The Pets that Bind Us

It’s really challenging to own a pet when you’re a wildland firefighter. 

Even more so when you’re single and/or live alone.  As pet owners, I think I can speak for us all when I say it’s a struggle between the desire to have a pet (or five) that brings so much joy and companionship and wondering if it’s unfair to the pet with being gone so much and so often.  Even when I have loving and dependable care for them, I still feel guilty.

When I was on the hotshot crew, my mom kept my dog, Ruby, and my sister kept my cat, Ethel.  My mom absolutely spoiled her granddog.  I’d asked Mom to not feed Ruby any junk, but after a while she didn’t even try to hide

Ethel, Ruby, Me 1993

it anymore, telling me Ruby loved Hardee’s hash browns.  About three months into the season, when I called to check in on Ruby, Mom said, “She’s really depressed.  I think she thinks you died.”  Ugh.  Mom said she had an idea and held the phone up to Ruby’s ear so I could talk to her.  Holding in the tears, I told her what a good girl she was, how much I loved her, and that I would be home soon.  When Mom picked the phone back up, she said, “I think that helped.  She seems better.”  Lawd.

After the hotshot crew I went to work on the Apalachicola NF in Florida.

I was single and still had Ruby and Ethel.  When I moved to the very small town of Bristol it was difficult to find a place to rent that allowed pets.  In much of the rural South, at least back then, it’s a bit unusual for dogs and cats to live inside homes with their owners.  Fortunately, I was able to convince a prospective landlord to allow me to pay more a month if I could have my pets.  He wanted to meet Ruby, and I had a good talk with her beforehand that she needed to be on her best behavior.  She sealed the deal with her good manners, calm disposition, and adorable good looks (she was a small, curly-haired Springer Spaniel).

In Florida we didn’t have an “off” season; we fought fire and implemented prescribed burns all year round.  The guys at work, nearly all locals, got to meet Ruby and started referring to her as my “young’un” because they saw how much we loved each other.  As a single woman in a very small town, she was the bright spot I came home to every day.  I took her with me everywhere I could, and I would even take her with me to training if I had to travel and could drive.  She was always quiet and well-behaved in hotel rooms.  When it wasn’t too hot, I’d take her trail running with me, making sure to steer her clear of ponds in case a hungry alligator was lurking.  She loved water and swimming, so it was always a challenge to keep her away from those gator holes.

I moved down to Florida in January of 1998, the year of an historic and unprecedented fire season. The Governor declared a State of Emergency on June 14, but up on the Apalachicola NF our first “notable” wildfire started on Mother’s Day.  We were running and gunning from then through July.  Although I spent nearly every night in my own bed, we were working 16+ hour days fighting lightning-caused and arson fires.  And, back then, we only got one day off after 14.  Well, Ruby wasn’t having it, and I felt like shit that she was alone for such long stretches.  I’d get home late, dirty and tired, and sit on my front steps in my Nomex pants and sweat-stained t-shirt throwing her ball, Ruby happily chasing it into the darkness beyond the porch light.

I remember one evening in particular.  It had been a long day, as usual, and I’d played ball with Ruby after I got home. I had just gotten out of the shower when the phone rang.  Yep, another fire, and they needed everyone to come back in.  Ruby watched me get dressed and then turned around and slowly walked into the living room and jumped on the couch.  Her sad brown eyes followed me around the house as I put on my boots and threw some food into my little Igloo cooler.  Our routine every time I left her alone was to tell her “Guard the house,” and then give her a kiss on her soft, furry forehead.  I walked up to her as she sat on the couch.  “Guard the house, Ruby.”  As I leaned in to kiss her, she turned her head away from me.  Knife in the heart.  I felt horrible leaving her.

I didn’t take any off-forest assignments that summer because the show was in Florida.  And by the winter I’d found myself a boyfriend who later became my husband.  Oh, and acquired another cat and another dog (strays, what could I do?).  Though this man had never owned a pet of his own (who grows up without a dog, a cat, even a goldfish?), he loved my pets as if they were his.  While he was also in fire, it was a bit easier to care for the pets with two of us.  Especially taking fire assignments or traveling for training. Neither of us ever wanted kids, but our pets were our family.

I use to joke that the main reasons I got married were, 1. someone to take care of the pets while I was gone, and 2. someone to remove spiders from inside the house. 

Matt left fire for timber, and so he wasn’t traveling for work nearly as much as I was.  Even though I missed the pets when I was away, I felt good knowing they were loved and happy with their papa in their own home.  I remember once in Utah I came home from being gone for a couple of weeks and our cat Bristol, who loved me beyond measure, walked up to me and proceeded to turn around and sit down with her back to me.  She wouldn’t acknowledge me except to say, in her bossy little way, “Fuck you for leaving me; I now withhold my love.”  I told her, out loud of course because she knew English, that she was only hurting herself by missing out on my cuddles and kisses.  She eventually listened and stopped giving me the cold-shoulder every time I came home.

As Ruby aged and her health began to fail, Matt and I made the gut-wrenching decision to put her to sleep.  We were fortunate our kind, small-town veterinarian came to the house to send her over the Rainbow Bridge.  She was Matt’s first pet, and though she was my soul-dog, I think he cried harder than I did.

Years later, my mom died somewhat unexpectedly and left her beloved cat, Lucy, without a home.  It’s a long story, but Matt and I ended up taking Lucy.  She suffered from severe asthma and didn’t want anything to do with our four other pets.  We made her a cozy space in our guest room with her own litterbox.  She could come and go as she pleased but spent most of her time lying in the sunny window on one of Mom’s towels or on the bed.  Matt would brush her nearly every night.  She was content, but we both knew she missed Mom terribly.  Her asthma got worse, and the dust-free litter, special food, and meds eventually stopped helping.  Matt was out of town when I had to make the decision to end Lucy’s suffering.  I had her at the vet, having rushed her in, still wearing my uniform.  Though my heart was breaking, it seemed appropriate that it be only me to send her across the Rainbow Bridge.  I wept deeply as I said good-bye to Lucy, and I know I was finally saying good-bye to Mom.

When my marriage broke up, Matt and I went through what many couples do during these times.

The dividing up of  belongings exercise was amicable, and we didn’t argue over any items.  We even divided up the simple wooden boxes that held the ashes of our deceased pets (Ruby, Ethel, Henry, Lucy, Kiley, Bristol, and Fred). But then it came to the pets. At that time, we had two dogs, Coco and Penny, and two cats, Kevin and Bo. I was the one who decided to leave the marriage, and I was also moving away to Oregon for a job as Fire Staff Officer/Forest Fire Chief on the Umpqua NF.  I would be back to being a single person, living alone, and in a demanding fire management position.  I suggested I take the cats and Matt keep the dogs.  It would be hard enough on the cats, but I knew it would be cruel to take the dogs.  At first Matt resisted.  He said he didn’t want any of the pets.  He felt like they would just

Kevin

be sad reminders of our once happy life together.  I was worried about him being along and told him as much.  He shook his head. I remember sitting at the dining room table and telling him he would need the dogs to come home to.  To get him out of house and out walking.  And that it would be so unfair to them to go with me.  Then I said one of the meaner things I said to him during our break-up.  “How can you just abandon the dogs?”  He got angry and said that wasn’t it. He just couldn’t imagine having them without me.  Eventually he agreed to keep the dogs (and was very happy he did), and I know he loved and cared for them as I would have.

The day I left Matt, our house, and our dogs for Oregon stays with me.  I was crying hard and was just beside myself over having to say goodbye.  To him, to our life together, my job, my friends.  But maybe most of all the dogs.  I bent down to hug and kiss Coco and Penny, inhaling their individual smells of slobber, soil, and sunshine, telling them how much I loved them and how sorry I was.  I cried into their soft fur leaving them wet with my grief.  I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see them again.  It’s not like I was moving across town.  I left, full of guilt and feeling like I’d abandoned them along with Matt.

I was fortunate that I got to go back to Asheville for work at least once a year (up until COVID).  Matt was gracious in letting me see Coco and Penny.  They were always happy to see me which warmed my heart.  We’d walk them around the neighborhood or meet for a beer at a local brewery, dogs in tow.  It was also a nice opportunity for Matt and I to talk and try to be friends again.  The topics were usually pretty superficial – jobs, families, friends – but it was nice to stay connected.  Back in Oregon, when our/my cat, Kevin, started having some health issues, I made sure to let Matt know. When I had to make the gut-wrenching decision to end Kevin’s suffering, I texted Matt, and he supported my decision.

I moved back to Asheville about a year and half after I retired, in May of 2022.

It’s a fantastic place to live, closer to my family, and full of good friends.  Coco and Penny were both still hanging in there but were also getting pretty old.  After I settled in, I asked Matt if I could pick them up and bring them to my house.  I hadn’t seen them in three years, and when I walked up onto the porch Penny pranced and whined seeing me.  Coco was more reserved.  Her eyes were a bit cloudy with cataracts but she slowly wagged her tail once she sniffed me.  At my house they were both pretty stressed.  I took them into the fenced back-yard and they ran around a bit, smelling all the new smells.  Inside they never really settled down but were anxious the entire time.  I loaded them up and took them back to Matt’s a little earlier than planned.  I told him it was just too stressful for them, that I wouldn’t take them to my place again.  He understood and told me I could come see them any time I wanted.  I cried a little on the way home.  They weren’t “our” dogs any longer; they were Matt’s.  Which was okay.  All our lives had kept moving forward.  Matt had a long-term girlfriend who was kind and loving to the dogs (and to Matt).  I was still navigating retirement and what that looked like for me and also traveling quite a lot.

One day in early January 2023 Matt called me to tell me Coco wasn’t doing well.  She seemed disoriented and lethargic and it had come on pretty suddenly.  Like our other chow-mix, Kiley, Coco had been healthy her whole life, so we both knew it was probably serious.  He told me he had made an

Coco in her prime

appointment for her at the vet but suggested I come see her before in case the news wasn’t good.  When I got to the house Penny greeted me exuberantly, but Coco barely took notice.  I petted her and spoke softly to her.  Matt and I drank tea and talked about a lot of things.  Work stuff, old friends, politics.  We caught up on each other’s families.  It was nice and what I had always wanted, and I think it was for Matt, too.  When our life together was shattering, we had both expressed how we’d hoped someday we could be friends, or at least friendly, again.

I decided to hike to an unstaffed fire lookout the next day while Matt took Coco to the vet.  I wanted to be in the sun and fresh air, in the healing embrace of nature, if the news was bad.  When I was nearly back to my car, Matt texted.  Coco was in late-stage kidney failure.  There was nothing left to do but say good-bye.  I thanked him for the time with her and asked him to please tell her I loved her, and he promised he would.  I cried all the way home, sad but grateful.  Grateful to have had Coco, grateful for Matt for taking care of her and loving her after I left, and grateful to Matt for letting me see her one last time.

Sweet little Bo

Later that summer Matt brought Penny over to see me.  She was getting old and had the beginnings of doggie dementia.  Matt got to see Bo who was also struggling with chronic illness.  We talked and it was easy and nice.  Later, when Bo let me know it was time to let him go, I texted Matt and offered to let him come see him.  He declined as he’d recently seen him, but sent his love to both of us.  I held on to that love as I let Bo go.

I would run into Matt and his girlfriend a few times, and Matt would give me updates on Penny. She was had dementia which manifested itself as pretty severe restlessness and was on some new meds that helped calm her anxiety.  We both knew it was temporary.  I sent Matt an article about making the decision to let a pet go, hoping he would find some comfort in what I knew would still be difficult, even if it were time.

Just after last Thanksgiving Matt texted me about Penny.   He’d made an appointment with one of the visiting vets to come to the house the next day and asked if I wanted to come over to see her.  We agreed on a

Penny, always cold

time.  And then he warned me.  “She’s not the same dog, Riv.  She’s not herself.”  When I arrived, Penny didn’t really acknowledge me.  She was pacing the house.  I put my hand out and she tried to nibble my fingers.  Then she started pacing again.  “She’s like that pretty much all the time now,” said Matt.  She was keeping him awake with her pacing for hours each night.  He was exhausted, and her quality of life was greatly diminished.  We sat and drank tea and talked for a couple of hours.  When it was time for me to leave, I said good-bye to Penny, hugging her as she tried to pull away, and told her how much I loved her.  The next day Matt texted me after Penny crossed the Bridge.  He said it couldn’t have been more peaceful or gentle.  I was glad for both of them.

Penny was the last pet we’d shared.  And her passing signified more than just the loss of a dear pet.  It was like the last thread that still connected us had broken.  I cried for Penny, but I also cried for Matt and me and us.  It had been seven years since we’d split, and we’d both moved on.  But this felt different from the other pets’ passings somehow.  Our pets had been reasons for us to stay in touch.  Reasons for us to sit together and drink tea and talk.  Reasons for us to still share a connection.  And now that was gone.  I think Penny’s dying felt like the last chapter.  The final good-bye to my marriage.

But I’m fortunate my pets have helped me connect to my neighbors.  I have some amazing neighborhood kids who will pet-sit for short overnights, two nights max, and their parents keep keys to my house just in case.  The couple who lives kitty-corner has a key to my house, and I have one to theirs.  I can text them to please let Ranger in (or out) if I get stuck somewhere, and I’ve fed their cats and walked their dog numerous times when they needed a hand.  I’ve met many of my other neighbors while they’ve walked their dogs past my house.  Confession, I usually remember the dogs’ names way before I do the peoples’.

Our 74-year-old neighbor, Sue, died unexpectedly in her home a few weeks ago.  Her sweet, tiny dog, Squirt, was by her side.  They were both an important presence in our neighborhood, as Sue would walk Squirt at least twice a day, every day.  On cold days Squirt would be dressed in a variety of colorful little jackets.  Sue had no surviving family, yet four different families in our tight-knit neighborhood offered to adopt that little dog.  I think all of us were relieved that Squirt would remain in our lives, in our neighborhood . She belonged here.  At Sue’s memorial, hosted by the wonderful neighbors who live across the street from me, we dressed in bright colors and many people brought their dogs, because Sue loved both.  Squirt came with her new parents, dressed smartly in a pink unicorn outfit, and we all fawned over her.  It was a bit cold and rainy, and as many of my lovely neighbors told funny and sweet stories about Sue, I held Squirt inside

Squirt and me

my jacket to keep her warm and dry.  It had been about three months since Penny died, and I still felt a little sad sometimes.  But in that moment of remembering Sue, as I felt Squirt’s warmth against me, I reminded myself to be grateful.  For not only the unconditional love and companionship of all my pets, past and present, but also for the connections they provide to other people in our lives.  To our co-workers, families, our current and former partners.  And to our friends and neighbors who love our pets and let us love theirs.

Being a wildland firefighter and pet owner is no easy road, and we all must rely on our families, friends, and neighbors to help us.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in wildland fire, probably just in life, it also takes a village to care for our pets, especially so us single folks have someone to come home to.  What gifts these furry little beings are! And how fortunate we are to get to spend a short time with each of them and cherish the connections they provide.

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
― Anatole France

PSSSST. There are Great Therapists Who Don’t Know Shit About Wildland Fire

There, I said it.  It’s an unpopular sentiment right now with all the calls for “culturally competent” therapists in wildland fire.

And, I have an embarrassing confession; the first time I heard that term I thought it meant therapists experienced with Native Americans. Come to find out, in our profession it means therapists experienced with first responders, more specifically wildland firefighters.

Of course, therapists who understand the work we do would be ideal!  But the reality is there just aren’t enough out there, especially in the rural areas where many of us live.  However, there are some excellent clinicians who specialize in relationships, depression, trauma, etc,  and they don’t need to know what you do for living in order to help you.  Please trust me.

What’s most disturbing to me is how many wildland firefighters I hear insist that only “culturally competent” clinicians can help us.  And my fear is that this message may be resulting in many wildland firefighters who need help not seeking any help at all if they can’t find one of these specialists.  I’m going to focus on treatment for trauma in this essay, but there are many therapists out there who can help with all of life’s challenges.  And please stop self-diagnosing PTSD.  It’s not a given that people who are involved with or exposed to traumatic events will develop PTSD.  And you don’t have to have PTSD to still need a bit of help working through trauma, whether from your childhood or an accident at work.

Here’s the thing – even the most experienced, culturally competent, trauma-trained clinician still may not be able to help you.  What I mean by that is, not everyone is a good fit or the right fit.  They just may not be a good fit for you.  And, frankly, you may not be a good fit for them.  It’s critical that you and your therapist form a professional bond based on honesty, hard work, and agreed-upon treatment and treatment goals.  As I learned from my own mental health journey, which I’ve previously written about, a therapist who is really great at treating trauma is more important to me than someone who understands precisely what I do for a living.  It’s much easier to “teach” a therapist what wildland firefighters do, and the specific issues we face, than to train a therapist in how to treat trauma in its many forms — that can take years.

Our brains and bodies process trauma regardless of what caused the trauma. Our brains don’t care that the roar of a real train sounds just like the roar of the fire from which we ran for our lives that one time in Idaho.  Our amygdala just knows that it’s time to recognize sensations that share cues with past trauma.  It functions with the intent to keep us alive.

When I was having my own little mental health crisis a few years back, I was fortunate to find a really fantastic therapist who specialized in trauma but didn’t know jack about wildland fire (or any other first responder type work).  I was on a major self-destructive adventure, and the important part of my treatment was addressing the way I was processing (or not) past traumas.  Sure, I had to talk about what had happened, but my therapist was able to connect the dots she needed to.  That therapy was more short-termed (intensive EMDR) because it was primarily to help me immediately stop blowing up my life.  Often times we wait until we are in crisis to seek help, and believe me, the last thing we all want to do is have to explain our work.  We just want help, and we want it right fucking now.  I also believe if you are truly in crisis, a therapist doesn’t need to know the details of your job in order to throw you a lifeline.

