The locker rooms where the teams from Oregon and Ohio State dressed for the College Football Playoff quarterfinals are now a command center and a briefing room. Outside, firefighters and National Guard troops mill about the wide concourse where, less than three weeks ago, more than 90,000 football fans gathered.
And the sprawling grass fields that were recently home to dozens of tailgate parties now hold hundreds of tiny pup tents.
First responders walk past tents set up in a parking lot at the Rose Bowl.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
For more than a century, the Rose Bowl has staged some of the most important sporting events in the world, from five Super Bowls and two World Cup finals to college football playoffs and two Olympic Games.
Now, the historic stadium is making history of a different kind.
Hours after the Eaton fire first flared, the area around the stadium was converted into a staging area that nearly 4,000 first responders now call home.
“This is probably not the most iconic event that we’ve ever hosted. But it could be the most important,” said Jens Weiden, the Rose Bowl’s chief executive.
Overnight, the stadium and surrounding parking lots were converted into a small city. There are massive trailers with private sleeping quarters, portable shower facilities, a laundry, a medical facility, a physical therapy trailer and two kitchens serving thousands of meals a day. There’s an area to fuel and repair fire trucks, a peer counseling center, a McDonald’s, a coffee kiosk, even a place to send and pick up mail.
And everything is free.
“We always say we’re in the events business, and this is an event. Our team just leaned into this,” Weiden said.
Tim Sell, Pasadena’s deputy fire chief, said the Eaton fire exploded so quickly his department outgrew its first command post in Altadena’s Charles S. Farnsworth Park in a matter of hours. But the 200 acres of open space around the Rose Bowl, already equipped with electricity, water, light towers, bathrooms and located less than 10 minutes away from the fire, was perfect.
So he called his friend Weiden and asked whether he had room for several hundred firetrucks and a couple of thousand firefighters.
California National Guard soldiers shave at a shower truck at the Rose Bowl as they rest from working security on the Eaton fire.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“The command post started on the hood of a [Chevy] Tahoe,” Weiden said. “They had their map out and they were doing their thing and we were opening bathrooms, making sure they had access to water and all the things they need.
“It sort of got to the point where they were a self-sufficient city.”
And if that city had a mayor, it would be Sell.
“Did they tell you that’s my nickname?” the deputy fire chief said with a chuckle. “Because I know all the Rose Bowl people and we plan all of our events here, I know what the capabilities are here. So when they go, ‘Hey, we’ve got this problem,’ I know who you need to talk to.”
Still, even Sell — who didn’t sleep the first two days of the fire — is surprised by what he and those Rose Bowl people have been able to pull off under trying circumstances.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s another place like the Rose Bowl that has this flat footprint with multiple lots where they could go and set everything up. It’s really been a blessing.”
On Friday afternoon, the tents lined up in the shadow of the stadium were surrounded by a colorful collection of red, green and yellow fire trucks and water tankers from more than a dozen states and Canada. Twice a day, dozens of those trucks line up in front of sand-colored Humvees and police cruisers and snake out of the parking lots as another line of vehicles returns, marking the end of one 12-hour shift and the start of another.
“It catches your throat,” said Brian Brantley, the vice president for advancement for the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, who lives in a house that looks down on the stadium. “All these people coming here to work together to fight this thing.”
For those returning, it’s not exactly like coming home. But they’re not really roughing it either.
“They do really good at taking care of us and bringing in the logistical needs, from the sleeping trailers to kitchens,” said Steve Wallace, an Oregon firefighter who has been on the front lines since Monday. “They really kind of make sure they check all the boxes to make sure we’re taken care of here.”
“You’re definitely not wanting for anything while you’re here,” added Rob Bardossy, the interagency resource representative from the British Columbia Wildfire Service, which has 22 firefighters in Pasadena. “On a small fire you don’t need something as complex as this. But obviously with what’s transpired and the number of different agencies that have responded, you’ve got to expand.”
As a result, the parking lots Weiden has driven through on his way to work every day for the past 12 years were unrecognizable as he walked about the tents and trailers Friday. To be honest, he’s not even supposed to be here. With the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game in the rearview mirror, he’s supposed to be in Sandpoint, Idaho.
“I usually am on vacation,” he said. “It’s all right, though. I’ll find another time.”
Hours into the fire, Weiden’s family was warned they might have to evacuate their nearby home, so his wife packed his suitcase. More than a week later, he still doesn’t know what’s in it because he hasn’t had time to look.
“It’s like a time capsule,” he said.
A California National Guard soldier rests after working security on the Eaton fire.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
But he’s not the only one who has put the needs of the Rose Bowl’s new city ahead of his own. Weiden said about 60 people have been showing up to work every day despite the fact some are fire victims themselves. For them, the work has become personal.
On the night the fire started, Dominick Correy, the stadium’s director of community relations, was at the Rose Bowl helping set up the command center while his daughter’s house — and thousands of others — burned to the ground just a mile away.
“This affected my community. I’m born and raised in this town,” he said.
As Bobby Childs, a security guard, rushed to the stadium to open the gates, his house in Altadena burned down, leaving him only with the uniform he was wearing.
“Wake me up. Pinch me. Just a nightmare,” said Childs, who buried his wife in September. “Would you believe it?”
Yet he remained at his post just the same. He said he finds comfort at the Rose Bowl, where he’s surrounded by people who have fought so hard to save other people’s homes.
“That’s why I came back,” he said Friday. “I shouldn’t be working today.”
Neither should anyone. But a spark and the wind had other ideas.
