throw in 3600 eggs and 550 pounds of hashbrowns.
All in a day's work for a gang of folks from Kanab who regularly face long lines of hungry firefighters.
Kaytee Glover/ Kanab Resident: "Sometimes there are like 400 in the line."
On this fire, Houston's Trails End Catering starts at 5 am. 1200 hot breakfasts. Then 1200 box lunches.
Linsey Glover/ Kanab Resident: "If we're lucky we get a catnap and then start it all again at 5:00 with dinner."
It's a side business for Houston's Trails End restaurant in Kanab. With one mobile mess-hall service, and part ownership in a second, they've been feeding firefighters all over the West for 30 years.
Robert Houston/ Houston's Trails End Catering: "We can go out and do in two months what it takes us all year to do at the restaurant in Kanab."
It's not just fires. Houston's operation has been called into action on Hurricane Katrina and on the shuttle disaster over Texas.
A network of warehouses responds quickly when there are suddenly more mouths to feed.
Robert Houston/ Trails End Catering: "At a moment's notice, they load a truck and they bring it to me. They know what's going on. They understand the importance of it. Sometimes it's run to every grocery store in town and buy everything you can."
A lot of the hands-on workers are Houston relatives.
Linsey Glover/ Kanab Resident: "I would say 80 percent. But the ones that we have, we claim as relatives. You get pretty close when you spend day in and day out with people."
One wildfire veteran says he's enjoyed Trails End cooking in 14 different states.
Gil Knight/ Fire Information Officer: "That's one of the things, when you come into a fire camp, 'Who's the caterer? Oh boy! It's Trail's End! That's great!'"
The catering service is sometimes in action all summer, working five or ten wildfires a year. The government pays about 35 to 40 dollars a day for each mouth they feed. Do the math. A big fire is very expensive.