After I moved from NC to OR I was able to find another therapist who continued the longer-term work of saving my bacon, and she also had no experience with first responders.  She enthusiastically wanted to learn about what our profession was like and asked me to send her videos and other information to give her a peek behind the wildland fire curtain.  Those end-of-the-year-crew videos a lot of you did?  Those were really beneficial in giving her a sense of not just our culture but also of the arduous conditions in which we work.  And I told her about the length of assignments and length of fire seasons and the stressors that impact our families and our personal lives.  The physical toll it takes on our bodies from poor nutrition and lack of sleep.  The horror of watching people’s homes and business burn down, seeing injured wildlife and pets, being involved in shitty medicals, and losing friends and colleagues to the external and internal hazards.

Are there any wildland fire situations where I feel culturally competent (can we please find a different term?) clinicians are absolutely necessary?  Yes!  I believe it’s imperative when providing critical incident stress management (CISM) assistance after traumatic events.  As a trained CISM Peer Supporter, I know this is essential. And we’re fortunate the agencies are able to rely on fantastic trauma-informed clinicians for this valuable work who do have extensive experience with wildland firefighters who experience a very bad day on the job.  I’ve seen them in action and am so grateful to be a small part of it.

The federal agencies are working hard to provide mental health programs and resources for wildland firefighters, and good things are certainly happening.  However, when it all comes down to it, we are ultimately responsible for our own mental health.  Just as we are for our physical health.  If you feel like you are ready to work on your past trauma yet you can’t find someone who understands your job, please don’t throw the therapist out with the bathwater.  Give a good trauma-trained therapist a try.  Start with the Employee Assistance Program (it’s free), and ask for a trauma-trained clinician.  If the EAP doesn’t work, start Googling.  There are some really good ones out there, and you might be surprised at how much they can help you if they’re willing to learn a little about the job (and if they’re not willing, kick them to the curb and find another).  Sure, it may take a little more time, but you’re worth it.

If you are in crisis, please dial 988. We all need you here.  

Like a lonely ranger
Running through the night another stranger
You gamble or you fight
Through dust and ocean faults in our stars
Silent echoes shadows in their hearts
I throw you a lifeline
I throw you a lifeline, my friend.

From “Lifeline” by Julia Westin

My First Forest Service Boss — A Gem of a Man

Back in 2008, as some of you may remember, we had a historic lightning bust in Northern California.  In June.

I was acting Chief 1 on the Klamath NF (regular position, Chief 2), and we were getting our asses handed to us.  We, as well as most national forests in Northern CA, had numerous fires, lumped into complexes.  The lightning storm started on June 20th and lasted into the next day.  Our firefighters did an amazing job catching numerous fires across this very difficult landscape, but they just couldn’t get to all of them.  No one could’ve.  Before we knew it, we, along with our neighbors on the Shasta-Trinity NF and Six Rivers NF, were ordering Incident Management Teams (IMTs) and Area Command to assist us with the fires that escaped initial attack (IA).  Even though IMTs and Area Command come in to help, those of us working on the forest still had a ton of work to do – ongoing IA, in-briefing IMTs, working with our cooperators, holding public meetings, strategizing two and three weeks/months ahead, attending planning meetings, reviewing plans.

Even for those of us not on the fireline, we were working 14-16 hour days.  The person who had detailed behind me actually was done with his detail the day after the lightning bust.  Doug’s home unit allowed him to stay on a few more days, but with everything going on regarding the fires none of us thought to get another detailer.  We just didn’t have the bandwidth.  Fortunately, my team was made up of several high-performing bad-asses and we just pulled together.  Regardless, I was running myself ragged.  Many of the Incident Command Posts were a two- or three-hour drive from my office.   And if any of you have driven the roads on the Klamath, you know there is little margin for error.  One brief loss of situational awareness could put you right into one of the many rivers.

I was on the phone with the Regional Fire Director just about every day.  After about a month, on one of those calls, he asked me, “Riva, do you have any friends?”  I laughed and said, “It depends on the day, Ed.”  He laughed, too, and said, “What I mean is, do you have someone you can call to come out and be your buddy?  To help you with driving while you’re covering all those miles so you can return phone calls, to remind you to eat, to help you track all the meetings.  Because my best friend from Arizona is here helping me do just that.  Find yourself a friend and just place an order to get them here to help you.  Seriously, please do it.”

I knew he was right, and I so appreciated the suggestion.  But who could I get?  Hell, nearly everyone was out fighting fire.  I had to think of someone who would be free and willing to come help me.  And then I thought of Andy.  My first ever District Ranger who was now a GS-15 Regional Director in Atlanta.  I sent him an email but didn’t get an immediate response.  I called his cell phone and left a message asking if he could come out and help, my voice shaking with emotion and likely sounding a bit desperate.  Finally on Thursday, July 24th, he called me back.  “Hey, I’m in West Virginia at a meeting.  No internet and shitty cell coverage.  I’m literally standing on a rock which seems to be the only place with cell reception.  I’m headed home tonight and can fly out tomorrow.”  He didn’t even ask any questions.  No “What exactly do you need help with?” or “Isn’t there anyone else you can call?”  Nope.  He was ready to drive home to Georgia and get on a plane to CA the next day.  I was nearly teary-eyed with relief.  “No, Andy, go home and spend the weekend with Laura.  But if you can fly out on Monday that would be perfect.”  “Okay.  Send me a resource order and I’ll see you Monday.  It will be good to see the old stomping grounds.”  Andy had started his career on the Six Rivers, and I knew that would also help me since he knew this country and its long list of challenges.

Two days later, Saturday July 26th, we had a burn-over fatality on one of our Type 3 fires.   I wrote about that previously in one of my other essays.  An enormous shit-storm engulfs all who are involved in one of those, and it was the darkest time of my career.  But a bright spot named Andy Colaninno showed up just in time that following Monday.  When he walked into the office I nearly wept with relief.  I’m pretty sure I did cry when I hugged him hello.  Nearly nineteen years after I first walked into his office as a young, nervous trainee forester.

In the summer of 1989, I was working as a contractor doing seedling surveys and silviculture exams on the Allegheny National Forest in NW Pennsylvania.

During the fall, while working at Rite Aid, my COR called me and told me they had a new hiring authority and I should apply for a trainee forester position.  Back then it was nearly impossible to get hired on permanently with the US Forest Service.  Many people worked as temporaries/seasonals for years without ever securing a permanent position.  This was a BIG DEAL.  I neatly hand-printed my SF 171 and turned it in.  A few weeks later I got a call from the HR specialist, Maureen.  She offered me the job!  Andy was the District Ranger, and he had selected me.  I am fully aware that I was a rare cat, at that time, in getting a permanent position with the FS after never having worked as a temp.

I tossed and turned the night before my first day.  I was exhausted, nervous, and excited when I showed up.  As a trainee forester, Andy decided he would be my supervisor for the first year.  Which was rare. I walked into his office, and he got up from his desk to shake my hand.  He stood maybe my height (5’ 3” ish), and had a full head of black hair and a black beard streaked with wisps of gray.  He spoke quietly and offered to take me around to meet everyone.  I would soon learn that although Andy was a man of few words, he had very deep thoughts and an ever-busy mind.  After introductions, he said, “Well, let’s go take a ride around the district.  You can drive.  Consider it your driving test (that forest didn’t issue official driver’s licenses like many did/do).”  He put on his mountaineering sunglasses and handed me the keys.  I drove him all around the district that day.  He gave me the history and also the current challenges.  He talked about his vision and goals for the land and the workforce.  It was easy with Andy.  Never awkward even during silences.  However, I was so tired from lack of sleep I was terrified I would close my eyes too long and run us off the road.  I envisioned killing us both in a fiery crash.  On my first day. Fortunately, we both survived.

I was too ignorant of FS culture or norms to know I was supposed to be intimidated by the District Ranger.  But he was my supervisor. And I think a lot of that was just how Andy was.  Although an introvert, which did rub some people the wrong way, to me he was always approachable.  A lot of people wanted a Ranger who would walk around the office first thing in the morning and ask everyone how their weekend/night was.  Who would engage in small talk.  But Andy was not that Ranger.  He hated mornings, for one thing.  He would come in at 7 or 7:30 and sit quietly and work in his dark office for a couple of hours.  We all knew not to bother him unless we really had to.  He wasn’t grouchy or irritated if we had to bug him, but we just tried to give him his morning space.  His door was literally always open.  The only time it was closed is if one of the employees was in his office and asked him to shut his door.  Once I started to walk in and he said “Stop. Don’t come in here.”  I stopped in the doorway.  “I have an upset stomach.  It’s better for both of us if you don’t come in.”  “Oh, okay,” I said and asked my question from the door.  I look back now and laugh at that.  It’s not many bosses who warn you about their flatulence.  Some people just never got past his demeanor and completely missed how much he cared about his employees.  I’ll take the genuine introvert any day over the phony extrovert.

Andy was really funny, too.  Not in a belly-laugh kind of way.  You had to pay attention.  His humor was dry and wry.  And he would get a little smile on his face when he thought something was funny.  If you got him to actually laugh?  Man, that was gold.

Andy gave me so many great lessons in my formative years.  I don’t recall what precipitated the discussion, but I uttered those famous words that most of us do when feeling wronged. “It’s not fair,” I said.  “Riva,” he gently said. “You have to learn that life isn’t fair.  And life in the Forest Service really isn’t fair.  And the sooner you come to terms with that the easier it will be.”  He was right.  When I was taking basic fire school, I was struggling with the difference between burning out and conducting a back-fire.  So, I asked Andy.  He had a lot of fire experience.  Although he was a frighteningly intelligent person, he was able to break it down and explain to me the difference.  He never made me feel stupid and never once acted like a question was dumb or that he didn’t have time.  He always had time for me.

During the first few years of my job, the Forest was so broke that no one could order uniforms, even us new employees.  Back then, especially in R9, everyone wore their uniform.  Every day.  I always felt like I stuck out without one and didn’t look professional.  Our wildlife biologist had been working with PA Game Commission to reintroduce otters, my favorite animal.  We were doing a big, public release of otters on Tionesta Creek.  There would be media as well as many conservation groups and cooperators.  I really wanted to go but I didn’t have a uniform.  Andy said, “Come over to the house.  We’re about the same height. You can have one of my shirts and a pair of pants.  Laura can take them in for you.”  They lived in Forest Service quarters, and so I went over after work.  Laura, a bubbly, sweet, funny, intelligent, talkative woman, had me try them on and then took in the waist of the too-large but just-the-right-length pants.  I got to go to the otter release and now had a uniform I could wear for special occasions.

Back then we had a program called “Older Americans” (which was later changed to something else and is now no longer) – we employed senior citizens from lower income brackets part-time.  Most of these gems worked in recreation and engineering.  Emptying trash at the campgrounds, cleaning toilets, helping the road crew.  One such gentleman was named Joe, and he was Native American (I can’t recall what tribe).  He asked us to call him Indian Joe.  Well, Joe was getting up there in years, and his eyesight was starting to go.  After two pretty serious driving mishaps (blowing through a school zone and not securing a boat trailer properly), Andy had to revoke Joe’s driving privileges.  Joe was quite upset.  It took away a lot of the autonomy he had, and he never really forgave Andy.  When Andy got another Ranger job in Florida, we had a nice going away party for him.  Joe made a lovely beaded necklace for Andy.  As he presented it to Andy, he spoke only in his native tongue.  We had no idea what he said.  As he placed it around his neck, Andy looked visibly uncomfortable.  I assumed it was because he just didn’t like the attention.   Later, as I was helping Andy load up his gifts, he took off the necklace and matter-of-factly said “I’m pretty sure Joe put some kind of curse on this.  He’s never forgiven me for taking away his driving privileges.”  He smiled, and I laughed and laughed.

Not only did Andy believe in diversity but he embodied it.  He actively recruited, and supported women and those of different races and ethnicities.

When the forest hired its first black dual career couple in about 1992, they struggled to find a place to rent in lily-white rural NW PA.  Andy nearly stepped in to rent a place under his name.   He had no tolerance for racism and bigotry.  And it wasn’t only people of different races or ethnicities whom he welcomed, but the flat-out misfits, too.  We had some real characters on the district.

Andy was a proud dad to two girls, now women.  He always told me he had more women friends than men.  That he liked being around women, especially smart women.  He knew what women faced in the male-dominated, para-militaristic US Forest Service, and he was an ally and supporter of women his entire career.

Andy loved science fiction (he wrote a novel about Mars!).  Our district was struggling in the eyes of the Supervisor’s Office.   We were the misfit district led by a misfit ranger.  He wasn’t Type A.  He wasn’t interested in team sports (he was into road cycling and mountain biking, hiking, skiing).  He wasn’t tall, his voice didn’t boom.  He didn’t have a need to make small talk.  He was so smart and his vision was so honed that people just didn’t know how to take him.  At meetings it always looked like he wasn’t paying attention – he’d fidget and look out the window and say little.  Until it was time to say something important.  And then he would, and it became clear he was not only listening intently but thinking of solutions.  He knew that his reputation was impacting the district.  One day he brought in a video tape and had us watch an original Star Trek episode.  It was called “The Corbamite Maneuver.”  A diminutive alien, Commander Blalock, tricks the crew of the Enterprise.  He initially accuses them of being hostile towards his crew/ship, but it is a ploy to find out if they are indeed hostile or friendly.  He’s a lonely one-man crew in a small ship, therefore at a significant disadvantage in space.  He’s also desperate for company and conversation.  When he determines they are friendly he has them board his ship.  He serves them a drink called Tranya as a sign of peace.  Andy’s idea was that we use the Corbamite Maneuver to our advantage.  When someone or small group do something good (no gesture too small) for our district or one of our employees we would honor them with a Tranya Ceremony.  Andy had buttons printed up that said “Corbamite.”  Instead of boarding an alien spaceship, our ceremonial party, usually 2 or three district employees, would drive to the office of the honoree, serve them juice in a fancy crystal decanter someone donated.  They would present the honoree with their own button and toast to their effort with “Trayna.” It was a pretty big hit, and it became a goal for others to be honored.  Of course, it also perpetuated the notion that we were a bunch of weirdos led by a bigger weirdo.  We loved it.  Well, most of us did.

After Andy left the Allegheny to be District Ranger on the Apalachicola Ranger District in Florida, I got to see him when my hotshot crew went down to do some prescribed burning.  A year later he and his Deputy Ranger, Ray, recruited me to come down to the district permanently.  I jumped at the chance.  To work for him again (!), and to also go from an asbestos forest to one that burned a couple hundred thousand acres a year, was just too good to pass up.  Once again, Andy saw the potential in me and provided me another opportunity that would change my life for the better.

Though Andy grew up in South Florida, the panhandle is like a completely different state.  It’s rural, and it’s also the Bible Belt.  But Andy loved it.  He felt more accepted even though he was still a bit of an enigma.  He did take some shit for not living in Liberty County where the Ranger Station was. Like a lot of people who worked there, he lived across the river in Blountstown.  Though it was just a 10 minute drive, it was in the Central Time Zone and had a lot more amenities.  Liberty County was, and still is, the least populated county in Florida.  Bristol, the Liberty County Seat and home of the Apalachicola Ranger Station, had one stop light and, at that time, no grocery store (it now hosts a Piggly Wiggly).  And it still bothered some people that he didn’t walk around the office every Monday asking folks how their weekends were.  Fortunately, his Deputy Ray Haupt, fulfilled that duty.  Ray was Andy’s opposite in many ways.  Tall and outgoing.  Quick to laugh. But also smart and good at seeing the Big Picture. They played beautifully off each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  They were a great team.

The Apalachicola Ranger District is a really interesting place.  A small part of the culture and tradition there is worm grunting.  When Andy decided to raise the cost of permits to grunt for worms, there was a bit of a rebellion.  A reporter and photographer showed up from The Atlantic to do a story on it, and Andy was featured in the article.  It’s a great article, “Can of Worms,” and you can read it here:  Part 1    Part 2    Part 3.     I think it really captures Andy well.  He had an idea, misunderstood the outcome/effects, admitted he was wrong, and then worked with the grunting community on a solution that benefitted them and the US Forest Service.  My favorite part was the reporter’s description of Andy.  “Colaninno was a scaled-down version of a big, bearish, bearded type that is common in the Forest Service. He stood about five feet seven, more a yearling black bear than an Alaskan brown bear. His close-cropped beard was somewhat more grizzled, perhaps, than one would expect in a man of forty-three.”  The reporter was generous with Andy’s height.   And I think Andy liked the comparison to a bear.  To me, though, he was always more like Gentle Ben than anything.

There was a woman who lived near the Ranger Station, and she suffered from pretty serious mental illness.  She would show up unannounced and ask to see Andy.  Most people would’ve had the front office folks tell her he was busy or unavailable.   But Andy would tell them to send her back, and she would sit in his office and talk  and he would just listen.  She would vacillate between talking coherently and intelligently about a topic and then veer way off into paranoid conspiracy theories.   As long as he had the time, he would just let her talk.  Never once was he condescending, impatient, or disrespectful.  I asked him once why he would let her come in and talk and he said, “She’s a very smart person with some unfortunate mental illness issues.  I don’t mind listening and giving her someone to talk to.  Maybe it helps her a little bit.”

I loved working on the Apalach and working for both Andy and Ray.  I made life-long friends there, met my future husband there, and learned so much about fire.  We did a ton of prescribed burning (100,000 acres/year just on that district – that’s not a typo), and both of them would come out burning with us often.  Andy usually just wanted to drag a drip torch.  He had no interest in being the burn boss or firing boss.  He was just happy to get out of the office and into the woods.  And no one rolled their eyes when “the ranger and deputy” came out burning with us.  We were glad.  They understood what it took to pull off that program.  They came out on wildfires, too.  Not just as curious-non-producers, but they helped with logistics or burning out or contacting cooperators or running interference with the SO.

When I was working on my Burn Boss 2 qualification, we were conducting a 2,000 acre prescribed burn on a Saturday.  A couple of the guys burning off with ATVs got turned around and accidentally lit outside the unit on the other side of a swamp.

