wildland firefighter – One Foot In the Office

Livin’ la Vida Covid*

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

*apologies to Ricky Martin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What you need to know about me.

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

The Beautiful Terrible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll see you in the morning, Jay.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On July 26^th we’d been managing large wildfires from the June 20^th 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.