The locker rooms that Oregon and Ohio State wore to the College Football Playoff quarterfinals are now a command center and briefing room. Outside, firefighters and National Guard troops mill about the vast crowd of more than 90,000 football fans three weeks ago.
The sprawling lawns that were recently home to dozens of tailgate parties now hold hundreds of tiny puppy tents.

First responders walk past tents set up in the parking lot at the Rose Bowl.
(Alan J. Shaben/Los Angeles Times)
For more than a century, the Rose Bowl has hosted some of the world's most important sporting events, from five Super Bowls and two World Cup Finals to the College Football Playoffs and two Olympic Games.
Now, this historic stadium is making a different history.
Hours after the Eaton fire first broke out, the area around the stadium was turned into a stage that nearly 4,000 first responders now call home.
“It's probably not the best event we've ever had, but it's probably the most important,” said Rose Bowl chief executive Jens Weeden.
Overnight, the stadium and surrounding parking lots were transformed into a small town. There are massive trailers with private bedrooms, small bathroom facilities, a laundry, a medical facility, a physical therapy trailer and two kitchens that serve thousands of meals a day. There is an area for fueling and repairing fire trucks, a peer counseling center, a McDonald's, a coffee kiosk, and even a place to drop off and pick up mail.
And everything is free.
“We've always said we're in the events business, and this is an event. Our team is leaning into this,” Weeden said.
Tim Sell, Pasadena's deputy fire chief, said the Eaton fire broke out very quickly, and Altadena's Charles S. It surpassed its first command post at Farnsworth Park by a few hours. But the 200 acres of open space surrounding the Rose Bowl are already less than 10 minutes away from electricity, water, lamp towers, bathrooms and fire.
So he called his friend Weeden and asked if there was room for several hundred fire trucks and two thousand firefighters.

California National Guard soldiers shave in a shower truck at the Rose Bowl and take a break from guard duty at the Eaton Fire.
(Alan J. Shaben/Los Angeles Times)
“The command post started as a hood [Chevy] Tahoe,” Weeden said. “They had their map, they were doing their work, we opened the bathrooms and made sure they had access to water and everything they needed.
“It got to the point where they were a self-sufficient city.”
If the city had a mayor, it would be for sale.
“Did they say that was my nickname?” The deputy fire chief said with a laugh. “Because I know all the Rose Bowl people and we plan all our events here, I know what the capabilities are here. So when they go, 'Hey, we have this problem,' I know who you should talk to.
Still, even Cell — who didn't sleep during the first two days of the fire — wonders what he and those Rose Bowl folks managed to pull off under tough conditions.
“I've never seen anything like it,” he said. “I don't know that there's another place like the Rose Bowl, this flat track with so many places where they can go and set everything up. It's really a blessing.”
On Friday afternoon, the tents lined up in the stadium's shade were surrounded by a colorful collection of red, green and yellow fire trucks and water tankers from a dozen states and Canada. Twice a day, those trucks line up in front of sand-colored Humvees and police cruisers, and when another line of vehicles turns up, it snakes out of parking lots to mark the end of a 12-hour shift and the start of another.
“It grabs you by the throat,” said Brian Brantley, vice president of advancement for the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, who lives in a home overlooking the stadium. “All these people are coming here to fight this thing.”
For those returning, it's not like coming home. But they didn't really tighten it up.
“They've been doing a great job of taking care of us and bringing in logistical needs from sleeping trailers to kitchens,” said Steve Wallace, an Oregon firefighter who has been on the front lines since Monday. “They really make sure they check all the boxes to make sure we're taken care of here.”
“You definitely don't want for anything when you're here,” said Rob Bartosi, an interagency resource representative for the British Columbia Wildfire Service, which has 22 firefighters in Pasadena. “You don't need something as complex as this on a small fire. But obviously with what happened and the number of different agencies that responded, you have to expand.
As a result, the parking lots that Weyden has driven to work every day for the past 12 years are unrecognizable as he walks past tents and trailers on Fridays. To be honest, he shouldn't be here. With the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game in the rearview mirror, he should be in Sandpoint, Idaho.
“I'm usually on vacation,” he said. “It doesn't matter though. I will find another time.
Hours after the fire, Weeden's family was alerted that they would have to evacuate their nearby home, so his wife packed her 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 serving a safety mission in the Eden Fire.
(Alan J. Shaben/Los Angeles Times)
But he wasn't the only one projecting the needs of the Rose Bowl's new city. Weeden said about 60 people go to work every day, even if the fire victims themselves. For them, work has become personal.
The night the fire started, Dominic Corey, the stadium's director of community relations, helped set up a command center at the Rose Bowl while his daughter's home — and thousands of others — burned to the ground a mile away.
“It affected my community. I was born and brought up in this town,'' he said.
Bobby Childs, a security guard, rushed to the stadium to open the gates when his home in Altadena burned down, leaving him with only the uniform he was wearing.
“Wake me up. pinch me Just a dream,” said Childs, who buried his wife in September. “Would you believe it?”
But he remained at his post. He finds solace in the Rose Bowl, where he is 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.”
No one should. But a spark and wind had other ideas.