As Mike, the DFMO/RXB2, and I drove around the unit a hunter flagged us down and told us we had fire across the swamp.  We drove over to the helispot and jumped in the ship to take a recon flight.  Sure enough, we had a lot of fire outside the burn unit.  Mike and I discussed whether or not we should try to cut the fire off by putting in a dozer line or just go ahead and burn that compartment off (it was through NEPA and had a burn plan completed and approved).  We decided to just burn the whole compartment off.  “Hey Trainee, you better call Andy and let him know what’s up,” Mike told me.  We were fixing to put up a lot more smoke.  I called Andy, and he immediately answered, “What’s up?”  “You getting smoke over your way?” I asked.  “Yes.”  “Well, you’re going to get more.  We accidentally put fire outside the compartment, and Mike and I decided to just go ahead and burn the next one instead of putting in a new dozer line.”  “Sounds good.  Need anything from me?” “Nope,” I said.  “Okay, thanks for calling.  See you Monday.”  And that was it.

As good Southerners, we looked for any excuse to have a potluck or fish fry or oyster roast at work.  All holidays meant food.  Several times a year we’d have an after-work party.  Someone would drive down to the coast and buy bags of fresh oysters and shrimp.  We’d assemble at a local park, the fish fryers and grills lined up, flames turned up high.  Andy and his wife always came.  Ray and his wife came.  Mike would break out the guitar and most of us would sing along.  It was the last place in my career where we did things like that.  We all lived local and we all valued camaraderie and each other.

When I started dating my now ex-husband, he was in my chain of command, supervised by someone I supervised, and so we knew we had to go to Andy.  We started dating right before Matt got laid off for the summer (field season in Florida is winter, not summer), and he went to Montana as part of the Helena Hotshots.  He came back the following winter for his temp job in Florida, and so we knew we needed to let Andy know.  We had tried to keep our relationship quiet, which was pretty easy with Matt being in Montana all summer.  We walked into Andy’s office, sat down, and announced we were dating.  “Yeah, I know,” he said.  What?  “How’d you know?” we asked?  “I could tell.  I’ll take care of it.”  He assigned Matt a different supervisor outside my chain of command, and it worked for everyone.

Ray left first, getting his dream job as District Ranger on the Klamath NF.  Eventually Andy left for a Deputy Forest Supervisor position on the Chattahoochee-Oconee NF in Georgia.  Matt and I weren’t far behind and struck out for Utah.  We stayed in touch, sharing emails occasionally, sometimes phone calls.  We were on each other’s Christmas card lists.  I would call Andy for advice, and he always did right by me.

And that’s how I came to ask Andy to come help me that unforgettable summer in 2008.

A lot of things had already been set in motion by the time he got there.  Chief Packer’s best friend and two men from his fire department had come down to handle the autopsy and some of the coordination necessary.  We had a small team working on the procession from the funeral home to the airport to transport Dan’s body back to his fire department in Washington.  The investigation team members began showing up and we were lining up interviews.  The OSHA investigator wouldn’t be far behind.  All the while we had numerous fires still burning.

Andy sat in with me on nearly every meeting I had (and there were a lot).  He would quietly stand or sit in the back.  Often people wouldn’t even notice him.  But when someone finally did and asked him who he was he’d just say, “I’m Riva’s driver.”  They’d look at him quizzically and try to read his name tag.  This was a GS-15 Regional Director who could have easily just said that.  But his role there was to support me, and that’s what he did, in any way I needed.

We covered a lot of miles in my G-ride, Andy doing most of the driving.  We had to go over to the coast one day to in-brief a new IMT with the Six Rivers NF, and Andy drove the Forest Supervisor and me.  On the way we made an overnight stop at the incident command post for another of our complexes.  Patty was to speak about the fatality at the operational briefing the next morning.  I saw a lot of old friends at fire camp that night and next morning.  So many people came up to me and gave me a hug and/or a kind word.  Some of these friends I hadn’t seen in years.  I’ve always loved that most about being in wildland fire.

The next morning we continued West towards Eureka.  Patty ended up getting sick, and so after we briefed the Alaska Type 1 IMT, we put her on one of our fixed wing aircraft to get her back home (it was that or a twisty four-hour drive back to Yreka).   As Andy and I made our way to Happy Camp so I could speak for Patty at another IMT’s operational briefing, he said to me, “You know, you have a lot of fire season left.  It’s only late June.  Have you thought about if another fatality or bad accident happen?  Because you need to. This is a helluva fire season in rough country.”  Damn.  I had not thought about it, but he was right.  I needed to.  We gamed out some scenarios, talked about what had gone well so far, what had not.  What we should do differently if we had another shitty day.   It was great to have his perspective and experience.  When a helicopter went down on the Iron 44 Fire on the Shasta-Trinity NF, for a few brief moments I thought a Klamath NF crew was on board.  It turned out that it was part of a contract crew out of Oregon.  We didn’t have to put our learning into motion again that summer, but our friends next door did.  Tragedy seemed to find its way to Northern California.

As Andy drove along the Klamath River on Highway 96 he looked over at me and said something that I’ve tried to live by ever since.  “I watched at fire camp and with the IMT today.  You had a lot of friends come up to you and give you big hugs.  And you always hugged back.  And every person who did that took a little bit of your pain away with those hugs.  They were happy to do that for you.  They wanted to do that for you.  But not everyone gives their pain away.  Some people stay closed off and unapproachable and they hold tightly to their pain. And you didn’t.  So, keep doing that.  Let your friends take some of your pain away.”  Ever since that terrible summer I’ve tried to do that for others, and I really hope I have.

Andy’s two weeks flew by in a haze.  Some memories are burned into my brain from that summer, and some I can’t recall even now.  I remember him picking up Mr Big (the Deputy Regional Forester) and me from the little county airport after we returned on the old DC-3 from escorting Dan’s body back to WA.  I remember him sitting quietly in Patty’s office as we talked to the Investigation Team.  The dust had settled a bit by the time Andy went home to Georgia.  He checked in on me a lot that summer.  I thanked him repeatedly for his help, but he always seemed a bit uncomfortable about it.  Meaning, he didn’t see it as a big deal.  Because those things are what we do for our people.  For those in our wolf pack.

In 2009 I moved back to R8 and got to see him and talk to him quite a bit which was great.  He and Laura had gotten into yoga and traveled around attending retreats.  They were also enjoying spending time with their daughters and grandkids.  After I moved to Oregon, he retired from the Forest Service.  We lost touch.  When I decided to move back to Asheville, I was excited to be able to see Andy again.  He and Laura didn’t live too far from me.   I’ll reach out soon, I told myself.  I had only moved back in May of 2022.  There was time.  I was busy with fire assignments and travel.  Maybe in the winter after things slowed down.

And then this past October 31 I was on Facebook and saw a post on Laura’s page that Andy had died.  No.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  It couldn’t be.

I went to Laura’s page and scrolled down, desperate for information.  Andy had died of pancreatic cancer.  It looked like it happened pretty fast.  I was in shock, crying.  I reached out to several mutual friends and no one else was aware.  None in our old work circle knew he had been sick.  I then felt overcome with grief and regret.  That I’d lost touch.  That I hadn’t reached out upon moving back to NC.  That I thought I had time. That I didn’t get to tell Andy how very much he meant to me.  I reached out to Maureen, the HR specialist who had hired me after Andy selected me.  I told her how bad I felt.  “Don’t carry that around, Riva.  Andy was so proud of you, and he always knew how much he meant to you.”

Knowing Andy, I’ve no doubt he met his diagnosis matter-of-factly with grace, bravery, and humor.  But I’m sure he also mourned for the life still left to live with his wife, daughters, and grandkids.  The life we all think we have ahead of us.

I take comfort being sure Andy knew how much he meant to me and how much I appreciated him, because I did tell him that over the years.  So, reach out to those special people in your life.  The ones who believed in you, who saw your potential and gave you opportunities to prove it to others.  Even if you haven’t seen or talked to those people in a long time.  You’ll make their day, I can assure you.  Do it now. Before it’s too late.

 

It seems to me a crime that we should ageThese fragile times should never slip us byA time you never can or shall eraseAs friends together watch their childhood fly
Making friends for the world to seeLet the people know you got what you needWith a friend at hand you will see the lightIf your friends are there then every thing’s all right

Friends by Elton John and Bernie Taupin

Standing in the Green

As hard as I fought for my firefighter retirement, a “special” retirement provision in the US federal service that requires a mandatory retirement age of 57, I was not ready to retire.  As my 57th birthday loomed I sought alternatives to retirement.   I could have moved into a non-fire position, but I really did not want to do anything except fire.  I really loved my job, and I honestly felt I had a lot I still wanted to do.  And that I still had a lot to offer. 

In early 2020 I saw an outreach for a fire position in my regional office that interested me.  I responded but was upfront that I would be “hitting mandatory” in less than a year.  The person who supervised that position responded to my email. He was very enthusiastic about me applying and said “we can work around your firefighter retirement.”  Wink, wink.  Nudge, nudge.  I know this had been done for a handful of others before me, so I knew it was doable.  I talked to my current supervisor, and she was supportive as well.  “I don’t want you to retire, I still want you in the Forest Service.  I will do what needs to be done to help with this.”

Over the new few weeks this person checked in with me a few times, giving me updates on where the process was, encouraging me to be patient, assuring me he really, really wanted me to apply for the position.  Finally, the job announcement came out, and I put my application in before the deadline.  As much as I knew there are no real promises, I started planning in my head that I was going to get this job.  I began looking on-line at apartments in Portland.    The time came for interviews, and I thought mine went really well.  I was heartened that several people on the panel had worked with me before and were supporters of my career.  I could not really imagine anyone out-competing me.  I had 30+ years of experience with the US Forest Service (USFS), I had worked on seven different national forests in five USFS regions.  I had experience on hand crews, a hotshot crew, engines, helitack, fuels.  I served on national cadres for a couple of upper-level fire courses.  I worked in management positions on three national forests with very complex fire programs.  My supervisor checked in with HR on what steps she would need to make to “get-around” my firefighter retirement.  We had a plan.

You probably know where this is going; I did not get the job.  I was stunned when I got the phone call telling me I was not selected.  It was August, 2020.  My 57th birthday was in December.  I had less than five months.  I had not been preparing myself mentally for retirement, and I was in semi-panic mode.  What the hell was I going to do?

Like most first responders, so much of my identity and my life revolved around my career as a wildland firefighter and manager.  I had sacrificed so much for my career.  Relationships.  My personal life.  And, at times, my physical and mental health.  And I was proud, as one of few women in wildland fire, how far my career had taken me.

I scoured the outreach databases for jobs, not even knowing what I was looking for.  It was highly unlikely that anyone would “work-around” my firefighter retirement, and the clock was ticking anyway.  It takes months to fill a job in the USFS.  I saw an outreach for a position with the National Park Service and called my Park Service friend, Chad, to ask him about it.  “That’s a shitty job, Riva,” Chad said with his gentle Southern accent.  “Why are you looking at that kind of job?”  I told him the condensed version of my pitiful story, that I felt like the rug got yanked out from underneath me, and that I was panicking at the thought of retirement. “I would retire tomorrow if I could,” he said.  Chad is a few years younger than I, and he’d just accepted a new job, a promotion into a national level position.  But he told me about missing out on so much of his sons’ lives.  He reminded me of everything I had given to this career, the sacrifices I had made.  The toll the job takes on us all.  “Man, you’ve got that sweet VW Van; go travel!  Travel during fire season.  Have fun, and enjoy the gift of an early retirement.  You have other interests, not like some folks who have no other life outside work.”  That conversation with Chad was just what I had needed.  It was like a switched got flipped inside my brain.  I stopped freaking out over retiring.  And I started putting my plan into place.

Fire season of 2020, however, would not let me go gentle into that good night.  An historic, and forecasted, wind event struck Western OR and parts of Western WA starting on September 7.  High winds from the East raced down the slopes of the Cascades Mountains towards the coast.   While my national forest had no existing large fires at the time of the wind event, new fires started and grew large very quickly.  For the next several weeks, my co-workers and I, as well as firefighters and managers across Oregon and WA and Northern CA, were heavily engaged in the management and aftermath of large, destructive wildfires.  And while this wind event was not unprecedented (these East wind events had been taking place every 70-100 years on the Western slopes of Oregon and Washington), its affects were.  It was sobering.  Our communities around this fire were horribly affected, and we lost over 100 homes.  This was a glimpse of things to come with climate change and persistent droughts and the people who live in, and on the edge, of the wildlands.  How could I walk away now?

Time flowed like a river towards December 2020.  I lined up some intermittent work for after retirement, work I would enjoy with people I liked.  I started planning a three-week trip in my van that would start in January, right after I was done.

Because of COVID-19 there was little retirement fanfare.  A lot of people poo-poo having a party, but I wanted a big party.  I wanted friends to travel from other places I had worked.  I wanted funny stories told.  I wanted to laugh so hard my belly would hurt.  I wanted to shed tears and feel the love from my sisters and brothers.  I wanted to hug these magnificent human beings I had worked with.  Instead, my immediate fire co-workers put on a nice lunch for me and gave me thoughtful, wonderful gifts.  And it was good.  It was enough. These people and I had been through some shit, and I was happy they were the ones who sent me off. I had spent the previous couple of months mentally preparing myself for my last day, and as I walked out of the office, I felt acceptance for where I was and gratitude for where I had been.

I finally stopped clenching my teeth in my sleep a couple of months after I retired.  I slept better and longer.  I worked out regularly, not having to choose between that and sleep.  I started meditating more, something I had been trying to make a regular practice for years.  I cleaned out closets and dressers.  I set up my own business.  The agencies have a program where retired folks can sign up as an “emergency hire” to fight fires and support all-hazard incidents.  Some retirees practically do it full time, serving on incident management teams.  I did want to sign up, but I did not want to be on a team or spend my retirement as an emergency hire.  I wanted to choose when I went out.  I completed my paperwork, training, and fitness test by March.  I went out on a Critical Incident Stress Management assignment in May of 2021, my first as a retiree.  I went to New Mexico on a three-week Duty Officer assignment.  I developed fire training webinars for firefighters in the Ukraine.

I also took trips!  In my van and not.  Visited my family back East for the first time since the pandemic started.  Took naps.  Went to an outdoor music festival with dear friends.  One of those trips took me through Montana and Idaho.  Smoke from wildfires was a constant companion.  It was somewhat discomfiting driving through fires in these states.  Passing fire crews on the highways.  Not being part of it.

I knew the true test would come when my “home” forest busted a big fire.  And it happened.  Pretty early in fire season.  And then more fires.  Damn.  It was hard not being there.  Not being in the job.  Not helping out my friends and co-workers.  I texted a few folks, told them I was thinking of them, wished them well.  A couple responded, thanked me for checking in and acknowledged how weird it must be for me.  It was.  I felt like I was standing alone way out in “the green” while they were all standing next to, or in, “the black.”  They were in the middle of what was going on, and I was on the outside.  I used to love being in the flow when we were getting fires and I was the Duty Officer.  But then I had to remind myself what I was not missing.  I wasn’t missing dealing with Incident Management Teams who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, carry out our direction.  I wasn’t missing disagreeing with key cooperators on the appropriate course of action.  I wasn’t missing the exhausting 14-hour days and then lying awake at night worried about the firefighters on the line.  I wasn’t missing my diet going to shit because I barely had time to eat a decent, nutritious meal. I wasn’t missing the constant dread of my phone ringing in the middle of the night.

When the COVID-19 vaccine became a reality in the spring of 2021, my friend Jaime, retired for 10+ years off the Klamath National Forest and former Type 1 Operations Section Chief, asked if I wanted to go to Europe on a hiking adventure in the late summer.  At first, I thought, well, no, I can’t go, that’s fire season! Geesh, she knows better!  And then I remembered, wait, I could go!  I didn’t have to say no.  I said yes! We planned it for the beginning of September, and I knew I had that to look forward to.  I no longer had to schedule nearly everything around fire season.

With about 10 days before our flight to Zurich, I got an urgent call from a friend off the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) in California asking if I could come down and help.  The Caldor Fire had started a few days earlier on the neighboring Eldorado National Forest, and it was pushing steadily towards Lake Tahoe and the LTBMU.  I reluctantly declined.  My trip was only a few days away, and I still had a lot to do to prepare.  The next day I got a text asking me to come for however long I could.  A typical fire assignment is 14 days, and it is unusual to accept one for anything shorter.  My friend said, “We really need the help.  We’ll take you for even just a couple of days if that’s all you can do.”  These were good friends of mine, and I knew what they were going through and what was yet to come.  I checked with my pet-sitter to see if she was available.  She was.  I got back in touch with my friend and said “I can give you five days.”  I left the next day.

The sun was dimmed by smoke, and ash fell in South Lake Tahoe while the Caldor Fire continued its march East. I cancelled a doctor’s appointment so I could stay an additional day.  Some of us made plans for the Caldor Fire to make it to the Basin while others refused to believe that it could.  I was so frustrated at the sheer denial of what this fire could do.  Many didn’t think the Dixie Fire would cross the Sierra divide from West to East, and yet it did.  No one thought the town of Greenville would burn to the ground, and yet it did.  And here we were arguing with the naysayers who did not want to accept the “new” reality of wildfires and just kept doing the same tactics, day after day.  Tactics that were not working.  It was infuriating.  And so our small group planned for the inevitable anyway.  And then I had to go.  I had to leave my friends, and I felt terrible doing so.  No one was mad at me; they understood.  They knew what I had given up all those years prior.  I think it was harder to convince myself that it was okay.

Three days later Jaime and I boarded our plane to Zurich.  She knew how I felt, as she’d also been there herself.  “It gets easier,” she said.  “And you will love this new freedom.”  We had an awesome time on our trip.  We hiked for seven days through the breathtaking Swiss Alps.  We spent several days in the sun on lakes in Northern Italy and even paddle-boarded.  We visited the Duomo in bustling Milan.  We ate cheesy fondue and sweet pastries.  We ate rustic, hand-made pasta, creamy gelato, and the best pizza ever.  We drank dark coffee and delicious local wine.  We rode fast trains and slow trains and made new friends.  It was wonderful.

