4 days ago
As Fires Get Fiercer, This Firefighter Warns: 'Every Season Feels More Dangerous'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Over the last year, wildfires ravaged the state of California—burning tens of thousands of acres and leaving many residents homeless in the aftermath. To combat high-priority blazes, firefighters from the National Interagency Hotshot Crews are rapidly dispatched to put out the flames. In this Q&A, wildland firefighter and author of Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West (Scribner) Kelly Ramsey details why she wanted to become a firefighter, the challenges of being on a hotshot crew and her concerns about where the next major wildfires might be.
Author Kelly Ramsey and book cover for Wildfire Days
Author Kelly Ramsey and book cover for Wildfire Days
Lindsey Shea
Newsweek: What made you want to be a firefighter?
Kellly Ramsey: I was working for the forest service as a wilderness ranger and all my roommates were female firefighters on various crews. They seemed just sort of like they came to life in this job. So I started to get curious, and when I went on my first tiny, tiny fire, I was like, "Oh, I get it. I want to try this."
Did you come alive like they did?
Absolutely. The job was so empowering and so exciting. It was really cool to see this natural occurrence of combustion happening. And to learn how to manipulate and use fire to fight fire. Fire beat me down in many ways, but also brought me to life.
What do you like about it most?
The intersection between brutal manual labor and the sense you have that you're doing something meaningful. That and the camaraderie.
What's different about being on a hotshot crew?
All wildland firefighters have an extremely challenging, grueling job, where you're out in the woods and the wilderness for 14 days at a time, doing very hard manual labor in heavy smoke, and sometimes right up against flames. But hotshot crews are assigned to the toughest parts of a fireline, and sometimes have to hike the farthest, or do the most grueling labor, tackle kind of the most dangerous assignment.
What were some of the toughest challenges?
Physically? Just the hiking. You hike up [gesturing] like a 45-or-more-degree the slope is right in your face. Hiking up something that steep, carrying anywhere from 45 to 70 pounds. I'm an average-sized woman, I would say, and I am not especially athletic, I'm just very stubborn.
How did your male teammates respond to having a woman on the crew, and were there surprises?
My problem at first was that I think they were afraid to do or say the wrong thing, so they kind of avoided me. I haven't felt that way since I was in 7th grade or something. You know, where you're just like, "Hey guys, I'm here too!" They didn't know quite how to navigate my presence there.
How did you overcome it?
Being really positive. Maybe almost excessively positive. I would just sort of volunteer to carry whatever was heavy, anything they asked. And just trying to engage them. Sometimes in a culture that's mostly men, there's a lot of, like, jokes and talking trash. But I would sort of be like, "So, what's your family like? Do you like to read?" But then I also [tried to] tell the jokes and talk the trash, and that took me a little while, because that's not a way that women are usually conditioned.
One really positive surprise was that a number of the men on my crew were really good advocates. They would give me assignments and mentor me. And there were a number of times that something a little bit—like, harassment or exclusion or something just incredibly awkward—would happen with one guy, and my supervisor would say, "Hey, that's not cool." To have him, as somebody really respected, to draw that set the example for the other guys, and that changed the tenor of the entire experience.
Sometime around September 1, 2020 on the W-5 Cold Springs Fire outside Eagleville, CA. And that's just half the crew, i.e., my buggy (B-mod, or Bravo).
Sometime around September 1, 2020 on the W-5 Cold Springs Fire outside Eagleville, CA. And that's just half the crew, i.e., my buggy (B-mod, or Bravo).
Christopher Cameron
How has fire changed? What are its main drivers?
Fire behavior is wilder, as everybody saw with what happened in Los Angeles this winter. Fires can now enter urban areas pretty easily, areas we wouldn't think would burn in a so-called wildfire. It's really like anything could happen at any time. I think there's quite a few drivers of that. Climate change is obviously one of the big ones. But there's also a history of mismanagement of our forests. We started suppressing wildfires about 100 years ago and putting out every fire that started.
How can we fix that?
One of the best ways to try to prevent catastrophic wildfire is with prescribed fire and Indigenous cultural burning. Essentially, you reduce the amount of vegetation so that when a wildfire does start, it won't burn as hot or as quickly.
Do you think that's one of the reasons for the L.A. fire?
Honestly, it's hard to pin down any one factor, but I would say the 100-mph winds are probably the factor. And what's so scary and disheartening is that you can't do anything about that.
What is it like fighting a fire in those conditions?
When you have a historic wind event, fighting fire becomes very different. Normally we would put ourselves out in front of the flames. But when you have really high winds, you don't have time. So you cannot get in front of the flames. You would literally just be throwing away your life. A lot of times, you have to just sort of back off from it, find a new perimeter and burn off that new perimeter as sort of a protective catcher's mitt for when the fire does come.
Looking ahead, is there a particular region you're especially concerned about for the next major wildfire?
I'm always concerned about California. But I lived in Texas for a long time, and I am concerned about central Texas, the Austin area. It's been identified in some recent study as the most likely urban area to be affected by wildfire after the cities in California. That really scares me. A fire hitting a place like Austin, which I love so much, we could see the same kind of devastation that we saw in Los Angeles, because this isn't a place that's really prepared for that kind of fire behavior.
Now that you're no longer fighting fires, do you miss it?
All the time. I never knew how much I would love that just brutal, grueling work. I miss that. And then I miss the guys.
