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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Female Hotshot firefighter brings California mega blazes to life in moving memoir
Fire changes whatever it encounters. Burns it, melts it, sometimes makes it stronger. Once fire tears through a place, nothing is left the same. Kelly Ramsey wasn't thinking of this when she joined the U.S. Forest Service firefighting crew known as the Rowdy River Hotshots — she just thought fighting fires would be a great job. But fire changed her too. In her memoir, 'Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West,' Ramsey takes us through two years of fighting wilderness fires in the mountains of Northern California. She wrote the book before January's deadly Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires, and what she encountered in the summers of 2020 and 2021 was mostly forests burning, not city neighborhoods. But at the time, the fires she and her fellow crewmen fought (and they were all men that first year) were the hottest, fastest, biggest fires California had ever experienced. 'My first real year in fire had been a doozy, not just for me but my beloved California: 4.2 million acres burned,' she writes, in the 'worst season the state had endured in over a hundred years.' That included the state's first gigafire — more than 1 million acres burned in Northern California. The job proved to be the hardest thing she'd ever done, but something about fire compelled her. 'At the sight of a smoke column, most people feel a healthy hitch in their breath and want to run the other way,' she writes. 'But all I wanted to do was run toward the fire.' Ramsey's memoir covers a lot of ground, skillfully. She learns that being in good shape isn't enough — she has to be in incredible shape. She learns how to work with a group of men who are younger, stronger and more experienced than she is, and she figures out how to find that line between never complaining and standing up for herself in the face of inappropriate behavior. She also writes about the changes in her own life during that time: coming to terms with her alcoholic, homeless father; pondering her lousy record for romantic relationships; searching for an independence and peace she had never known. 'It wasn't fire that was hard; it was ordinary life,' she concludes. Sometimes her struggles with ordinary life threaten to take over the narrative, but while they humanize her, they are not the most interesting part of this book. What resonates instead is fire and all that it entails — the burning forest and the hard, mind-numbing work of the Hotshots. They work 14 days on, two days off, all summer and fall, sometimes 24-hour shifts when things are bad. They sleep rough, dig ditches, build firebreaks, set controlled burns, take down dead trees and, in between, experience moments of terrifying danger. Readers of John Vaillant's harrowing 2023 book 'Fire Weather' — an account of the destruction of the Canadian forest town of Fort McMurray — might consider Ramsey's book a companion to the earlier book. 'Wildfire Days' is not as sweeping or scientific; it's more personal and entertaining. It's the other side of the story, the story of the people who fight the blaze. Ramsey's gender is an important part of this book; as a woman, she faces obstacles men do not. It's harder to find a discreet place to relieve herself; she must deal with monthly periods; and, at first, she is the weakest and slowest of the Hotshots. 'Thought you trained this winter,' one of the guys tells her after an arduous training hike leaves her gasping for breath. 'I did,' she said. 'Thinking you shoulda trained a little harder, huh,' he said. But over time she grows stronger, more capable, and more accepted. In the second year, when another woman joins the crew, Ramsey is torn between finally being 'one of the guys' and supporting, in solidarity, a woman — but a woman whose work is substandard and whose attitude is whiny. 'Was I only interested in 'diversity' on the crew if it looked like me?' she asks herself. 'Had I clawed out a place for myself, only to pull up the ladder behind me?' But competence is crucial in this dangerous job, and substandard work can mean deadly accidents. For centuries, natural wildfires burned dead trees and undergrowth in California, keeping huge fires in check. White settlers threw things out of whack. 'The Indigenous people of California were (and still are) expert fire keepers,' Ramsey writes. 'Native burning mimicked and augmented natural fire, keeping the land park like and open.' But in the 20th century, humans suppressed fires and forests became overgrown. 'Cut to today,' she writes. 'Dense forests are primed to burn hotter and faster than ever before.' Ramsey's descriptions of the work and the fires are the strongest parts of the book. 'We could hear the howl — like the roar of a thousand lions, like a fleet of jet engines passing overhead — the sound of fire devouring everything,' Ramsey writes. Later, she drives through a part of the forest that burned the year before to see 'mile upon mile of carbonized trees and denuded earth, a now-familiar scene of extinguished life.' But she also notes that the burned areas are already beginning to green up. 'New life tended to spring from bitterest ash,' she writes. 'The forest wouldn't grow back the same, but it wouldn't stop growing,' she observes earlier. There is a metaphor here. Ramsey's memoir is a moving, sometimes funny story about destruction, change and rebirth, told by a woman tempered by fire. Hertzel's second memoir, 'Ghosts of Fourth Street,' will be published in 2026. She teaches in the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction program at the University of Georgia and lives in Minnesota.