It’s been over a year and a half since I retired.  Now I’m grateful that I was “forced” to retire.  I’m so glad I didn’t get that job! I got to take a once-in-a-lifetime, 3-week trip rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  I likely couldn’t have done that if I were still working.

I still miss some things, mostly the people.  But I don’t miss a lot of things.  And I’m still connected to the wildland fire community in many ways.  I’ve been able to go out on some good assignments, but I pretty much only go where I have good friends who need the help.  My work with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters provides me connection and satisfaction.  I’m aware I have a “shelf life” as an emergency hire, but I also know there are many other things I can do to support our community.  I can continue advocate for the boots on the ground.  I can advocate for more good fire on the land.  I can talk and write about my experience in seeing the effects of climate change on the land, on wildfires, and on the people who fight them.  And I can do all of that, happily, from “the green.”

-end-

Now I see fire
Inside the mountain
And I see fire
Burning the trees
And I see fire
Hollowing souls
And I see fire
Blood in the breeze
And I hope that you remember me

Ed Sheeran, “I See Fire”

The Price of Admission

I had been working just over a year in my first Forest Service job and was the inspector for our aerial fertilization contract.   Northwest Pennsylvania, where the Allegheny National Forest is, had a terrible problem with deer.  We used a helicopter to spread a granular fertilizer to give the tree seedlings a boost; to try to get them above the deer browse line as soon as possible.  I’d been working with the three-man contract crew for several days.  The pilot, mechanic, and project manager were all old enough to be my fathers, and they had been great to work with.  They were conscientious, wanted to do a good job, and were easy to be around.  As with any aviation project there tends to be a lot of hurry-up-and-waiting, and these down times were when we got to know each other.  The pilot had flown in Vietnam and had some great stories.  I was enjoying working on this project with these men.

Being a small forest in the East back in the early 90s we didn’t have a dispatch center.  Every office had a base radio at the front desk, and whomever was working the front desk usually answered.  There were other base stations scattered around in case others needed to talk or the front desk person was busy.  And no one worked in the office on Saturdays outside of fire/recreation season.  Which this was.

It was a sunny but cool spring Saturday, and we were waiting for the weather to cooperate so the pilot could get up in the air and start spreading fertilizer.  The guys were standing around the back of their truck shooting the shit while I was sitting in my truck catching up on paper work.  I had the windows down and could hear them talking, though I wasn’t paying much attention.  Until I distinctly heard the pilot say to the others, “Maybe she’ll give us all blow jobs while we wait.”  They all laughed.

So many emotions swept over me at once.  Shock.  Anger.  Sadness.  And then the worst one of all — fear.  I was alone with these three men deep in the forest.  No one was at the other end of my mobile radio.  Cell phones didn’t exist.  For the first time in my job with the Forest Service I was afraid.  And it wasn’t fear of wild animals or being struck by lightning or falling off a rock bluff.  I was afraid of these men who just seconds before I liked.  And trusted.

I didn’t know what to do.  I never once thought of confronting them.  It was three against one.  I never thought of just driving away, back to the office.  What would I say to my male boss?  I sat in my truck, my mouth dry, my heart racing, nearly sick to my stomach, fighting the tears.  “Do not fucking cry,” I thought to myself.  I didn’t think they’d rape me, but I didn’t know these men, not really.  So, I did what a lot of women in my shoes have done for decades, if not centuries.  I pretended like it hadn’t happened, that I hadn’t heard it.  I did stay in my truck until it was time to actually start working, and I’m sure I couldn’t meet any of their eyes.  When we finished up for the day I drove back to the office, dropped off my stuff, and went home.

I never told a soul.

Not my significant other.  Not my boss. Not the contracting officer or any of the other women I worked with.  Because I was fucking embarrassed.  Because I didn’t want to come off as a candy ass.  Because I didn’t want to be “that girl.”  Because I didn’t want to bring up blow jobs with the 50+ year old, male Contracting Officer.  Stuff it down, Duncan, and maybe you can actually convince yourself someday that it really never did happen.  Thirty years later ,and I haven’t forgotten how afraid they made me.

This is the price of admission women have had to pay since we entered the workforce.  Particularly a male-dominated, para-military organization like the US Forest Service.  “What’s the matter, it was just a joke, can’t you take a joke?” “Geesh, lighten up, will you?”  “We were just kidding!”  “You need to grow a thicker skin!” “If you can’t take a little good-natured ribbing, maybe you don’t belong here.”  “If you can’t run with the big dogs you best stay on the porch.”  And the price fluctuates wildly.

Soon I went off on my first Western wildland fire assignment on a twenty-person Type 2 Initial Attack (T2IA) crew.  We had five women on our crew which really wasn’t that unusual in the mid-nineties, and all five of us were Type 2 Firefighters.  Meaning we were the lowest in the pecking order.  We fire-hopped all across Washington for a 24-day roll.  One fire camp was run by the Washington DNR (state) and was located at the fairgrounds outside Chelan.  Three of us women headed to the shower after shift, and just as we walked up the woman running the shower unit flipped the cardboard sign around from “women” to “men.”  There was only one shower unit as opposed to two separate units, one each for men and women, as in the previous fire camps.  “Hey,” said September to the shower lady.  “What about us?  We need showers.”  “Sorry, evening hours are for the men.  Women’s hours are during the day.”  A lot of women worked in support roles in fire camps (still do) – finance, plans, information – and so could shower during the day while the firefighters were out on the fire.  “We’ve been out on the fire, too, with our crew.  We’re dirty and we’d like to shower.”  The shower lady looked us up and down like she didn’t believe us.   “Looks like you’re out of luck,” she said, turning her back on us.  “This is bullshit!” said September.  “C’mon,” she said to Diane and me, and we walked back to our crew sleeping area.  September walked directly up to our Crew Boss, Fred, and told him what happened.  “Are you serious?” he asked.  He was as surprised as we were.   To his great credit he didn’t tell us to get over it or that we were out of luck or that we were being demanding prima donnas. “I’ll take care of it,” he said and walked off toward Logistics.  The next evening when we got back to camp there was an additional shower unit.  I don’t know if it was Fred going to Logistics to complain or if there had already been an additional one on order, but he stood up for us, and that counted.

At that same fire camp the WA DNR used male inmates as the kitchen crew.  They cooked the food, served it, and cleaned up after us.  In the chow line one night I reached for a bowl, and an inmate put his hand over mine and held it there on top of the bowls.  I looked up, startled, and he smiled and winked at me.  I quickly pulled my hand away.

We moved on to a new fire outside of Twisp.  After a few days, a couple of us headed over to the showers after shift.  They had big blue “tents” set up as the changing rooms.  The tents were attached to the side of a semi-truck which had the showers inside.  We’d change out of our dirty fire clothes, grab a large paper towel (really, they’re made out of paper), and walk the four steps up into the semi to shower.  I don’t know who noticed it, but the guy who ran the shower unit had set up his lawn chair behind the women’s semi-truck.  The four steps we had to walk up into the truck had no drape or tarp behind them.  He’d moved his lawn chair exactly far enough back so that he could watch the naked women walking up and down the steps.  He happily sat there like Jabba the Hutt perving out to all of us in our birthday suits.

The price of admission that roll – shitty hygiene, a stranger’s unwelcome touch, and good hygiene with a view.

I later snagged a spot on the Asheville Hotshots, one of three leadership development hotshot crews.  Our Superintendent (Supt), Dick Kastler, had spent his entire career, up until that job, in California on hotshot crews and engines.  In his late forties then, he said he hated it when his crews were all men.  He actively recruited women.  Said we just made things better.  Watered-down the testosterone and bravado.  He said women were problem-solvers and good with details and worked smarter.   He and our other two overhead (male) were great.  Once on assignment somewhere in the Southeast I overheard two of the younger guys on the crew complaining about “girls in fire.”  “Girls just don’t belong in fire,” one of them was saying to the other.  This was a 19-year-old guy who I could out push-up and out pull-up (by a lot) every day in PT.  While I had learned to stand up for myself, I was also mature enough to realize that he had no power over me, no say in any decision about women in fire or me on this hotshot crew.  I let it go and continued to kick ass in PT.

After pulling a 36-hour shift burning out for four miles on a fire in Texas the Supt sent three of us back to move the rigs and get them ready.  We organized them, bagged up the trash, etc.  I don’t remember exactly what we were doing or what I had said, but one of the other guys called me bossy.  These were two guys who were friends of mine (and still are today).  I was so pissed.  I grabbed his gloves and threw them as hard as I could into the dark forest (it was night). “Fuck you,” I said.

The price of admission was now not coming from outside but was starting to be charged by my peers, and sadly, my friends.

As I continued to gain more experience and achieve higher fire qualifications I struggled more to be accepted, to be treated like I belonged there.  It should’ve been the other way around.  It got exhausting trying to prove myself over and over again.  When I went out on an assignment as a single resource it was rarely taken at face value that I earned my qual – it always took a few days for people to see I knew what I was doing.  But when a guy showed up there was no question he was qualified.  I would get so frustrated and angry.  It didn’t help that I looked younger than my years.  I was Task Force Leader Trainee on a fire in WA.  After a few days, the BIA engine boss, a good kid who had become my right-hand guy, asked me how old I was.  “Thirty-five,” I said.  “Oh, whew, good.  We thought you were in your mid-twenties, and we were wondering how you got to be TFLD-Trainee so quickly.” Translation – we thought you were fast-tracked.  I soon learned to just do my job, do it well, and let my actions speak.  Folks would see that I knew what I was doing, did it well, and that I deserved to be there.  But in the meantime, we would lose a few days of trust that often were very important.

When I was the Deputy Fire Chief (Chief 2) on the Klamath National Forest in CA, my vehicle was striped, and I had CH2 on it as my identifier.  Most other regions hadn’t done this yet, but it had been a standard in CA for years.  On my first fire assignment in CA since moving there I drove my rig, CH2, to the Shasta-Trinity National Forest for a fire assignment.  On at least four or five different occasions, I was asked what my job was on the Klamath.  This would be from people who would see me getting in and out of CH2.   I would often point to my rig.  They would just look at me, confused.  Then I’d say “Chief 2.”   “Oh!  Shit, sorry.”  It happened over and over.  At one point a young man light-heartedly elbowed me, smiling conspiratorially, and said “Does Chief 2 know you’re driving his rig?”  “Yeah. She knows,” I smiled back.  He looked at me blankly.  Like he couldn’t put it together.  Finally, I said, “I’m Chief 2.”  The look on his face was pretty funny, and he apologized profusely.  I never lost my temper, I never got angry, but it was frustrating.  Why the automatic assumption that there was no way I was Chief 2? Partly because there were very few women at that level.  Partly because of the overwhelming numbers of men vs women in wildland, period.

After the fire on the Shasta-Trinity I was reassigned to the Moonlight Fire on the Plumas and Lassen National Forests.  It was a big fire with a lot of resources.  I was working on my Division Group Supervisor (DIVS) qualification.  Division Supes are typically the highest level position on the actual fireline.  Sometimes there are Branch Directors, but the DIVS are each in charge of a chunk of the ground (eg Division F) on the fire or a group of resources as (in a Structure Protection Group).  It’s a lot of responsibility, and a DIVS will usually have numerous resources assigned under them – crews, engines, dozers, water tenders, and other overhead.

I was initially assigned to a quieter division under a qualified DIVS as my trainer.  We had a mix of federal and state resources including a CALFire Dozer Boss/Dozers.  My DIVS trainer asked me to tie in with the Dozer Boss and assign the dozers a task to connect some handline with dozer line.  I drove over to meet with the Dozer Boss and pulled my rig up next to him.  He came over and stood at my window, and I went into great detail about the task I was assigning him.  When I finished and asked if he had any questions he said, “Wow, you have beautiful eyes.”  Yeah.  This was someone subordinate to me in the chain of command.  And all he could do is comment on my appearance.  It flustered me because I didn’t expect it.  I have never expected this kind of behavior, and so I’m always surprised.  I asked him if he understood the assignment and he replied that he did.  I drove away, shaking my head and thinking to myself, what the fuck?

Later on that same shift, I had to tie in with that Dozer Boss again.  CALFire personnel work 24 hour shifts (24 on, 24 off), and I needed to ask him if they were in the middle of shift or at the end.  Drove up to him again, asked if they were working all night or rotating out.  He said, “We’re here tonight then off shift in the morning.  Why don’t you bring your sleeping bag out and spend the night with me?”   For fuck’s sake.  “No,” I said.  “That’s not going to happen.  Let’s just keep it business between us.”  He just smiled.  Again, I was his fireline supervisor and also outranked him in our day-to-day positions.  Yet he felt like this kind of behavior was perfectly okay.  Because, obviously for him, it had been.

A few days later I got moved to a different division that was considerably more active so that I could get a thorough and challenging trainee assignment.  I found myself with about 10 hotshot crews including one of the crews from my home forest.  At a lull in the action, I told the Supt and one of the Captains, both good friends of mine, about the CALFire guy hitting on me.  They both shook their heads, but they weren’t really surprised.  The Captain offered to go kick the guy’s ass.  And while I appreciated the sentiment, I told him it wasn’t worth him getting in trouble over some douche bag.  A couple days later the fire had blown out on our division so several of us (DIVSs, hotshot Supts, Branch Directors) were meeting with neighboring division resources and the night shift resources to develop a new strategy.  As we gathered at the meeting spot, I saw the asshole Dozer Boss get out of his truck.  “Shit,” I said.  “What?” asked Johnny, my good friend and Supt of Klamath Hotshots who I’d told about this guy.  “There’s that jerk who hit on me.”  “Which one is he?” Johnny asked.  “Don’t do anything,” I said.  “I won’t, I just want to know which one he is.”  I pointed him out.  A few minutes later Johnny said to me, “Hey, do I need to pick up the dogs at the kennel when I get home?”  I looked at him like he was high on meth.  “What?”  I didn’t know it, but the Dozer Boss had walked up behind me.  Johnny said, “You know, since I’m getting de-mobed before you, do I need to pick up the dogs at home?”  Now I was tracking!  “Oh, no, I didn’t take them to the kennel, I had Joey come over and pet sit,” I said.  I couldn’t look at anyone else, because I knew the other hotshot Supts were wondering what the hell we were talking about.  They knew Johnny and I were not a couple.  But Jonny didn’t stop there.  He started laying it on pretty thick.  He pulled his Nomex pants away from his waist to show how much weight he’d lost that season and said “I sure can’t wait to eat your home cookin’ this winter.”  Oh, hell.  I nearly busted out laughing, but instead I said “Well, you know how much I love to cook for you, Honey.” “Yes, you need to fatten me,” he continued.  Right about then the Branch Directors showed up so we all gathered to talk about the fire.  After that was over, Johnny and I were leaning on another Supt’s truck when that guy said “What the fuck was that about back there?  Picking up the dogs?”  We all cracked up.  Johnny told Jay the story, and Jay said “Was it the blond-haired guy with glasses and a shitty mustache?”  I said, “Yeah.” “Holy shit. Remember the old Looney Tunes cartoons?  Where the Coyote would imagine the Roadrunner as a cooked bird on a platter?  He was looking at you like that.”  “Ewwwww, gross.”  Then Jonny said, “By the way, Riva, smooth move when you said ‘What?’” We laugh about that to this day.

Did I report that asshole?  No.  I didn’t have any confidence that anything would happen to the guy.  Doubted he’d be kicked off the fire, and I really doubted he’d face any repercussions back at his unit.  Frankly, I was worried that I would be the one labeled as a “trouble maker” or a chick who couldn’t handle the tough work environment.  My brothers looked out for me, and for that I was very grateful.

What wore me down the most over my career wasn’t the blatant harassment (although that certainly sucked) but the nearly constant subtle acts of discrimination and bias (conscious and unconscious) by mostly men but by women as well.  That was much more prevalent.  One of those instances occurred when I worked on a national forest in Florida.  I had met and bought a house with my future husband, an enlightened and supportive partner who also was a firefighter and former hotshot but who had less experience and had lower qualifications than I did.   We were out mopping-up a prescribed burn down the road from our work center.  He and I were working with a young guy a couple years into his career.  We blew out one of the rear dual tires on the engine driving over a palmetto stump.  As the guys wondered aloud what we should do I said, “The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago.  Since it’s one of the dualies, we can drive it back to the work center.  There’s a floor jack and spare tires there.  We can change it on the spot.”

It was like I had never spoken.

“Boy, I don’t know if we can drive it like that,” said one of them.  “We may have to have it towed into town to Larry’s to get it changed,” said the other.    Again, I told them we could drive it slowly back to the work center and change it there.  Again, I was ignored.  Finally ,the young guy got on the radio and called the Fire Management Officer at the work center.  After he explained the situation, the FMO said, “Just drive it back here slowly, we’ve got spares and we can change it with the floor jack.”  “I knew Mike would know what to do,” he said to my boyfriend.

I fumed.  I was so angry it blurred my vision.  But what was even worse, is that my own beloved boyfriend, the one whose support had been unfailing, had completely let me down.

I was mostly silent the rest of the day, and went off to mop-up by myself.  When we got home, before we even went in the house, my future husband asked me what was wrong.  He knew something was, but he really did not know.  So, I told him.  I saw the regret and sorrow in his face as he realized what he had done.  I actually broke down crying out of sheer frustration as I told him how if the one man who loved me above all others, who encouraged me and was proud of me, could dismiss me and what I said because I was a woman, then I was doomed.  I was fucked.  There was no hope for me as a woman in fire any longer.  I went on and on, blubbering about how it sucked having to prove myself over and over. That when a man steps on the fireline everyone assumes he has earned it, and only if he proves otherwise through his actions is he taken to task.  That when a woman shows up on the fireline everyone assumes she was fast-tracked and so she has to prove herself first, through her actions, that she deserves to be there and lead others.  Right then and there I seriously thought about quitting.  Not quitting the Forest Service, but quitting fire.  Which I loved.  It was not the first time, nor was it the last, I thought about quitting fire.

