A wildland fire manager navigates the line between supporting the boots on the ground and informing/advising/mentoring the agency administrators who are the deciders.
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.
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
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.
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)*
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.
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.