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Climate
- Newsweek
Inside the Life of a Woman Hotshot Battling Blazes in the American West
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. With wildfires getting more severe and unpredictable, the work of firefighters is increasingly significant—and dangerous. January's Los Angeles County fires caused up to $53.8 billion in property losses and billions more in economic and tax hits to the economy, according to a February report from the Southern California Leadership Council and the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Often referred to as the "special forces" of wildland firefighting, hotshot crews tackle the most difficult and remote wildfires. Most people who come to a hotshot crew have a few fire seasons under their belt; but when Kelly Ramsey joined her hotshot crew, she was the only rookie to both the crew and to fire—and the sole woman, as well as the first in nearly a decade. To many of the men, she was the only woman they'd ever worked with. In this exclusive excerpt from her book, Wildfire Days: A Woman, A Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West (Scribner), Ramsey talks about fighting the 2020 North Complex Fire in California. BACKBURN. Intentionally burning the forest in advance of an oncoming wildfire, as Ramsey is doing with a drip torch near Quincy, CA, can help create a barrier of burned vegetation to stop a wildfire's progress. BACKBURN. Intentionally burning the forest in advance of an oncoming wildfire, as Ramsey is doing with a drip torch near Quincy, CA, can help create a barrier of burned vegetation to stop a wildfire's progress. Parker Kleive The day after Labor Day, we woke to the wind. It threw dirt on our tarps and whipped hair into my mouth as I zipped my bag. The morning was sunny, which should have been a warning. Sun means the inversion has lifted—a temperature inversion happens when warm air "caps" cooler air, trapping smoke in the valley overnight, dampening fire activity. Once the temperature rises, the fire awakens. We stood in a circle to brief. "The East Wind Event they've been talking about arrives today," Van said. He had gone to morning briefing with all the other superintendents, where they'd learned about the weather situation. "As you can see, it's already here." Red flag warnings stretched from California to Washington State. The wind was historic, a once-in-a-hundred-year phenomenon. Incident management teams along the West Coast were on edge. They would have increased staffing, but there was nobody to add; everyone was already committed, and short-staffed at that. "You really need to be heads-up today," Van said. "Lotta trees could come down," Salmon added. We broke the circle, trudging through deep dirt. I could feel the wind inside my yellow, and I shuddered. "Come on, load up," Fisher called, and fired the engine. I collected my hairbrush and stuck a boot on the bumper and pulled myself up, and the back door of the buggy clanged shut, a lid closing. "All in!" Trevan yelled, and we were wheels rolling toward the black. We hiked in on the same dirt-powder line. Cloud of dust, choke, cough. We reached the black and spread out along the line. Everything here was holding, and we were set up with a hose lay and engines pumping water from either end. We moved as a group, finding hot spots and digging as the wind picked up. 'Head on a Swivel' The wind howled and roared, bending the trees. Big old conifers creaked and popped. Some were burned out at the bottom, some were cat-faced (with a burned hole or hollow, like a cave), some crispy carbon sticks all the way up. It didn't feel safe. Boom! A massive tree fell, somewhere out of sight. The big ones sounded like bombs. The ground shuddered, meaning it hadn't landed far away. Boom! Another tree. Everyone's head was on a swivel. "Head on a swivel" was a shorthand phrase of Van's, but that's also what it looked like: a tree fell, and our heads snapped around, our expressions asking where and how close. Boom! "That was too close. Too f****** close." Luke looked unnerved. A crew got on the radio and said they were pulling out. Too many snags comin' down, the crew boss said. "The wind's too high, and we don't feel safe to continue." They said they were hiking out. Division said he copied. "You think we'll leave too?" I asked. "Oh, hell no." "No way. Hotshots gotta be the last ones to leave." "Don't worry, Rowdy River'll do it!" "Perfect time to get after it." "Find the boys an outlet. We're gettin' plugged in." Bitter sarcasm was our only resort. The eerie wind stirred the stump holes and swirled embers into the air. Where we were, the wind threatened to coerce a dead fire back to life. But elsewhere, where we couldn't see, the risk was much worse. Salmon, who was posted on the ridge as lookout, came on the radio. "Hey, uh, this thing is making a decent run. It's starting to put up a pretty good column." Van confirmed that he was seeing the same thing from wherever he was hiding out. We kept digging. Then Air Attack came on the radio. "This is making a big push," Air Attack said. "The fire has jumped the Feather River drainage and is making a big run to the south. It's moving fast. I'm seeing—I'm seeing a campground and some structures here, in front of the fire, and you need to send people out there to evacuate anyone in this thing's path. Tell everyone to get out of the way. It's—it's not stopping." My skin prickled. We couldn't see any of it—the column, the fire pushed by these winds, jumping the river and racing toward a