Brandi Bartscher bustled around the back room of H Bar J Saloon and Café, looking over long rows of paper bags for the last time that day. Over the last few hours, she and a small team of friends and family members had prepared and neatly organized 350 meals. It was Wednesday, which meant this was one of the last mass assemblies she would perform. She flitted back and forth between the backroom and bar, busy with the dual responsibilities of restaurant owner and dinner-bag organizer.
One of two bars in Wise River, a town with roughly 50 permanent residents, H Bar J doesn’t usually serve so many customers at once.
But just a few weeks earlier, the firefighters had come to town.
On July 29, 60 in-state responders arrived at the Grouse Fire, then a relatively small but fast-growing blaze 10 miles south of Bartscher’s restaurant. When the fire’s growth didn’t slow, the number of personnel began to rise. On Aug. 9, Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team Three took command. By then, firefighters and administrative staff totaled 294 people.
Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFP
The responders set up a base of operations a few miles from the blaze. The fire camp functions as a centralized location for planning, resupplying, eating, sleeping and maintaining personal hygiene. The government services a number of these needs directly, but some key functions of the camp are contracted out to independent businesses. At the Grouse Fire, the mobile shower unit and gasoline supply were both operated by outside contractors.
So was the food.
BBQ 4 U Catering is an emergency response kitchen based out of Bakersfield, California. But the company arrived too late to feed the fire camp when its population doubled in early August. And it couldn’t remain for the full demobilization as the population began to dramatically decline on Thursday.
During the caterer’s absence, the fire camp turned to Wise River.
Wise River experienced a similar event in the summer of 2021 when the Alder Creek Fire burned tens of thousands of acres just seven miles west of town. Bartscher remembers preparing meals for the temporary residents of that fire camp as well. This year, she got the call on a Monday about supplying the camp later that week.
“There were tears,” Bartscher said. “This is a lot. And we don’t have a Costco down the street.”
Bartscher placed orders for additional deliveries on top of the bar’s regular schedule. Then she drove to Butte for more supplies. She estimates spending $7,000 for food alone. Businesses working to supply a fire camp sign a contract with the federal government detailing the terms of the agreement and compensation.
“There were tears. This is a lot. And we don’t have a Costco down the street.”
H Bar J Saloon and Café owner Brandi Bartscher
In Wise River, Bartscher’s restaurant wasn’t the only one.
When responders first arrived at the fire en masse on July 29, camp representatives asked the West River Club, a restaurant roughly 100 yards east of H Bar J Saloon, to prepare more than 115 breakfasts for the next day. The business shut down its usual restaurant service for several days, directing all its available labor toward preparing meals for firefighters.
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The Montana Fire Report: Aug. 10–16
The Grouse Fire is the state’s largest active fire, covering just over 4,000 acres in Beaverhead County. High humidity and slow winds are likely to hold through the weekend.
Tony Aumell, a chef at West River Club, worked alongside the club’s limited cook staff to prepare hundreds of meals each day.
“We would shut down things here around 8:00,” Aumell said. “And then we’d usually go take a nap and then wake up at midnight [or] 1:00.”
For the first few days, nights with only three to four hours of sleep continued with “no end in sight,” Aurnell said. But Tim Montana, one of the restaurant’s two owners, both of whom made careers as singers and songwriters before purchasing the restaurant in 2023, called in reinforcements. On July 31, staff of The Beached Pig, a Tennessee-based catering company that had worked with the owner before, flew to Montana and drove to the West River Club.
Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFP
“I like using that place to give back,” said Montana, who grew up visiting the establishment from his childhood home in Butte. “It means a lot.”
The exact number of combined breakfasts, lunches and dinners provided by West River’s restaurants is unknown.
But Aumell, a Nashville native, remembers exactly how many meals his team provided.
“The guys that we brought in from Nashville — our area code is 615. It was 3,615.”