Certainly, sexual harassment has, and is, taking its toll on women in fire.  But I think it’s these constant and pervasive acts of bias that are driving far more many women out of fire, particularly once they start moving into leadership and supervisory positions.  This shit beats us down, gradually but constantly. Most women are “one of the guys” while they’re at the lowest level.  But when women start moving up ahead of their male peers, especially on the same module, that’s often when hostilities start.  I’ve seen it time and again, and on a nearly monthly basis I have young women reach out to me who are struggling with this exact same thing.  Some insecure dude (or dudes) is threatened by their intelligence and work ethic and begins to systematically beat them down.  Constantly questioning their ability.  Telling everyone she only got the job “because she’s a woman.”  Making up lies that she slept her way to the job. It happens everywhere all the time.  Still.  And I used to say, “Hang in there, sis.  Fight it.  Don’t let them win.”  But I don’t do that any longer.  Just a few days ago I was on the phone with a young woman I’ve never met who reached out to me through social media.  She was on the verge of quitting, giving up her wildland apprentice position, because of the way she was being treated by her module.  She fought back tears as she told me, “I love this job so much.  But I don’t think I can handle this abuse much longer.  It’s not worth my mental health.”

As an awesome friend of mine said, “And we endure much of it in silence, or through humor, or through being grateful for good men in this field while simultaneously being let down by so many of them. ”

As women try to move into higher management positions, AFMOs/FMOs, I have witnessed and experienced the now “normative” hard core Type A “ops” bias; that mostly only people (men) who’ve been hotshots and/or smokejumpers for several years are of value in AFMO/FMO (and higher) positions.  And, of course, this isn’t anything personal or against hotshots and smokejumpers.  I repeatedly see men and women in high positions, who appear open-minded and say they support gender and ethnic diversity, continue to hold this attitude, and I think many of them don’t even realize their biases.  It’s an insult to those who came up on engines, in fuels, aviation, prevention, dispatch.  And for those of us women who do/did embrace and model the more “masculine” leadership traits that are expected in order to move up, we are often “punished” for those same traits.  Bossy, harsh, abrasive, aggressive, a bitch, “too much.”  Words rarely attributed to men in the same negative ways they are to women.  This makes us “unlikeable” which somehow holds more value as a desired trait for women than men.  Yet, for women who don’t model those traits, then that means they don’t have good “command presence” or show “strong leadership.”  It often feels like a no-win situation because it actually is.  And this has a name; it’s called the Double Bind, and it’s been studied extensively in private industry at the executive level.

The price of admission for a woman to be successful and advance in a career in wildland fire (in any male-dominated profession) is steep and doesn’t seem to be coming down any time soon.  The numbers of women in federal wildland fire are on a sharp decline and have been now for a few years.  I’m probably less optimistic now than I have ever been that things will improve.  Implicit bias is extremely difficult to overcome.  As a lot of us women have said, we can’t turn the freightliner ourselves.  It takes men.  And a lot of them to take the lead.  To stand up and LOUDLY call BS.  To model the right behaviors and be open to self-improvement.  To sincerely examine their own biases.  To be vocal allies.  To want to make a better place for their daughters and nieces to work.  I have heard from a lot of great men that they didn’t “get it” until they had daughters themselves.  Many have honestly admitted they were once part of the problem.  I wish it didn’t take them having a daughter to shift their behavior and mindset.  I wish they were able to think of their sisters and moms and women friends on the first day they stepped into the job.  I hope my pessimism is inaccurate. But if hopes and wishes were fruit and fishes it would be Christmas every day.

Baby firefighter.  Happy and hopeful.

For the People on the Edge of the Night*

Just tied handline in to the dozer line, 1994, WA. Allegheny NF, Crew 1, the 5 firechicks

I had my first panic attack while speeding south on I-75 in Tennessee in 2010.  I was heading back home to Asheville after visiting my mom in Northern Indiana, and it was an effort to safely pull over on the shoulder.  I sat there in my Subaru, heart racing, sweating, hyper-ventilating, crying, wondering what was going on with me. I didn’t think I was having a heart attack (although it felt like I thought a heart attack would feel like), I was pretty sure it was a panic attack.  It had been a rough few years, but this was the first clue, that I couldn’t ignore anyway, that I was a bit fucked up.  And it would be a very rough few more years ahead of me as I eventually tried to get myself to a good place. I would do risky, reckless things, hurt people I loved, and make some really stupid decisions along the way.  But I would also make some good decisions – like seeking help from professionals who did, in fact, help me a lot.  One continues to help me.  I’m still a work in progress, a flawed human.  But now I’m doing better mentally and physically than I probably ever have.

Last week I asked my therapist if anyone has done a study on whether people who experienced trauma in their childhood are attracted to jobs as first responders.  Growing up amid chaos, do we seek careers where we can overcome chaos?  Bring order to chaos.  We say that a lot in our profession of wildland firefighting.  That we are good at bringing order to chaos (and we are).  Are many of us striving to finally do as adults what we couldn’t do as kids — exert some control over our often violent and frightening and uncertain and tumultuous childhoods? She didn’t know, but she said it made a lot of sense, so there’s likely something to it.  Those of us who grew up in those situations adopt a lot of coping mechanisms that helped us survive.  And while those mechanisms are critical in self-protection, self-preservation, when we’re kids, they don’t always serve us well as adults.  They mostly do not.

##

In the summer of 1994, I was on my first Western fire assignment on a type 2 initial attack fire crew.  I was working for the FS on the Allegheny National Forest (ALF) in Pennsylvania, and the Western fire season was so bad they starting flying crews in from back East.  We ended up in WA state not long after the South Canyon Fire tragedy where 14 firefighters died on Storm King Mountain in CO.  My crew quickly gained a good reputation, and so we got moved around a lot to emerging fires.  For an Eastern T2IA crew, hell for any T2IA crew, we got a lot of cool assignments – fireline construction (even a little bit of hotline), firing, holding.

After about a week total on two different fires on the Colville National Forest, we ended up on a fire called the Tyee on the Wenatchee National Forest.  We got there in the early afternoon.  Fire camp was set up at a fish hatchery, and we were told to drop our gear in the gravel next to the empty fish runs.  I remember looking at a bunch of tents set up in a lovely shady area where the grass was bright green and looked soft as a pile of old quilts.  “Why can’t we set up over there?” I asked.  My Squad Boss, Randy, laughed.  “That’s for overhead. They always take the best spots.”  We dumped our gear, and, surprisingly, they sent us right out to the fire.  The bus dropped us off, the Crew Boss and Assistant got their briefing, passed it on to the Squad Bosses, and the 20 of us walked up a paved road behind a row of houses.  Randy lined us out and told us to watch for spot fires.  We were so spread out we couldn’t even see the other two squads.  But we could see the fire up on a ridge in the distance.  The wind was blowing, the sky orange.  We hadn’t been there long at all before we noticed the fire pushing downhill towards us.  Fast.  Randy shouted above the wind “Let’s go, time to GO!” motioning with his arms to follow. The sky got darker and the fire got louder.  I followed the person in front of me, eyes on his or her back, tucked in close, as we cut through someone’s back yard.  We popped out onto a state highway and waited for the rest of our crew.  The residents who hadn’t yet evacuated were jumping into their packed vehicles and tearing out of their driveways and up the highway.  The two other squads showed up along with the Crew Boss and Assistant.  We formed into our line and began hauling ass up the highway.

And then the noise.  The nearly deafening noise of a freight train that everyone talked about.  I remember thinking “Wow, a fire blowing up really does sound like that.”  Vehicles streamed past us – evacuees, overhead in their trucks, agency engines.  And then the big structural fire engines, the pavement queens, pulling out of driveways, speeding past us, red lights reflecting off the windows of the homes.  The sky darkened, our pace quickened, the fire got closer.  Leaves, pine cones, small twigs swirled around us.  A pickup truck stopped “Get in!” someone yelled. “There’s 20 of us, go on!” someone from the crew yelled back.  I just kept my eyes on the person in front of me.  Suddenly someone at the head of the crew stopped.  A blond woman in shorts and a t-shirt was screaming at us from her driveway across the road “HELP US!  Please, help us save our house!”  A rookie started across the road toward her and someone off the crew stopped her.  “You need to leave! We can’t help you, you need to go NOW!” the Assistant Crew Boss shouted at the woman.  And then we started jogging.  I remember catching up with other crews or maybe it was just one crew. It was dark like night, the streetlights were on.  I was now next to my friend Diane who was on my squad.  She had way more fire experience than I had.  She had worked on an engine on the Angeles NF in southern CA and taught me a lot.  I knew I’d be okay if I just stuck next to her. Suddenly a large black bear was running from the fire with us and then past us. Diane and I looked at each other, wide-eyed but silent, and just kept going.  So did the bear.  And there were deer running with us as well.  At least we were all going in the same direction.  Eventually the sky ahead of us began to lighten, the roar of the fire abated behind us, we slowed to a walk and pushed on to a staging area where other resources were now gathering.  I looked at my watch, surprised it was only about 1600.  The fire-darkened sky had fooled me into thinking it was nighttime.  “Take a break but stay together,” the Crew Boss said as he and the assistant went to tie in with overhead.  The immediate danger over, we drank water, we high fived each other and laughed and smiled.  “Holy shit, did you guys see that bear?”  “Wow, I didn’t think we were gonna get out of there!” “Did you hear the noise of that thing?”  “I saw a giant pine cone fly through the air!”  “I wonder how many houses burned?” We were high on adrenaline and being alive.  What a rush.

Back at fire camp that night we were told to not set up any of our tents but to sleep in our Nomex clothes on top of or inside our sleeping bags with our shelters next to us.  There were concerns the fire would get close enough for us to have to evacuate camp.  The night was warm, and I unbuttoned my Nomex shirt that was over a cotton t-shirt and untucked it from my pants.  I had taken my boots off, and I’d snugged my fire shelter up against my hip.  I gazed up at the mountain; the fire had laid down for the night, but the hillside was dotted with flames and embers still burning in tree tops and stumps and downed logs. I fell asleep thinking it was lovely and frightening at the same time.

The next day we headed out to the fire in our bus.  We ended up driving up the highway we’d run down the day before.  We were all silent as we drove past the burned homes.  Well, what was left of them.  There were a few still standing, but many had burned down to foundations, their brick chimneys naked amidst the rubble, shells of vehicles in their driveways.

Later that summer, on the Boise National Forest in Idaho, after a burnout gone bad, my crew had to prepare a shelter deployment site.  My Crew Boss, Steve, had seen it coming, tried to talk the Division Supe out of lighting it off.  They lit it off anyway and it was immediately gone, cutting off the escape route to our safety zone.  Our bus was parked to head us out and down the way we came in, and that route, and the bus turnaround, were now cut off as well.  Our bus driver, Burt, was a retired Pan Am pilot who flew jumbo jets to Europe.  Worried our bus was going to catch fire, the Strike Team Leader and our Crew Boss sent our Assistant Crew Boss to have Burt back the bus up the windy, single-lane forest road as far as he could.  We hadn’t been up that way, didn’t know if there was a safe place for Burt, Jim and the bus, but they decided to give it a shot.  The rest of the crew’s attention was focused on scraping down to bare soil in a small opening and caching our saws, fuels, and fusees away from this location.  I was fucking scared.  I remember my legs shaking while I was bent over digging down to dirt.  Steve gathered us all up.  Man, he was calm and cool.  “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go.  We’re going to sit here and hopefully not have to use our shelters.  But if we do, I’ll say when, and I want everyone to deploy with their squads and I want you packed in together like sardines.  Remember, feet towards the fire.”  He glanced up and across a small draw where the Park Service crew was doing the same.  “And someone go tell that crew to take the fusees out of their packs.”  In those days the training was to keep your pack on when you went into your shelter, and a fusee stowed in your pack could ignite from the fire’s heat.

We didn’t have to deploy that day.  The fire blew around us, and we had to sit there for hours late into the night until it was safe enough to leave.  We listened to the trees crashing around us, loosened rocks and boulders rolling down the slopes.  When he felt it was safe enough, Steve called Jim on the radio to come down with the bus and get us.  I was so happy to see our yellow school bus and Burt and Jim.  As we got on the bus, we all high-fived Burt.  I sat close to the front and heard Jim telling Steve about Burt backing the bus up.  Jim said there were quite a few switch backs and drop-offs and that Burt backed that bus up like it was nothing.  He said they probably backed a couple miles up the road and Burt never broke a sweat or acted like it was any big deal.  Compared to a 747 that bus was practically like driving a sports car.  Someone wondered aloud if we could request that all our bus drivers were retired jumbo jet pilots.

And I loved it.  All of it.  Everything.

##

Those experiences weren’t uncommon just to us.  Everyone who does this has stories like mine.  Some even more harrowing.  It is the job.  It is wildland fire.

I would go on to work a season on a hotshot crew, then on engines, and do a little bit of helitack.  I moved into fuels, and then got the Chief 2 job on the Klamath NF in Northern CA.  During my three plus years on the Klamath we had two non-line of duty deaths from our fire ranks.  Woody missed a curve and drove his vehicle off the road and into the Scott River during the winter when he was laid off.  A couple years later Mike missed a curve driving his motorcycle home from work.  In 2006 and 2007 we had helicopter crashes that killed all three pilots.  In 2008 first we had two people from a caterer hired to feed folks on one of our big fires drown in the Klamath River while swimming on their day off.  Shortly after that we had a burn-over fatality on one of our Type 3 fires.  In 2009 one of our hotshot crews had a buggy rollover after being clipped by a semi, the truck driver having fallen asleep.  Later that summer a forestry technician off our other hotshot crew was run over by a water tender in fire camp as she slept in her sleeping bag.

I tell people those three years on the Klamath were the best and worst years of my career.  I found my favorite wolf pack, my best boss ever, while learning so much.  But after three years of demanding fire seasons, a lot of death, serious injuries, and loss I was Fucked Up.  Capital letters.  I had gotten sideways with my boss on the Klamath, and back in Indiana my mom’s health continued to decline.  When the Forest FMO job opened up on the National Forests in North Carolina (NFsNC) I applied and was hired.  I’ve moved around a lot, and moving on is always bittersweet, but leaving the Klamath NF was the most difficult departure from a job I’ve ever made.  After everything many of us had been through together, I felt like I was abandoning my best friends.

I was hoping the pace and grind of the job in NC would be slower, easier than on the Klamath.  It was different, but it wasn’t slower or easier.  The job had been vacant for over a year, and a lot of stuff had fallen through the cracks. One of the largest fire programs in the Southeast, the NFsNC consisted of four national forests, eight ranger districts, stretching from the TN border east all the way to the coast.  We had 11 engines, a hotshot crew, three tractor plows, and three dozers.  The mountains of the SE US enjoy a split fire season – spring and fall.   When we weren’t fighting our own fires and prescribed burning, we were supporting the Western Fire season.  Hardly a break at all.  And there were some pretty big gaps in the program – lack of adherence to important policies, out of date SOPs, major inconsistencies across the districts. I was frustrated that several managers on the forest weren’t interested in improving the program.  I felt like Sisyphus on a daily basis.  I found myself angry much of the time.  What I didn’t know then, but I’ve since learned, is that constant anger is common expression of grief.  I didn’t know what to do with it, so I took it out on a lot of the people around me.

So.  Panic attack on I-75.  I remember lying in bed with my husband that night, breaking down crying, telling him about my panic attack.  And out it came.  Why won’t they listen to me about what they need to do here?  Why is everything a fucking fight?  What if someone dies again on my watch?  After 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots died on the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013, a good friend of mine who was on the fire told me that when he went home he just could not deal with the day to day petty bullshit at work.  He was incredulous.  He’d just been a part of 19 firefighters dying, and people at work were bitching about who didn’t wash out a fucking coffee cup in the break room.  Of course, they had no idea what he’d been through.  They were just going about their normal lives, yet he was profoundly changed by what he’d been through.  Looking back, that was what was going on with me.  In NC I didn’t talk about what I’d been through in CA.  Only my close friends knew, and they didn’t know the details, and didn’t know how much I was struggling.  So, of course, no one could know how desperate I was that none of the folks under me would go through anything bad.  I wanted them to just take my word for things, to respect my experience and knowledge.  I didn’t want to play the Klamath card, and I really didn’t.  But I also didn’t want to escort another body home or face the wife of another dead firefighter.  I wanted to spare everyone that, but I didn’t want to tell them what I’d been through because I was afraid they would think me risk averse at best, not up to the job at worst.  For a while I lived in constant dread of the “next bad thing” happening.  In the meantime, my mom died suddenly, and five beloved pets crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  More loss, more sorrow.

I felt desperate and crazy.  But what finally drove me to find a therapist wasn’t panic attacks, nightmares, my anger, or my reckless actions.  What finally got me to make the call was I couldn’t pass the damn pack test (wildland firefighter fitness test).  I’d wrecked my knee really bad when I crashed my little Yamaha in my driveway at the end of summer 2008.  It was a long two-year recovery, and when it was time to take the pack test I kept getting hurt.  I jacked up my Achilles tendon.  Then I broke a bone in my foot taking it.  Just walking with the pack.  I had to surgery to have a permanent screw inserted.  In 2014 I started to have severe pain in my legs and back.  I couldn’t walk more than 50 yards without having to stop, my lower legs so tight they felt like concrete.  A friend said, “Maybe your body is trying to tell you you’re done fighting fire.”  I was actually worried it was my mind telling me that.  And that my mind was recruiting my body to make sure.  I went from doctor to doctor.  I tried acupuncture, medical massage therapy, stretching.  I had a cardiac stress test and ultrasound to rule-out blockage in my femoral arteries.  I was despondent to think this was all “in my head.”  That my mind had roped my body into betraying me.  I would try to take the pack test, and not even get a quarter mile in when I’d have to stop. I was embarrassed.  And scared.  What if this was it?  What if I couldn’t fight fire anymore?  Sure, I was an FMO, but I was also a firefighter.  I wasn’t ready to leave the fireline.

