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Barely open two weeks when the lightning-sparked fires ignited, the Gaia Anderson Hotel & Spa found itself hosting 80-100 key Cal-FIRE personnel including Ruben Grijalva, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

A silver lining to all of those orange and brown clouds of smoke kicked up by wildfires has also fueled a mini-economic boom in and around Anderson.

Two of the largest recipients of state and federal largesse were the Shasta District Fair and Gaia Anderson Hotel, Restaurant & Spa. But there was plenty of additional business to be spread around to other establishments, reports indicate.

The day-to-day rental by Cal-FIRE of nearly all of the Shasta District Fair’s grounds in Anderson for use as an incident command center yielded a negotiated sliding scale of from $3,800 to $6,800 per day, depending upon the number of firefighters and related personnel for which the command center was responsible, said Chris Workman, chief executive officer for the fairgrounds.

“On average, we received about $4,000 per day for the 35 days they were on our fairgrounds, but we have to deduct out of those nearly $140,000 in payments our expenses for utilities such as electricity, water, sewage and garbage, which are substantial,” Workman said.

While inmate crews, private contractors and some firefighting crews slept in tents on the fairgrounds, most of the Cal-FIRE management team took up occupancy at the Gaia Anderson Hotel, which held its grand opening just two weeks before the June 20 lightning storms ignited 158 fires in the mountains surrounding the upper Sacramento River Valley.

“It’s been a huge blessing for us,” said Steve Kinder, general manager of the Gaia hotel. “We housed top fire officials from all over the western states and they filled 80 to 100 of our 120 rooms each night for 35 nights. And we didn’t even have our laundry facilities open yet,” Kinder said.

Filling that gap was All States Fire Support, owned by Steve and Jan Daniels of Cottonwood. No sooner had the incident command center opened June 23 at the fairgrounds and the Daniels were set up to commercially process up to 250 pounds of laundry each hour with just one of the company’s two trailer-mounted washer/dryer stations.

“We help keep the poison oak in camp down by providing laundry services for the folks out on the fire lines,” Jan Daniels explained. “It is a big deal, because when they come in, the poison oak oil is all over their clothes and they want it washed off right away before they even climb into their sleeping bags.”

The Daniels provide a 24-hour turnaround and easily put in a 12-hour day, seven days a week during fire season, she said.

Meanwhile, in Anderson, Mark Wyman, who recently purchased the Big Town Hero deli, found a way for his crew members to make and serve about 5,000 sandwiches to famished firefighters over a six-day period.

“It was a very good boost” to a business that normally would serve up that many sandwiches in an entire month, Wyman explained.