The bright, colorful cover reads like a camp brochure: “Experience the Great Outdoors,’’ it blares, showing a pitched tent before a campfire on a bucolic grassy expanse.

But flipping to the calendar’s inside pages reveals photos of tattered tents and tarps clustered in a series of homeless campsites along sidewalks, roads and fields in East Portland.

Beside each photo is commentary, urging readers to “get your reservations early!’’ or promising “expansive views of a cinder-block wall’’ with a caution that “sanitation facilities are quite limited.’’

The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained a copy of the calendar that previously had been only briefly described. The Portland Fire & Rescue Bureau announced an internal investigation last month after the calendar was found hanging inside Station No. 7.

On one page titled “Cherry Blossom Park,’’ photos capture tents pitched near Southeast 96th Avenue and Main Street and a caption notes: “Rules? What rules? This secondary campground is nestled against a mature greenspace (i.e. bioswale) with tons of room for all your friends and their junk!’’ It shows a campsite beyond a sign that says, “No Trespassing.’’

Another page highlights a campground called “Safeway Park” and touts it as a “year-round favorite’’ with “constantly changing scenery.” It says: “parking abounds,’’ with “single and group sites’’ available in the lot of the former supermarket on Northeast 122nd Avenue, between Glisan and Stark streets.

The calendar made by one or more firefighters, which pokes fun at homeless camps around the city, is now the focus of an internal investigation by Portland Fire Bureau's Professional Standards deputy chief.

Investigators are trying to determine who created the calendar and are expected to complete their inquiry by mid-March, said Fire Lt. Rich Chatman, bureau spokesman.

Fire Chief Sara Boone said the calendar “is not reflective of who we are or what we stand for.”

“Working at Portland Fire & Rescue is about service, community, and sacrifice,” she said in a statement last week to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “As fire chief, I will address any issues that get in the way of those three pillars of commitment that I know our firefighters take extremely seriously during every hour of every shift.”

Fire officials haven’t publicly identified the firefighter who made the calendar. It surfaced at one of the city’s busiest stations, in the Mill Park neighborhood at 1500 S.E. 122nd Ave. Twenty-four firefighters are assigned to Station 7.

Firefighters from other stations apparently expressed interest in having one of their own, according to Fire Bureau members.

City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees the Fire Bureau, has denounced the calendar for disparaging homeless people, while Alan Ferschweiler, president of the Portland Fire Fighters Association, said the calendar may be insensitive but highlights friction between firefighters and homeless people as well as an “overstressed work force.’’

Firefighters usually deal with low-level medical calls at homeless camps or put out fires at the camps. Because Portland police don’t respond as often to those calls, firefighters often feel unsafe or face aggression from people who are abusing drugs or alcohol, Ferschweiler said.

In 2018-19, the Fire Bureau responded to 7,810 homeless-related calls, up from 5,783 the prior fiscal year, according to bureau records. The majority were fire rescue and emergency medical calls.

Shortly after The Oregonian/OregonLive first wrote about the calendar in January, Street Roots, an advocacy group for homeless people that publishes a weekly newspaper, and the fire chief agreed to organize a sit-down between representatives of the homeless community and firefighters.

Three Street Roots vendors, homeless people who sell the paper on street corners, talked with firefighters Tremaine Clayton, Lisa Reslock and Brett Zimmerman, at Street Roots’ office on Northwest Davis Street, said Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots.

“Some of the folks who are unhoused talked about a need for compassion from first responders, and also an understanding that in crises, it’s not always easy,’’ Sand said.

The firefighters shared how it can be discouraging to encounter systemic poverty because they can’t do much about it while at the same they’re geared toward finding solutions, according to Sand.

“When firefighters respond to calls at the homeless camps and they don’t see a fix to the problems they witness, that can be heavy and that can be frustrating because we want to help and we want to solve things,” Zimmerman told the group, according to a column Sand wrote in the Street Roots paper. “And I think that frustration can make you feel pretty helpless, and there’s positive ways to deal with that, and there’s less positive ways. Humor can be both.”

The calendar, Zimmerman said, was “more harmful than constructive.”

Clayton told the group most of the photos captured public property. He’s manager of the bureau’s Community Health Assessment Team, which reaches out to people who overuse 911 to reduce their reliance on first-responder services.

“We’re here to provide a service but we don’t have the resources because (the resources) just don’t exist in our system,” he said, according to the column. “It’s a bigger systemic issue. So I can see where they might be looking at that as ‘let’s make light of this situation to ease our tension.’ That’s not an excuse at all. There’s a lot of people that encounter these high stress situations and find other ways to cope with them.”

Reslock said the calendar hurt the Fire Bureau. “One of the things we want everyone to know first off is that our organization is made up of people similar to the community, and so when stuff like this happens, it hurts us as an organization when we have 750 people that really love our jobs, we love being in the community,’’ she said, according to the column.

Street Roots vendor Gary Barker told the group that when “you are staying in a tent, you’ve really got a lack of feeling of value” and urged greater communication between people who are homeless and those who aren’t.

The fire chief credited Hardesty’s office and Street Roots for making the meeting possible, "for providing a safe place so that all parties can heal.''

“I’m hopeful that Portland Fire & Rescue can turn this calendar incident into a springboard for changes in training and expectations’’ with an emphasis on showing compassion, Sand said.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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