campground—but even I had been doing this long enough that I could picture the flames, and the urgency in Air Attack's voice made my blood run cold. Author Kelly Ramsey portrait Author Kelly Ramsey portrait Lindsey Shea/Courtesy of Scribner 'Intergalactic Columns' He came on again to say that this wasn't the only fire seeing explosive growth. "I've flown everything from here to Redding," he said. "And I hate to tell ya, but it's just columns everywhere. All of California is columns, far as you can see. Intergalactic columns." "Intergalactic?" "Did he really say that?" We'd never forget it—it was a joke for the ages. We'd later get to a fire that was putting up a column and someone would intone, Intergalactic, with a wink, and people would laugh, and I would feel a chill. Because that is how a single column looks, like a rope from earth to space, and to imagine them spread over the breadth of this nation-sized state was to apocalypse. Alien invasion. Armageddon. With one word, Air Attack had conjured a vision of the end times. And he wasn't wrong. We kept working our way down the line, mopping up. Opening my pack to grab a snack, I saw I'd missed a call from Jossie, the friend in Happy Camp who was watching our animals. I called back. "Everything OK?" "I'm at your house," she said in a rushed voice. "I have the dogs. Is there anything you want me to grab?" Huh? I was so confused, the best response I could summon was, "What?" "There's a fire in Happy Camp. I thought you knew." "What? No, I didn't know." Ice. As if someone had poured a bucket of it over my head. Cold water flowing over my body and entering my veins. "Yeah, it's right outside town, they're evacuating everyone. I have to leave, and I've got my dogs. Do you want me to take yours?" "Yes," I said. "Please." "I tried to get the cat, but he ran away." "That's OK. Cats are smart. Tommy will hide." My voice caught in my throat. Poor Tommy, the scrappy stray I'd bribed into our home. "What about Sam?" F****** Sam. There was no loading a large goat into Jossie's small SUV. "Um. Why don't you let him free in the yard, so he can escape? I guess." Poor old Sam. "OK, I'll do that. Is there anything else you want from the house? Any important papers or anything?" My throat was closing. The trees around us, columns of carbon, creaked in the howling wind. "No, just the dogs." It was almost a whisper. "Please take the dogs." June 7, 2021 on the Telegraph Fire outside Globe, AZ. June 7, 2021 on the Telegraph Fire outside Globe, AZ. Parker Kleive Smothering Smoke The sky had gone orange. The atmosphere hung low, bloody and dark, as if someone had steeped the sky in an amber tea, the smoke like cloudy billows of just-poured cream. We were all taking videos, because it was insane that morning could look like the middle of the night. We'd left the North Complex, headed home. Miles upon miles spooled out under the buggies' tires, wildfires in every direction. Everywhere we turned, roads were closed. We had to reroute because I-5 was shut down: a fire near Ashland, where my friends lived. Cold prickled my neck. We took a back road, a two-lane highway between orchards, their gnarled limbs menacing under the heavy sky. Happy Camp wasn't the only tragedy in California. A headline about the North Complex read: "Tiny California Town Leveled By 'Massive Wall of Fire'; 10 Dead, 16 Missing, Trapped Fire Crew Barely Escapes Blaze." The North had grown explosively, barreling southwest and consuming the town of Berry Creek, leaving only three houses out of 1,200 standing. Meanwhile, in the western Sierra Nevada, almost 400 campers were trapped when the Creek Fire blew up; the Army National Guard rescued them in Black Hawk helicopters. By October, Governor Gavin Newsom would request a federal disaster declaration for six major wildfires in the state. The windstorm had also fueled five simultaneous megafires in Oregon, damaging 4,000 homes, schools and stores, killing several people, placing 10 percent of Oregon residents under an evacuation order and incinerating more of the Oregon Cascades than had burned in the previous 36 years combined. The Almeda fire leveled, among many other structures, my friend's mother's Polish restaurant in Talent. In Washington, the towns of Malden and Pine City were mostly destroyed. The Cold Springs Canyon fire grew from 10,000 to 175,000 acres overnight, an insane rate of spread. The Pearl Hill fire jumped an almost unheard-of 900 feet to cross the Columbia River. Smoke blanketed British Columbia and the Western U.S. and, funneling into the atmosphere, drifted and spread to cover the continent. Air quality advisories were issued as far east as New York. College students hid in their dorms in Berkeley; older people sheltered from the dangerous particulates outside. We were a nation huddled, terrified. The smothering smoke implicated each one of us for our part in making a hotter world, enabling such a catastrophe. This was a disaster. There was no other word. The Slater fire had blitzed north through Happy Camp and crossed over Grayback. It had jumped Indian Creek east to west, then the wind had shifted and it had jumped back again. The fire had gone everywhere at once and made a 100,000-acre run up Indian Creek and over the ridge into Oregon. That ridge, where an undivided stand of Brewer spruce grew. Had grown? The canyon where so many been. Wildfire Days book cover Wildfire Days book cover Courtesy of Scribner ▸ Adapted from Wildfire Days by Kelly Ramsey. Copyright © 2025 by Kelly Ramsey. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
