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Show 73 Chapter Five. The Boise Interagency Fire Center The Fire Center where Karen works is located right next to the Boise airport. When fire season starts, aircraft of every size and description land and take off only minutes apart, their sides painted with the names of Hughes Air West or American or United. Though the Center owns tvio helicopters and four air tankers, at the height of the fire season additional planes have to be leased from commercial airlines to transport all the firefighters and equipment. Busy in her office, Karen has grown so used to the sound of roaring jets that she rarely notices the flight activity. Vfhen fire season peaks in July and August, two thousand firefighters may be funneled through the Center in a single day. Crevis are brought in from states in vihich fire danger is minimal and flown to places where fires have grown too big for local crevis to handle. Firefighters are outfitted at the Center's warehouse, an enormous building which holds the biggest supply of fire equipment in the world. Each crew member receives a basic fire pack: a specially treated yellow fire shirt, a hard hat, work gloves, and a paper sleeping bag. Paper sleeping bags and collapsible cardboard latrines are used at the fire sites and afterward burned, which is more economical thart transporting them back to Boise and sanitizing them. In one room of the warehouse, fire jumper suits hang on a rack - wire-mesh-visored helmets above metallic-fabric jackets above pants of the same material - looking like a row of lifeless astronauts. Another room has tables long enough for parachutes to be stretched out |