![]() Wildland firefighting is a complex endeavor, and the Forest Service plays a primary role in staffing and funding suppression efforts on public lands (not just National Forests) across the nation. Full female integration on Forest Service fire crews didn’t come easily, but by the late 1970s, women had finally worked, and sometimes fought, their way onto most types of Forest Service fire crews. The first women in the postwar period known to have actually been paid by the Forest Service for fire suppression served on an all-women wildland firefighting crew on the Lolo National Forest in Montana in the 1970s. The first evidence of women fighting fires on National Forests was in 1915, where photos show wives of Forest Service rangers trained to help battle fires in what is now the Mendocino National Forest in California. military engagements or when a large number of ongoing fires outpaced male-only crews’ capacities. Women have been trained to fight forest fires since the turn of the 20th century, during times when males were stretched thin during U.S. These are equal opportunity addictions, and the fix – fighting fire in a remote forest – is sought by both men and women. Wildland firefighting offers both the promise of a decent paycheck and the opportunity to work outside, but most who stay in the profession have some form of addiction – to the adrenaline, to the challenge, or to the escape it offers from the real world. This is not to romanticize this work but there is no question it provides a charged and exciting challenge. ![]() ![]() ![]() For those that find their way into wildland firefighting, there is an allure to a forest fire: hearing the freight train- like roar as it advances, seeing the columns of smoke that rise into the sky, feeling the heat that permeates Nomex pants and shirts and can make trees explode in a shower of sparks.įor some, the challenge of the fight against a fire is the attraction: the sprint to contain it, the din of air support delivering payloads of water and retardant, the exhaustion of a 16-hour workday, and the battle weary comradery that comes from spending day upon day with the same overly-tired, overly-caffeinated and overly-filthy people. Some people, like moths, are drawn to flame. ![]()
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