I did what any 21st century human being would do and started Googling.  I came across Somatic Sensing, which is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders.  It talked about how unresolved trauma is often manifested into physical ailments, but that Somatic Sensing could also use the body to heal trauma.  Sounded right up my alley, and there was a therapist who specialized in it in the same building as my primary doctor.  Well, it wasn’t.  Up my alley, I mean.  It did not work for me.  I tried it several times, I wanted it to work, I was desperate for it to work.  But it was not my jam.  Meanwhile I continued to do stupid shit, mostly in my personal life.

It was the back doctor who finally figured it out.  He thought I may have spinal stenosis, which is not a good thing to have, and sent me to get an MRI.  When he told me I didn’t have it, I broke down crying.  I should’ve been elated I didn’t have spinal stenosis, but I thought I was still without answers.  This man was so kind, so compassionate.  And then he said, “I think you might have compartment syndrome in your legs.”  Wait.  What?  “Rhabdo?” I said.   “No, they’re often both called that, but I think you have the chronic kind, not the critical kind.  It’s pretty unusual.  We have a doctor on staff who specializes in it.  I’m going to get you an appointment with him.  In the meantime, go home and look it up.”  Huh, a doctor actually telling me to GTS (Google that shit).  “What about my back pain?”  “Well, you do have arthritis in your L4 and L5, which is causing some of your pain, but I think the problems with your legs is affecting your back by throwing off your gait.”

I did exactly what he told me to do, and I went home and looked it up.   Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome wasn’t even on WebMD.  I found it on the Mayo Clinic website.  While not classified as rare, it is an uncommon condition, and one that typically strikes people in their 20s and 30s (score one for the old chick).  They didn’t know what caused it.  The only sure cure was surgery.  The website said try to find a doctor who performed 2-3 surgeries a year.  That’s how unusual.   And it sounded like that’s exactly what I had.  The test was to do physical activity and then have the doc insert a probe into the calf muscle to measure the pressure. Ouch.  When I went for my appointment the doctor asked me about all my symptoms, what brought it on, what it felt like, etc.  And then he said, “I don’t need to give you the test, you have it.”  Whew.  I was elated.  I nearly wept with relief.  Finally, I knew what was physically wrong with me.  “Surgery is the only cure for you.  I’ll have to slice open the fascia in both legs.”  “At the same time?” I asked  “Yes.”  “How many of these do you do?”  “Oh, two to three a year.”  Bingo!  Hired.  I had surgery in December of 2014, over eight months into the ordeal.  It was a success, and I was back working out in no time.

##

Now I had to try to work on my mental demons again.  *sigh*  I’d had two more panic attacks, but I didn’t tell anyone, not even my husband.  I actually drove myself to the hospital late one night when he was out of town, because I began to wonder maybe I really was having a heart attack.  Nope, the ticker was fine.

I decided to once again try to find a therapist.  I wanted to find one who worked with first responders, but I came up empty.  I was fortunate that I was living in Asheville, NC, a decent sized city with numerous therapists from which to choose.  I wanted a woman, a PhD, and someone who specialized in trauma.  I looked through several profiles on the Psychology Today website over the course of many days and kept going back to the same one.  I looked at her web page and liked what she had on it, and I was happy to see she took my insurance.  I felt a good vibe. I took the leap and emailed her.   And found myself back in therapy.  And this time it clicked.

A PTSD diagnosis that I reluctantly accepted.  You see, I hadn’t thought I’d earned it.  I wasn’t under the helicopters when they crashed.  I wasn’t one of the employees who found Mike’s body the day after he went missing.  I wasn’t on the fire when the firefighter died inside his shelter.  I didn’t witness the hotshot buggy rollover.  I wasn’t on the ground when one of our LEOs and his K-9 Officer were murdered during a manhunt on the forest in NC.  It looked like many of my fellow co-workers weren’t struggling like I was.  Maybe they were and were just good at hiding it.  And maybe they weren’t.  One of my best friends was with her team in Washington DC after 9/11 and it messed her up.  She finally sought help and just needed a session or two to put her back on track.  Dr. B was able to explain to me that it doesn’t always have to be a big, “Capital T” trauma to mess us up.  She said a lot of little traumas could cumulatively build up, overwhelming our abilities to process and handle these events. Chronic or complex trauma.  And she said I needed to stop comparing myself to others, we all have our own journeys. I’d had some pretty big Capital T traumas as a child.  And then over the course of my career, like so many of us, endured numerous smaller, yet not insignificant, traumas.  Not saying that the fatalities and accidents on the Klamath were necessarily little “ts.”  They were not.  Dr B and I did talk therapy, and she also guided me through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which I’d heard about from some of my friends who’d found relief with it.  It all helped a lot.  I started to feel more myself, less angry, less afraid of the next bad thing happening.  More in control.  Less self-destructive.  Don’t get me wrong, EMDR and talk therapy were not a quick fix nor a miracle cure.  It took a lot of hard work.  Therapy was uncomfortable and difficult.  Dr B often gave me homework to do.  There were days I didn’t want to go to my appointment.  But I always went, because the discomfort, the raw emotions, the terrible memories were worth it.  Worth me getting myself back.

That summer, 2015, I passed the pack test for the first time in years.  Between my leg surgery and therapy, I finally got into shape and stopped sabotaging myself.  I had to start over as a Division Supervisor Trainee because my qual had lapsed, but I made it out to Idaho and got signed off.  Again. And I was prouder of that than the first time.

Therapy couldn’t save my marriage.  And as Dr B said, her job wasn’t to “save” marriages but to help couples figure out what they wanted to do, and then help them through that.  Out of respect to my ex I won’t go into details here, but the best thing for me was to leave my marriage.  It will always be the greatest sadness of my life.

##

I am certainly not one to judge, but there are a lot of fucked up people in our profession — many of my close friends belong in this group. Some are doing better, some are not. Some have gotten help, some have not.  As I asked my current therapist recently, are those of us who experienced childhood trauma drawn to this profession, already bringing the little “t” event with us?  Who knows?  And you know what?  It doesn’t really matter.  The job is a meat grinder and can wear you all the way down even if you had the perfect Brady Bunch childhood.

You don’t have to be exposed to trauma to struggle in this profession.  As I referenced in a previous essay, the demands are extremely challenging.  I have several dear friends and colleagues who struggle with depression.  The Black Dog visits them periodically.  EVERYONE struggles at some point, and there should be no shame in that.  No shame in reaching out, asking for help.  I think it takes great strength to do so.  My message here is if you’re struggling, then try really hard to get yourself some help.  Self-diagnosing yourself with PTSD without seeking professional help won’t heal you.  Crawling into a bottle every night won’t permanently keep your demons at bay.  Asking your friend to hold onto your firearm until the Black Dog leaves is only a band-aid.  You can’t wait for the agency to help you, either.  Look, I know it’s fucking hard; not just the work you have to do in therapy but finding a therapist.  I’ve lived in small, rural towns where there weren’t a lot, if any, options.  The EAP doesn’t have a lot of clinicians on the rolls, especially in small towns., but give it a try.  And sometimes you have to go through a couple to find the right one for you.  If the EAP doesn’t work for you, and you have health insurance, find someone who takes your provider.  Many therapists will work on a sliding scale.  ASK.

Damn, this essay is LONG.  And writing it was not easy.  I’m an extremely private person.  And while I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it, it’s highly personal.  I just don’t talk about these things.  In my younger days, especially as a woman in fire who had to constantly prove I’d earned my spot, I would’ve been afraid to talk about this.  Afraid it would show me as weak, not tough enough for the work.  But my proving days are over, and now I’m on a quest to normalize talking about mental health and well-being.  And if I can’t share my own experiences then it’s just lip-service.  I need to walk the talk.  One of my favorite bosses, who himself just went through some pretty tough stuff at work, recently said that leaders need to talk about their own struggles in the hope that it makes it okay for others to also do so.  To ask for help.  To seek getting better.  To heal.

Too long after I moved to OR I realized I still needed to put in some work, so I found myself a new therapist.  I worked with her regularly for a full year and then didn’t need sessions as often.  Just an occasional “tune up” as I call them.  Then during the fire activity after the big wind event — when I was neck deep in evacuations, when there were moments I had to sit in my truck and cry, when I couldn’t sleep — she checked in on me via email.  She’s over an hour away, but I take sick leave for my visits.  She doesn’t take my insurance, but she adjusted her fee for me.  I turn in the expenses to my Health Savings Account and pay the rest out of pocket, which I’m able to afford at my GS level.  And it’s worth it.  I am worth it.  YOU ARE WORTH IT.

Can’t we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
Why can’t we give love, give love, give love, give love,
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love.
‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word,
and love dares you to care for the people on the
edge of the night, and love dares you to
change our way of caring about ourselves.
This is our last dance.
This is ourselves. This is ourselves.

 *From “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen

 

 

 

We Don’t Need Another Forestry Technician Hero (Part 2)

Forestry Technicians prepare a burnout operation to secure structures at Steamboat Work Center, photo courtesy of Marissa Duarte, USFS
Archie Creek Fire. Photo by Marissa Duarte, USFS

Okay, what’s the deal with Forestry Technicians?  Why am I not calling them Firefighters?  Well, because technically federal employees are not classified as Wildland Firefighters (there is a tiny segment of the federal workforce who are structural firefighters).  They’re Forestry Technicians, Range Technicians (mostly with the Bureau of Land Management), Equipment Operators, and Administrative Specialists.  (In the federal government EVERY position falls within a “series” that determines a lot of things including qualification requirements and pay.) Yep.  Now, the federal firefighting agencies (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs) will blame the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  Sure.  Okay, let’s go with that for now.

According to OPM, the federal firefighter series (0081) excludes wildland firefighters, which are defined as,  “Fire control, suppression, and related duties incidental to forestry or range management work.”  Pretty much any position that is involved in “natural resources” is in the 400 series.  Some require a college degree (i.e., 460 is a Forester, 401 is a General Biologist, 408 is an Ecologist) and some don’t (i.e., 462 is a Forestry Technician, 455 is a Range Technician). For GS-11 and above “fire” positions the series is 300 “General Administrative, Clerical, and Office Services.”  Yes, a Fire Staff Officer, a Fire Management Officer, a Division Chief, are all “Administrative Specialists.”  Now, some of the boots-on-the-ground who think people like me are simply paper pushers driving a desk may agree with this. However, we are required to have operational fire qualifications.

In my 30+ years with the US Forest Service (USFS) I’ve been a 460 (Forester), a 401 (General Biologist), a 462 (Forestry Technician) and a 301 (Miscellaneous Administrator) all while working in wildland fire as my primary job.

This “battle” with job series has been going on for some time.  After the South Canyon Fire tragedy it was decided at the top by the federal fire management agencies (listed above) that “wildland fire” positions needed to have incident qualification requirements associated with each position.  They are known as the Interagency Fire Program Management Standards (IFPM), and they were proposed in 2004, ten years after South Canyon.  I don’t think most people had issue with this part of IFPM.  If you were holding a District Fire Management Officer (DFMO or Division Chief) position on a highly complex district then you should be qualified as a Division Group Supervisor and Type 2 Burn Boss at a minimum.  But they also decided that the management positions (at the DFMO/Assistant FMO level and higher) should have a four-year natural resources degree (or equivalent) because these positions would be classified as 401 (General Biologist).  In other words, if you wanted to move from an Engine Captain or Hotshot Superintendent position into management you would need a college degree.

I’m not opposed to education.  I’m actually a big fan of education. I have a BS in Forestry that I’m pretty proud of.  But to make a 40 or 50-year-old person who has proven they are a good firefighter and manager go back and get the equivalent of a college degree to keep their current position seemed ludicrous.  The absolute best “Fire Ecologist” I’ve worked with in my 30 year career was a District AFMO whose formal education didn’t go beyond high school.  There was talk of “professionalizing” our fire workforce.  I don’t think a damn college degree has any bearing on how “professional” a fire organization is.  The agencies reached out to a few universities to develop “continuing education” programs specifically aimed at wildland firefighters who needed this requirement.  People in current positions that would become 401 had priority, and Uncle Sam foot the bill.  For people who aspired to these positions they could get in as well after applying.  And as many people that went through these programs it still wasn’t enough to fill the “pipeline” with qualified employees.

The consternation in the Forest Service over appropriate job series for wildland “firefighters” began in 2004 with the plan to implement IFPM.  Go here to see the numerous memos, letters, and FAQs regarding series.  In a nutshell, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and OPM did audits in 2008 and 2009.  OIG was concerned about the Forest Service’s ability to sustain a viable recruitment pool of fire management candidates for the GS-401 series (I’ve searched high and low for the audit/report and management alert and cannot locate them).  It was a valid concern.

As a follow up to a 2008 email instructing the agency to “stand down” in implementing wildland fire positions in the 401 series, Forest Service Chief Gail Kimball penned a letter on May 29, 2009 referring to the OIG audit and providing interim guidance on job series, including suspension of the 401 job series. The letter also stated, “The Forest Service will be working with the Department to evaluate the options of establishing two new job series [emphasis added] to describe wildland fire management work. One series would be a technical wildland fire management series. The technical series would blend the knowledge, skills and abilities required of modern wildland fire suppression and natural resource management. The second series would be a professional wildland fire management series that provides leadership and management for wildland fire management programs in a natural resource organization. These job series would replace the existing 462 and 401 series currently in use for fire positions within the Agency.”

The USFS convened a “summit” consisting of top Fire and Aviation Management employees, Human Resources Management, and the National Federation of Federal Employees (union) to develop a plan to “seek immediate near-term and long-term solutions.”

On July 8, 2011, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell rescinded former Chief Kimball’s letter with this letter.  It stated, “The outcome of the meeting was a long-term strategy to pursue the creation of a unique occupational series for wildland fire management [emphasis added] that is consistent with the action item in the agency’s Cultural Transformation Plan. However, the creation of a new occupational series is likely to require significant effort and time.”  He laid out an interim strategy that designated positions that would remain in the 462 Forestry Technician series (“firefighting and dispatch”) and the 401 series (“IFPM fuels positions”).  The letter then stated, “Fire management positions at the GS-09 and above grade levels that are primarily administrative and managerial in nature are in the process of being reclassified in the GS-0301, Miscellaneous Administration and Program Series.”

That letter was the last we formally heard about “a unique occupational series for wildland fire management.”  We’ve been told a lot of things informally.  The unions has tried to get elected officials in on the fight to develop a new series, but every time it seems there’s a bit of traction gained it goes nowhere.

I do want to acknowledge that the 455 Range Technician series is also an issue, primarily in the BLM, which is in the Department of Interior (DOI).  I can’t tell you what the internal discussions have been in the DOI agencies, but it’s frustrating that the federal land management agencies who engage in fire management can’t seem to get in alignment with the US Forest Service, and vice versa.  This is just as important of a discussion; I just don’t have the information and experience with the 455 series in DOI.

Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, series are connected to pay.  There are some series in the federal government that receive a higher salary rate on the General Schedule scale (professional engineers, for example, because the pay in the private sector is so much higher).  It’s Uncle Sam’s way of sweetening the pot in order to better recruit qualified and high performing employees who would make more in the private sector.

Entry level Forestry Technicians are at the GS-3 level.  Go here for the General Schedule pay table.  There is a “base”, and then there are higher rates for localities that meet the criteria (high cost of living and large enough population, for example Portland, OR and the greater Denver, CO area).  A first year GS-3 Forestry Technician makes $11.49/hour.  The California minimum wage rate, which is a state rate so the Federal Government doesn’t have to comply, is $12.00/hour (set to incrementally increase to $15.00 by 2022).  I’m not knocking on the work millions of Californians do for minimum wage.  But how many people who make minimum wage in the CA service industry can get killed by a falling tree or a raging wildfire in the scope of their employment?  As a comparison an entry level wildland firefighter for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFire) makes 50% more.  This holds generally true for all federal Forestry Technician and administrative positions – CALFire employees make double what the feds make.  For federal Forestry Technicians there is enormous pressure to get as many fire assignments and as many hours as one can during fire season in order to supplement the often “meager” base salaries. Because a large segment of these Forestry Technicians are “seasonal” employees this means they are only guaranteed work for six or nine months out of the year.

Those of us in “fire” positions are required to meet not just the qualification requirements but physical fitness requirements as well.  It’s a condition of our employment.  Hotshots, smokejumpers, helitack all have to meet even higher standards of physical fitness and technical proficiencies.  And wildland fighting fire is hard on the body.

A unique occupational series for federal wildland firefighting positions could mean a higher rate than the base GS rates (such as engineers).

But it’s not just about the money.  It’s about so much more.  It’s about acknowledging the inherent risks associated with wildland firefighting.  And I’m not only referring to the physical risks like falling trees, rolling boulders, raging fires, chainsaw accidents, and vehicle mishaps.  The USFS has gotten better about acknowledging the environmental dangers associated with fighting fire. But this is also about acknowledging the personal, emotional toll this work takes on us and our families.  Structural firefighters might sleep at their fire station when they’re on a shift (typically 3-4 nights away from home per week), but federal Forestry Technicians who fight fire can and will be dispatched anywhere in the country (and sometimes to Australia or Canada) for 14 to 21 days, excluding travel.  Then a couple days off and right back out (and sometimes those days “off” are done at incident, not at home). In a busy fire season (and they’re getting busier and busier) a Forestry Technician on an engine or hand crew, a smokejumper or helitack, could spend as little as 16 days at home in a four-month period (“peak” fire season in the West).  We miss birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, funerals and the simple day-to-day interactions with our families and friends.  A lot of spouses get tired of living “alone” and raising children as to what amounts to being a “single” parent for a good part of the year.  And while official statistics on divorce rates are lacking, subject matter experts believe the rate for Forestry Technicians who fight fire is considerably higher than the national average.

