Where was your favorite to work in Yosemite?

Someone on Facebook posed that question.   My response:

There is, or at least was, a number of awesome places to work in the park.  Of course, my favorite was Area 5!  

Every day was different.  Throughout the year, 24/7/365, each day held the real opportunity to learn something new, do something new, work with any other internal department at any level or outside organization, meet and work with new people, or go someplace unexpected inside or outside the park.  It didn’t matter what your position or role you held.  You might help guests one minute due to an injury or other issue, reuniting lost ones or items, then helping employees that are locked out, injured, or in a crisis of some type.  Then there were the natural disasters and human caused catastrophes.  We were there.  

And yes, sometimes we had to be firm.  

The time of day didn’t matter, if someone didn’t know who to call for help, they called us.  We strived to be there for them in every way we could.  

Were we perfect?  Of course not.  Yet that remained our goal.  Our motto was based on our priorities, “Safety, Security, and Service.”  It might sound odd to have a hospitality operation putting customer service last, but if you can’t provide the first two, the last one suffers.

You could start a shift in the valley, and end up going to Tuolumne Meadows, Wawona, or beyond.   We’ve had officers and staff unexpectedly go to Lone Pine, Sacramento, San Francisco, the coast, Fresno, Bakersfield, and points in between.  When absolutely critical, we were faster than FedEx for guest and company needs.  

Investigations grew to be a key resource and asset for employees, guests, the company, and NPS.  Not to mention the variety of training we provided onsite and in our Briefing Room.

Firefighters were practiced, prepared, and ready.  They prided themselves at beating NPS Fire to calls the vast majority of the time, including years ago, one above their firehouse.  The Engine 7 crew trained far more often than NPS, and knew the inside of our facilities and what they contained extremely well.   

Yet, thanks to the combined “insight and wisdom” of both Aramark and NPS leadership, the 80+ year old department was gutted, then dissolved.

“Fare thee well.”   

Chief of Security & Fire

2000-2018

Engine 51 | Engine 7 History

As I was perusing Facebook recently, a conversation popped up about Engine 51 and it’s time in Yosemite.  There was a lot of information about it, and most of it correct.  There were a couple folks who were quite stubborn in their erred information.  Several subject matter experts through in good information.  This was my response.  

A little Engine 7/Engine 51 action while in Yosemite.  The Engine stayed very busy.  Toned out at the same time as NPS Fire, the Engine responded to an average of 120 calls for service each year.  

The most frequent calls were landing zone (LZ) coverage and “burnt toast” calls (more later).  

In the summer months, E-7 often responded to the Ahwahnee Meadow (and occasionally El Cap Meadow) for the park assigned NPS Helicopter 551, or CHP 40 out of Fresno, for back country or technical rescues and medicals.  Those calls often involved a second ship coming into the park, a medical helicopter, to transport those injured and other medical issues to a hospital in Modesto, Calif.  The E-7 crew has handled LZ coverage for as many as 7 helicopters at once on the ground.  LZ calls occasionally occurred multiple times a day.  Since E-7’s firefighters were long term full time employees in their own jobs, business interruptions were common.  Both the Curry Company and Delaware North understood and accepted it as a normal business practice—and in fact was a point of pride and success for the executive management teams.  

More often in the winter when windows and doors are closed up, and although the nickname itself was only accurate a small percentage of the time, the other prevalent response was nicknamed the “burnt toast call.”   The company employed some awesome chefs.  Yet in housing buildings with shared kitchens, a small percentage of non-chef employees were not always as safety conscious in the dorms’ shared kitchens.  

In all seriousness, at all times of day, these calls got jumped on fast because of the huge potential of loss in residents lives and structures.  All firefighters lived in or adjacent to these residential areas, and when toned out to respond would pass by a location while running to the firehouse and could give an initial size up.  

The Engine responded to all the other types of calls too, traffic collisions, fire alarm activations, spills, and such with an average of at least one working structure fire a year.  Although some firefighters were EMTs, a pure medical call was not in its normal response protocols.  

Over its history, the crew had a proud tradition of consistently beating NPS Fire to calls, including one in a building that housed the NPS Fire Valley Engines.  It trained twice as much as NPS Fire, and since they were company employees, usually knew a structure’s layout and operations much better than a NPS Firefighter.   

Sadly, without the knowledge of both the concession and NPS Fire Chief’s, when Aramark took over the contract from Delaware North in 2016, Aramark leadership quietly cut a side deal with park management to pay NPS an annual amount to eliminate Engine 7.  In 2018, after 80 plus years of service to the community, Station 7 was silently decommissioned.  

David Stone

Chief of Security and Fire, Delaware North | Aramark

2000-2018