And let’s talk about mental health.  While no one keeps official records, it’s thought by mental health professionals and other subject matter experts that the suicide rate for Forestry Technicians engaged in wildland firefighting is significantly higher than other professions and is an indicator of a mental health crisis. One known research study published in 2018 was done with a small number of participants and showed staggering  findings: 55% of wildland firefighters compared to 32% of non-wildland firefighters reported clinically significant suicidal symptoms.  The reasons are numerous – challenges of balancing family life with work; being laid off in the dark, often cold months and losing the “family” support unit of one’s engine crew or hand crew (the bonds are strong in fire), called “thwarted belongingness” by psychologists; financial challenges in the off-season; exposure to traumatic events associated with the job. The Employee Assistance Program, EAP, has some great services, however the maximum number of free visits to a mental health professional varies from three to six.  And the contractors don’t often have trauma-trained clinicians.  It’s hard enough to find someone who works with law enforcement or structural firefighters, but someone who understands wildland firefighting is about as rare as a unicorn.  Rural communities, of which a lot of our national forests are part, and where many Forestry Technicians live year-round, often will have no clinicians at all that are contracted with EAP.  Go here to read just one story of this struggle.

Again, why does this matter? A unique occupational series for federal wildland firefighting positions means an acknowledgement of the work we do and the sacrifices we (and often our families) make.  My agency won’t officially acknowledge us as Wildland Firefighters.  Many of us feel they only do so when it’s convenient or cool or sexy to do so: when the agency needs “heroes” and not just Forestry Technicians.  As the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we started talking about contracting the disease while in official capacity and how to “prove” that to the Officer of Worker’s Compensation Program (OWCP), the USFS had an opportunity to officially state to the OWCP that Forestry Technicians who fight fire are “first responders.”  The agency chose not to.  But during the memorial for a Forestry Technician Hotshot who recently died on the fireline, the Chief of the Forest Service referred to him numerous times as a “firefighter.” Managers at the highest levels of the USDA Forest Service are quick to refer to us as “wildland firefighters” when we die in the line of duty.  It’s good PR.

As former Chief Tidwell wrote in his 2011 letter that developing a unique series would require “significant effort and time.”  It’s been NINE YEARS.  To be fair, the OPM oversees an incredibly archaic classification system that will need a congressional mandate to update.  And the OPM is one of the few federal agencies that actually makes a profit off other agencies by charging them to do the work no other agency is allowed to do.  Meaning, we are required by law to use the OPM (and they charge us money to do the work).  But just think what could happen if ALL the federal land management agencies who manage wildland fire got together to work with OPM to develop a unique wildland firefighter series.  I just cannot imagine real change would take another nine years to happen.

Morale is extremely low in the wildland fire community.  These Forestry and Range Technicians feel ignored, unappreciated, misunderstood, and disregarded.  It’s a testament to the fortitude and drive of the people doing this dangerous, yet necessary work that they continue year-in and year-out to labor with an overall positive spirit and high level of determination, despite the shitty pay, lack of recognition, and disrespect.  These folks are largely smart, creative, dedicated, critical-thinking problem-solvers who love the land.

The Wildland Fire Leadership Values are Duty, Integrity and Respect.  Duty  — leaders valuing their jobs; Integrity – leaders valuing themselves; Respect – leaders valuing their coworkers.  It’s time the top managers of the USDA Forest Service, and the other agencies, show proper respect of valuing these hard-working women and men by honoring them, us, as Wildland Firefighters:

  • Establish a unique wildland firefighting job series with appropriate living wage and commensurate benefits.
  • Provide better mental health services that acknowledge the unique work and sacrifices of wildland firefighters.

 

 

If you want to support this effort please go to the Grassroots Wildland Firefighter Committee to see a lot of ways you can help.  Go here to see a new bill H.R. 8170 – Wildland Firefighter Recognition Act.  Contact your representative if you support it.  We need your help.

 

DISCLAIMER: In no way here do I officially represent the USDA Forest Service or any other federal agency.  I have links to public documents and have attempted to present as many facts as I can.  The rest of the essay is my opinion and does not reflect any official stance by any of the federal land management agencies who engage in wildland fire management. 

 

 

 

We Don’t Need Another Forestry Technician* Hero (Part 1)

In 2007 I stood at one of the crosses near Stand 5, the Spot Fire/Lunch Spot, of the Rattlesnake Fire Staff Ride on the Mendocino National Forest.  The entire permanent fire organization from the Klamath National Forest was participating in the staff ride as part of our first “Fire Week.”  The Rattlensake Fire is where 15 members of the New Tribes Missionary Fire Crew were overrun by the flames and died on July 9, 1953.   A co-worker and I were looking at the interpretive sign remarking on how far one of the crew members ran before he was overtaken by the fire.  For me it was reminiscent of Eric Hipke’s epic charge to the top of the ridge on the South Canyon Fire.  Except Hipke survived.

As we talked I heard a sound behind me.  When I turned to see what it was I saw a young man, one of our Klamath NF Apprentices, sobbing nearly uncontrollably.  One of the Captains from the Klamath Hotshots had his hand on the young man’s shoulder and was consoling him.  Through his choking sobs he was saying, “I have always laughed off close calls.  We joked about having to run from fires.  I never really thought about how close I’ve come to being hurt or killed.  And it was cool, and it was exciting, and I thought I was smart and a great fireman.  And now I finally see how easily I could’ve made my wife a widow and my kid’s without a dad.  And that I don’t want to die a hero.”

I started crying and walked over to this young man and put my arm around him, “It’s okay. You’re okay.  You’re here.  This is why we’re all here.  To learn.  So this doesn’t happen to us.”

It is still happening.

I’VE STARTED THIS ESSAY NUMEROUS TIMES since the helicopter crashed on the Mt Hood NF on August 25th (the helicopter manager and trainee are from my forest).   But I couldn’t land on a topic.  I wanted to talk about fire fatalities, I wanted to talk about forestry technicians*, I wanted to talk about mental health of those who fight fire, I wanted to talk about the dark realities of “heroism.”  Then after September 8th I wanted to talk about the fires that roared through Western OR and WA leaving tragedy in their collective wake.  Each time I started to dive deep into thinking about on which topic to focus (I do a lot of writing in my head) I would find myself getting overwhelmed and emotional.  I had to just stop.  I was in full compartmentalization mode for at least the first 14 days after the wind event that started on the 7th.  It’s the only way I could get through the long days of dealing with two large fires.  I had to focus on the work and task at hand and push everything else back into a dark corner.  In my long journey into taking better care of my mental health I know I will have to eventually light up that dark corner and deal with all of it.  I must be getting there since I’m finally sitting down to write this.

Look, I know shit happens.  Sometimes healthy-looking green trees fall.  Sometimes the wind blows or shifts when no one, let alone meteorologists, expected it to.  Sometimes we do everything right, and bad stuff still happens.  But when we do know the wind is going to blow, when we’re well aware of snags and other hazards, when we know the inversion is going to lift, when it’s obvious a structure is indefensible, when the “values” aren’t’ worth the risk, why are we still putting our forestry technicians in the way? And by “we” I mean Fire Staff/Chief Officers (like me), Agency Administrators, ICs, Division Supervisors, Module Leaders.  “We” all own those decisions. And lastly, we’re humans; we’re fallible.

I was once a gung-ho hotshot with more bravado than experience.  But my Supt and the Foreman did have the experience to manage the risks for the rest of us.  When I questioned why we needed fresh drivers to come get us after a 36 hour shift the Supt bet me $20 I couldn’t stay awake for the 30 minute drive from the fire to the hotel where we’d bed down.  As hard as I fought it I was asleep in less than five minutes.

THE EAST WIND EVENT THAT WAS FORECAST FOR OREGON AND WASHINGTON STARTING ON SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 WAS SPOT ON.  When the National Weather Service in Portland put into their forecast that it was a weather phenomenon that only happens two to four times a century and that it was a very dangerous situation, well, that got my attention.  While east wind events aren’t unusual in Western OR, this one was forecasted to be historic due to the unusually high winds (gust up to 60 mph) and single digit relative humidity. They warned us a few days ahead.  We knew it was coming.  My forest didn’t have any active fires, but we knew that was likely to change.  Two nights before the forecasted winds I sent an email to the fire folks here asking them to prepare themselves emotionally to walk away from homes that were likely to burn or already burning.  Homes in the communities where many of them grew up and still live.  Homes of their neighbors, co-workers, friends.  I wanted to acknowledge how hard it is to do that, and I wanted them to think about it before they needed to do it so that they would make the decision to withdraw in time.

On the first night of the forecasted winds, Monday, I woke up once.  Surprised at the lack of wind, “Maybe they got it wrong,” I thought as I fell back to sleep.  My phone ringing at 0521 proved otherwise.  It was our primary cooperator.  “Tell me about the fire you have up Williams Creek,” he said.  “This is the first I’ve heard about it,” I said.  “Well, MODIS (satellite imagery) is showing you have a 500 acre fire.”  “Shit,” I said, “I need to make some calls.”  There was no wind at my house, it was calm as could be. I called the Acting FMO (one of our AFMOs who was covering since the DFMO was out on assignment) and got no answer, so I left a voicemail.  Next I called the other AFMO who worked on the district where the reported fire was.  He answered.  I told him about the fire report.  “There is no wind here at my house,” I said.  “Let me step outside,” he answered.  “I live between Roseburg and Glide (Glide is where the Ranger Station is), and it’s calm here, too.”  The AFMO was getting a call from the acting DFMO I’d left a message with earlier, so we hung up.  He soon called me back and said the wind was howling up the river.  They were going to start calling the forestry technicians to gather up and head to the fire.  Before we hung up I said, “There’s no firefighting with this. Just get people out.”  “Understood,” he said.  I trusted him completely.

And that’s exactly what it was.  Before long I was on calls with one of the Deputy Sheriffs concurring with evacuation areas up the river.  Soon another fire started near the forest boundary on BLM and private lands.  Even with helicopters that fire fight quickly turned solely to evacuating residents and folks in campgrounds.  The forestry technicians and others were honking the engine horns, running sirens, emptying campgrounds, knocking on doors, helping the elderly get to their vehicles.  The Umpqua NF Type 4 IC trainee, born and raised just down the road, later said that at times she couldn’t tell where she was because the once-prominent landmarks were either obscured by smoke and ash or already completely burned.  They led many residents and recreationists to safety through the smoke and flames.

As devastating as it was to lose over 100 residences, no one died in our fires.  Some of that was because ours happened in the light of day.  But a lot of that was the result of the actions of the Umpqua NF forestry technicians, the firefighters with our key cooperator, and proactive actions by county and local law enforcement.  Before the day was over, in a proactive and gutsy move, our Sheriff put the entire county, over 5,000 square miles, into a Level 1 (Ready!) evacuation.

Later that day we got another fire report, this one in the Mt Thielsen Wilderness near Diamond Lake.  We had no resources to spare, and there were no immediate threats to people or homes.  I told the AFMO, “We have to let that one go, Brian. We have homes burning down river and on the neighboring forests.  We don’t have a choice.”  He understood, but I know it was still hard for him.  I called the Regional Duty Officer to let him know.  He understood, too.  We had few, if any, options.

That evening the two fires outside of Glide merged.  As I stood in dispatch the Type 3 IC reported over the radio that this combined fire, the Archie Creek Fire, was now 70,000 acres.  He later told me he heard me in the background calmly ask “What the fuck did he just say?”

After a very long day and evening I was finally asleep.  Until my phone buzzed a bit after midnight.  It was at text from Brian, the AFMO at Diamond Lake.  “Riva are you still up?”  I texted back “yes” and he called me.  “We have reports that the fire has pushed out of Thielsen and is about cross Highway 138.  I have someone en route, now.”  Shit.  I should’ve seen that coming, and I didn’t.  We had folks in campgrounds, at the Diamond Lake Resort, in the Diamond Lake summer homes.  I completely dropped the ball on that one.  Just because we didn’t have any resources to put on it I shouldn’t have ignored it.  I should’ve been thinking of worst-case scenario(s), and I hadn’t been.  “Okay, let me know when he gets on scene.”  Shit.  I got up and fired up my laptop to look at a map of the area.  Brian texted me several minutes later.  The fire had indeed crossed Highway 138 and a Level 3 Evacuation (Go!) had been ordered with the Sheriff’s Office.  FS folks started notifying people camping and they called the resort.  I asked if Crater Lake National Park had been notified and Brian said no.  I told him I’d have our Center Manager notify their dispatch center.  Brian was trying to have folks assist with evacuation and also try to get as many folks rested as he could because we’d need folks the next day.  Well, later in the day since it was already the “next day.”  I texted the Forest Supervisor to let her know.  And got a couple hours sleep at most.

As the east winds continued to blow into Wednesday both fires continued to march.  The Archie Fire pushed towards Glide and a Level 3 Evacuation notice was ordered by the Sheriff that included Glide (and our North Umpqua Ranger Station), up Little River, including the Wolf Creek Job Corp Center.  Thankfully no students were there, a COVID-19 silver lining.   The Diamond Lake Ranger Station, located at Toketee, is a large compound with several permanent FS homes.  It is an old-school remote station where many employees live full time year-round.  One of the county Sheriff’s deputies lives there as well as several employees of Pacific Power.  Sandwiched between the two fires we decided to err on the side of caution and evacuate everyone (it was not within the evacuation area from the night before) from there, too.

I’d remember hearing about a situation a few days prior where 15 fire personnel had to deploy fire shelters after trying to defend a historic Forest Service structure on a forest in Southern CA.  The structure burned to the ground and two people ended up in the burn unit.  I did not want the same thing to happen trying to defend either ranger station.  Not that we wouldn’t assess to see if we could safety defend them, but I wanted folks to very clearly understand that these buildings weren’t worth anyone getting seriously injured or killed.  On the road I called my Deputy and asked her to get fire leadership on a conference call and have that very direct discussion. I wanted it be very clear where we stood on it, and I wanted the information to go all the way down to the module leaders.  I asked my boss to call each of those district rangers and ask them to have the same discussion.  I wanted them to verbalize it – I wanted their folks to hear it from them.  No building was worth anyone getting hurt.  Not one.  The next day the incident management team that had arrived to manage the Archie Fire used Umpqua NF forestry technicians to implement a burn-out operation around the old Steamboat work center where we had housing for our temps (they had been safely evacuated).  They were able to safely and successfully complete the burn-out.  I’m so proud of them, but I would be equally as proud if they’d withdrawn because it wasn’t safe enough to implement the burn out.

All-told, over 100 residences were lost in the Archie Fire, none in the Thielsen Fire.  No lives were lost, no serious injuries incurred.  But these were the homes of our community members, our friends and some of our families.  And it hurt.  Both ranger stations survived.  None of the forestry technicians or firefighters with our cooperator were injured.

I thought I could pack the “forestry technician”discussion into this one essay, but I cannot.  It’s just too “big,” too complicated. And I want to get it right, to do right by the folks out there risking their lives.  Stay tuned for that, but in the meantime, go here for some great info on what a grassroots group is doing to try to turn the ocean liner.  https://anchorpointpodcast.com/grassroots-wildland-firefighters-committee

 

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog.  While I am currently an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture, any opinions posted here are my own and should not be construed to represent the official position United States Government, Department of Agriculture, or the U.S. Forest Service.

*Technically federal employees are not classified as Wildland Firefighters (there is a tiny segment of the federal workforce who are structural firefighters).  According to the Office of Personnel management (OPM), the federal firefighter series (0081) excludes wildland firefighters.  “Fire control, suppression, and related duties incidental to forestry or range management work.”

Livin’ la Vida Covid*

I had to take a step down off my high horse and place my self solidly in this young man’s fire boots.

                                                                                                     *apologies to Ricky Martin

 

As I write this, the first lightning bust of the season is forecast for tomorrow here in SW Oregon.  We’ve been spending the weekend putting our lightning plan into place – ordering resources, coordinating with neighbors and cooperators about what they have or might need, making bro deals, bringing Agency Administrators up to speed, chasing always-elusive (for us) aircraft resources.    It’s been nearly six months since the COVID-19 pandemic changed all our lives and how we work, do our jobs, fight fire.  And now it’s our turn to put the plans and lessons learned into practice.  As not only the Duty Officer but the Fire Staff Officer, I hear that little voice whispering in my year, “Have you thought of everything?  What have you missed?  Have you done enough? Are you ready?”

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I was one of the people who originally didn’t take the Corona virus seriously, but only in the very early days.  I was in denial because I didn’t want to face the loss of many of the things I really love; travel (work and personal), live music, a draught beer with friends, humanity.  And as someone who is an extrovert, single, and lives alone the prospect of teleworking was something I just did not want to confront.  But, being a woman of science, I soon accepted the reality of the pandemic quickly descending upon us.

I was appointed my forest’s Pandemic Coordinator by the Forest Supervisor and Deputy which pretty much meant I had to read everything COVID-19 related that passed through my inbox. This was so I could track the latest guidance coming from all directions and then communicate that to our Forest Leadership Team (FLT). I had to send daily reports to the Regional Office with all our numbers – how many employees total, how many teleworking, how many in isolation, how many in quarantine, how many recovered.  What major issues facing the forest?  I had to synthesize all the information facing the forest not just that related to fire.  You’ve heard the saying “drinking from a fire hose?”  Well, as tired as that cliché might be, that’s what it was like. I tried my best to only forward the important and relevant information.  That took some time on my part to read at least some of it first.  But I knew there was no way people could keep up with everything and I didn’t want them to not read anything, so I had to dive in.

Initially the task to put the numerous COVID-19 plans into place felt completely overwhelming. Quarantine plans, housing plans, on-boarding plans, the myriad of risk assessments for just about everything work related.  I kept waiting for the higher levels (national, regional) to provide some plans, some guidance.  But all I saw and heard was that Agency Administrators were being given “decision-space” to adapt their plans to their own situations.  Non-fire managers were now using the word “doctrine,” which until this year only seemed to be used, and fully understood, by those of us in fire (or those employees who were in the military).  “We’re applying ‘doctrine’ to this situation.”  “We don’t want to be prescriptive; we want to give you flexibility.”

Now, I’m a big fan of wildfire doctrine.  I embraced it early on in fire in the forest service back in the mid-2000s.  Some people dismissed it as another buzz-word-laced initiative that didn’t mean anything.  I’m not a “everything is black or white” person; I love to live in the gray.  I know my policies, I’m pretty well-versed, but when situations warrant a different approach, based on good, sound judgment and experience of the person or people in the thick of it, I liked being able to apply doctrinal principles in making decisions.  And I liked the people in my charge being able to do that as well, to know they could make decisions based on their situation, to defer to the experts. The guy who brought doctrine to the forest service from the military said, “Some people like to cloak themselves in rules, and they are the ones who don’t like doctrine.  But this is for the thinkers, the problem-solvers, the people at the pointy end of the spear who just might have a better idea.”  I liked that.  Wildland firefighters are notorious for our “can-do” attitudes.  We’ve been both lauded and vilified for that attitude.  Punished and rewarded.  Doctrine came to us as our culture was just beginning to shift from blaming to learning.

But if ever there seemed a situation to not use a doctrinal approach, figuring out how to prepare for fire season pandemic was it. It did not seem like the time for everyone to “roll their own.”  How could we all do things differently when at some point in time we’d be fighting fire somewhere else or hosting large fires with off-unit resources who all did something different back home?  I kept waiting for policy, guidance, direction from the Washington Office.  And if not from there, surely from the Regional Office.  As we began onboarding our seasonal firefighters there was CDC workplace guidance recommending one person to a vehicle.  Our hand crews typically have nine to 22 crew members.  For numerous reasons it was not feasible for each person to have their own vehicle.  This would create other issues and challenges; logistical, funding, safety — what those of us in the risk management business call ‘trade-offs.”  And when one looks at risks, one must also look at the tradeoffs for performing the hazardous work (or not). Is the risk acceptable? Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze and other times it is not.  For the vehicle issue I tasked our local Captain’s group to come up with a proposal for all the modules – engines and hand crews.  I told the Chair of the group to use common sense that didn’t cause other less acceptable risks.  They did a great job and came up with a solid plan that us managers adopted with no changes.  This was one example of where I felt like our Regional Office should’ve developed a plan, using subject matter experts like our regional Captain’s group. It finally came to a point where we could wait no longer and so developed our own.  And don’t get me started on the whole “who pays for testing” discussion.  That is a separate essay all its own (that I won’t likely write).  Yes, I am fully aware I work within a bureaucracy, but still, why does it take months to make decisions that err on the side of advocating for our employees, our first responders?  Some say “better late than never,” but that is not the right sentiment for me.  I say, what took so damn long?

*

Going into this I thought I had a pretty good handle on operational risk management.  Those of us in fire live in a world of risk.  The job is inherently risky, often times quite dangerous.  Early on in the pandemic, sometime in March, I came face-to-face with the true spectrum of the risk of COVID-19.  Just as we were bringing firefighters off of telework and into the office for critical training, one crew member asked to sit the season out.  He did not feel the agency truly had his well-being at heart.  He didn’t trust the agency to take care of him, or his family, if he got sick with COVID-19.  To be honest, at first, I was disappointed in his reaction.  I love being a wildland firefighter and a fire manager. For me it’s not just a job or even a profession.  It is a calling. I accept the job and all its risks and feel it is my duty to do the job.  But I also understand I’m 30+ years in, very close to the end of my forest service career, and I’ve had a lot of life and work experiences that shape how I view all of this.  And as mentioned above, I’m single and live alone.  I don’t have to worry about bringing the ‘Rona home with me and passing it on to my roommates or loved ones.  My family, two of whom are high risk, are clear across the country, so I don’t have to worry about infecting them.  I had to take a step down off my high horse and place myself solidly into this young man’s fire boots.  He has a wife and kids.  And like a lot of our firefighters, the ones who are out there day after day on the fireline (not comfortably sitting in an air-conditioned office like I am), he hasn’t always felt valued by the US Forest Service for the work he does.  I was really glad he spoke up, because I needed to know that.  His crew supervisor, the district ranger, and the DFMO had a good discussion with him.  They listened to his concerns, explained what plans and processes were in place (or soon would be) to help manage/mitigate COVID-19, but they also didn’t blow sunshine up his rear end.  They were honest in telling him which answers they, we, didn’t have.  But they assured him that they, and the rest of us on the forest, would help him make the right decisions for him and his family.  He decided to stay with the crew.  And he sent a nice email to his ranger saying he felt heard and understood, and that had gone a long way in his decision to stay.  It illustrated for me the very broad spectrum of risk tolerance/acceptance as it’s related to COVID-19.  That we have employees on every single point along that spectrum, and that we owe it to them to acknowledge that it is okay no matter where they fall.

On one of our fire management calls after that I told folks that I had to really shift my thinking about these new risks we were facing.  And that while I feel like I’ve always taken my responsibility as a fire manager seriously, knowingly sending folks into hazardous environments, that never before have I had to send people into an environment where I knew they could bring the hazard home with them.  I admitted that I was struggling with that. I told them we might have people take a pass from firefighting this season, maybe forever. My expectation of all of them was that no one belittle or shame anyone for making that decision based on their own, or their family’s, refusal to accept this new risk that we were still learning more about every day.

We’ve come a long way since those chaotic days in March.  We have our plans in place.  My immediate staff and the fire managers and module leaders at the districts have done some stellar work in being creative and figuring out the “yes” when others were pretty happy with telling us “no.”  I’m really, really proud of them.  Other regions have been in their fire seasons “guinea-pigging” the best management practices, sharing their lessons learned (good and bad), helping the rest of us adapt our plans based on what seemed to “work” and what didn’t.  I was able to take a Duty Officer assignment to New Mexico where I got to be in the thick of it as not only an observer but a participant.   I learned a lot – some things falling into the “what not to do” category and some solidly in the “good stuff, let’s do that” category.  Some great fire management leaders are emerging from the pandemic, people filling the gaps and finding creative ways to meet logistical challenges, stepping up and figuring out how best to take care of our firefighters and support staff.  I am in awe of them and honored to be in the same profession.

And so here we are, on the threshold of Dirty August.  Depending on what we get out of this lightning (which is starting in Northern CA and working its way north) we could find ourselves at Regional or National Preparedness Level 4 or 5 in the next few days.  We could soon see what the worst-case scenarios of COVID-19 and wildland firefighting actually look like.  I hope it’s not as bad as some of the experts fear.  But hope is not a plan.  We’ll keep moving forward and put our plans to work, adjust and adapt as needed, look for the gold nuggets, but be mindful of the weak signals.  What do I think the rest of fire season and the ‘Rona hold for us?  Ask me in November.

  Upside, inside out
She’s livin’ la vida (covid)
She’ll push and pull you down
Livin’ la vida (covid)…
…She will wear you out
Livin’ la vida (covid)
Livin’ la vida (covid)
She’s livin’ la vida (covid)*  

*from “Livin’ la Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin

                                                             

 

 

What you need to know about me.

I’ve suffered a few “abrupt and brutal audits” in my career. They’ve certainly shaped who I am as a wildland fire manager and human being. I wrote this in 2015 for a writing class at the U of NC Asheville. The assignment was to write of a place that held deep meaning.

The Beautiful Terrible

I remember the moment when I first realized how much I loved the Klamath Mountains and valleys.  It was a lovely April evening, 2007, and I was driving north on Interstate 5 in California; the long downhill stretch just past the town of Weed on my way home from Sacramento to Yreka.  I was coming from a meeting with my peers from the other 17 National Forests in California.  I’d only be in the job for about seven months, and it had been a steep learning curve.  Finally I felt like I was picking things up, figuring out the many challenges that came with the job. 

In northernmost California I-5 divides the Klamath Mountains from the wide valleys of the Great Basin to the East.  On my right Mt. Shasta’s hulking, snow-covered slopes glowed pink like cake frosting in the setting sun. The sight of Mt. Shasta still made me catch my breath.  Technically a volcano and not a mountain, it rose drastically from the valley floor, standing alone like the cool jock showing up unexpectedly at tryouts for the school musical.  It makes perfect sense that it is considered a high holy place by the local tribes.  Mt. Eddy, part of the Klamath range, was on my left.  I glanced out the side window, scanning the ridge for the lookout that was not yet staffed this early in spring.   In the gloaming the air was sparkly and clear, and I could see the white tip-top of Oregon’s Mt. McLaughlin, another volcano, far off to the northeast.  The pastures and grasslands, dotted black and brown with grazing cattle, were still so green from the winter rains and snow that they nearly glowed. Redbud trees heavy with startling fuchsia blossoms grew in gangly clumps along the highway and in the yards of the small and simple ranch homes.

I felt a surprising rush of happiness that nearly moved me to tears and felt the sharp pain in my chest normally experienced at the onset of first love.  This.  This diverse landscape of steep, sharp mountains, lush expansive valleys, and cold rushing rivers was where I belonged.  Beginning my eighth month as the Deputy Fire Chief for the Klamath National Forest I already felt a deep connection to this place and its people unlike the five national forests where I had previously worked.  My previous job in another state had been challenging.  I’d never felt included in the fire organization there, never felt like I belonged.   Vowing early in my career to never work for the US Forest Service in California, here I was.  And I loved it. I’d found my forest and my tribe.  This was going to be a great gig. 

*

While Death did not escort me to the Klamath, it met me at the door one August evening, my third day on the job.   In a hotel, my phone rang at about nine o’clock in the evening.  My new boss, Jay, who I’d known for a few years, was on the other end.

            “Riva, it’s Jay.”  I immediately knew something was wrong. His voice was heavy and sad.  “We’ve had a helicopter go down on the Titus Fire.” I had been lying in bed watching TV and I jumped to my feet.

            “Oh, no.  Oh, shit,” I said.  “What happened?”

            “It was a Sky Crane.  Crashed into the Klamath River.  Both pilots are dead.” I felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

            “Fuck.  Ah, fuck.  I’m sorry, Jay.  Do you need me to come in?” I didn’t know what I could do to help but I wanted to help.

            “Uh…no.  You don’t need to come in.  I’m leaving dispatch soon.  It’s just…. It’s just…. Well…” he said.  He was quiet for a moment, working to control his emotions.  “I will pick you up at your hotel at 0400.  Sorry so early, but it’s a long drive.  And we have a long day ahead of us.”

            “Okay.  I doubt I’ll sleep much anyway.”

            “Me, neither,” he said, suddenly sounding old to me.  I didn’t want to hang up the phone, but I didn’t know what else to say.

            “I’ll see you in the morning, Jay.” 

            “Good night, Riva.  I’m glad you’re here.”

I stood there, alone in my room at the Best Western Miner’s Inn, surrounded by mass-produced “art” and the standard low-end hotel décor of particleboard furniture and floral, polyester bedspreads.  I felt helpless and sad.  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea taking this job.  What the fuck had I gotten myself into?

*

In the wildland fire community the Klamath National Forest is one of the worst and best places to fight fire.  Biologically diverse, the mountains are extremely steep; the knife-edge rocky ridges with fingers of thick stands of conifer trees spreading down the slopes separated by boulder-strewn openings.  At the lower elevations along the primary rivers, the Salmon, the Scott, the Klamath and all their tributaries, were thick stands of poison oak, many of them head-high.  The forest and nearly all of its ecosystems had evolved from fire.  Most species of tree, shrub, and grass had adapted to fire, and many needed fire to live and regenerate. This forest was born of fire.

It is a rite of passage to fight fire on the Klamath.  Legendary fire seasons of 1987, 1988, 1999, and then 2006-2009 validated and ruined careers of many and also claimed the lives of some.  The Klamath either made you or broke you.  If you could fight fire on the Klamath and survive, well shit, you could fight fire anywhere.  If your feet didn’t blister and bleed from hiking up the 60 degree slopes, if you didn’t end up covered in oozing, itchy blisters from the poison oak, if you didn’t get taken out by a rock rolling down the slope and bouncing chest-high off the dirt, if the thick, choking smoke that clung to the valleys day after day after day didn’t infect your lungs with chronic bronchitis, then you passed the test. And you wore your time fighting fire on the Klamath like a badge. 

The California Smokejumpers, based in Redding less than 100 miles south of the Klamath, don’t jump a lot of fires on the Klamath.  Very few places to safely land.  Either too steep, too rocky, or too closed in with trees.  During the historic fire season of 2008 when President Bush visited the jump base in Redding, he asked a wiry smokejumper if he was often afraid.  The jumper replied, a wry smile on his face, “The only time I’m afraid is when I’m standing in the open door of the airplane looking down at the Klamath.” 

Even today, this far to the east in North Carolina, when dispatch calls the guys to see if they are available to go on a fire assignment to California, most reply, “I’ll go anywhere but the Klamath.”

*

Unfortunately, that late-night call from Jay in 2006 wouldn’t be the last for me in my three years on the Klamath.   In July of 2007 another helicopter crashed while fighting a fire on the Klamath.  But instead of a catastrophic tail-rotor failure like what caused the Sky Crane to crash into the river the summer before, this time it wasn’t a mechanical failure.  The helicopter nearly crashed on top of one of the Klamath’s own crews.  The pilot, after getting the long-line tangled in a treetop, peeled off to his right to avoid crashing into the crew, killing himself instead.  It was the result of a cascading series of poor decisions made by several firefighters.  “Human factors.”   Couldn’t blame this one on a faulty part.  And what usually comes with fault is guilt and remorse, and the result can be career-ending; not necessarily from disciplinary action or management’s heavy hand, but from the personal struggle within.  From the inability to reconcile one’s own role in the death of another.

Tragedy would come again in 2008.  Jay had since retired leaving me temporarily in charge of the fire program.  The best boss I’ve ever had, one of my closest friends, had had enough of death and personnel bullshit and tapped out.  Death first showed up to him on the Klamath in 2002 when a Lassen National Forest engine dropped a front tire off the edge of a forest road on the Stanza Fire and rolled 300 feet down an embankment.  All five firefighters had their seatbelts on, but the crash was so violent that three were ripped out of their seatbelts and tossed from the engine like rag dolls as it tumbled down the mountain.  Two were killed instantly, crushed by the rolling hunk of metal. One died on the side of the mountain in the arms of a Kentucky firefighter.   Jay had told me that he’d struggled to deal with that accident, and it had been a long, difficult process for him.  The helicopter crashes in 2006 and 2007 stacked on top of the engine accident, became a horrible weight to bear. 

The 2008 fire season had started in Northern California two months early and with gusto.  On June 20 an early dry lightning storm rolled in off the coast, flashing and raging across the already parched northern part of the state.  The storm produced over 25,000 lightning strikes in that one night, igniting over 2,000 wildfires.  My husband and I were sitting in our camp chairs in the little city park in Yreka listening to a local band.  We were drinking beer with friends, watching the little kids dance and twirl to the music.  As the day receded into night we could see lightning etch the Western sky like neon spider webs.  The wind came up, blowing through the treetops, the branches bending and arching as if also dancing.  Whoa, I remember thinking to myself; we may get some fires out of this.  We ended up with nearly one hundred fires on the Klamath alone.

On July 26th we’d been managing large wildfires from the June 20th lightning storm for almost five weeks.  My staff and I were exhausted.  At our level we provided the oversight and management of hundreds of firefighting resources.  Hotshot crews, engine crews, bulldozers, helicopters, from all over the country.  Not to mention the caterers, shower units, and base camp managers who supported the “boots on the ground.”  I had taken a rare and much needed day off.  I’d hardly seen or spoken to my husband in days, and we enjoyed a beautiful summer day kayaking on Shasta Lake.  We’d barely walked in the door, the dogs happy to see us and dancing around our legs, when my phone rang.  I saw from the caller ID it was Jaime.  She was the Duty Officer for the day. 

            “Hey, what’s up, “I asked. 

            “Riva, you need to come in.  There’s been an accident.”  Fuck.

            “What happened?”

            “Just come in,” Jaime said.  She was vague for a reason.  She didn’t want me killing myself or anyone else speeding over to the office.  But I knew it was bad.

            “Jaime.  What the fuck happened?” I demanded, my voice tight as a wire.   

            “There’s been a burnover on the Panther Fire.  One fatality, one injury.  Come in,” she said quietly.  My vision narrowed.  I felt like I was suddenly standing in a dark room by myself.

            “Who is it?” I whispered.

            “Just come in, Riva,” she repeated. 

            “God damn it, Jaime.  Tell me who the fuck it is,” I said, loudly this time.  The Panther Fire had been a problem for days, and we were soon handing it off to one of the teams managing a large group of fires for us.  We still had some of our forest folks on it.   She knew what I was asking.  She sighed, long and low with the slightest waver.

            “It’s not one of ours.”

            “Okay.  Okay. I’ll be right in.”  I hung up the phone, tears blurring my vision. I was so relieved it wasn’t one of “our” firefighters, and then I realized it was someone else’s.  Someone’s co-worker or child or spouse or parent wouldn’t be coming home.  I felt nauseated with guilt at that moment.  For being glad one of our firefighters hadn’t died.  But I’d already learned that a piece of all us dies when we lose a firefighter anywhere.  I cried softly in my husband’s arms for a few seconds.  “It’s not one of ours,” I said mostly to myself.  I pulled away from him then, physically and emotionally.  “I gotta change and go in,” I said, wiping my eyes. 

The next several days were filled with the shit-storm a fire fatality triggers.  Body recovery and autopsy.  Transport of the remains.  Investigations, internal and external.  Interviews.  Memorials.  CISM.  Tears, anguish, questions, shock. And we still had fires burning; they would burn until mid-October. 

*

Why do I love the Klamath so much, even still?  After all that death?  Helicopters falling from the sky, a good man burned alive, careers breaking like delicate glass, relationships ruined.  Even before all of that, all the heartbreak and doubts, the fear of phone calls in the night that stopped my heart, I felt a visceral connection.  And it doesn’t stop at the physical place of mountains and rivers but includes the people that went through those tragedies with me.  They are an integral part of that place for me as well.  We have those shared experiences that forever bind us to one another, probably the deepest friendships I have to this day.   That beautiful, wonderful, horrible, deadly place. I think it’s because part of me, a small piece of my soul, my spirit, walks those mountains with my co-workers and our dead brothers and sister.  The rest of me will join them there one day.  

 

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog.  While I am currently an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture, any opinions posted here are my own and should not be construed to represent the official position United States Government, Department of Agriculture, or the U.S. Forest Service.