A woman's place is on the fire line

In the first decade of the 21st century, women have come into their own from corporate boardrooms to Indycar racetracks, from the state department to network news anchor chairs.

Nowhere is the "arrival" of women in traditionally male roles more apparent than on the fire line in wildland fires.

Women make up anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the crews that battle fires in the Sisters Country and the management teams that organize and lead those battles. That trend started in the mid-to-late 1980s. That's when Jinny Pitman, Renee Lamoreaux and Amy Kazmier each launched their firefighting careers.

Lamoreaux is BLM fire prevention specialist who was in training as a safety officer with the Central Oregon Incident Management Team in Sisters during the Rooster Rock Fire. The safety officer is responsible for everything from making sure fire crews have the right equipment to issuing warnings about snag danger to food safety in camp.

She started her career in Colorado.

"I moved there because I wanted to learn to telemark ski," she said. "Crested Butte is the place to be."

She got a job with the U.S. Forest Service that took her to LaGrande in 1986 where she served as a sawyer. By 1989, she was in Redmond jumping out of airplanes as a smokejumper.

"I was one of the first women to do that," she said.

Like pioneering women in every field from aviation to science, she received an uncertain welcome.

"The men didn't know how to treat me," she said. "I didn't know how to treat them. It was quite a dance we did."

But talent always wins out in the end, and Lamoreaux proved herself as a smokejumper, attacking fires from the Gila National Forest in New Mexico to Alaskan forests north of the Arctic Circle. She did that for 16 years before starting to work through the qualification system to move into management positions.

Lamoreaux believes the different qualities men and women bring to firefighting complement each other.

"Women have better endurance than men. Men have more power than women," she said. "We balance each other out nicely."

Lamoreaux says she'd like to see more women break into the aviation end of firefighting, and she would encourage women who really want to do the work to persevere.

Amy Kazmier has done all of that in a varied career. Kazmier is program manager for the Prineville helibase, which dispatches helicopters for air attack in the Sisters Country.

She didn't set out to be a firefighter, but her life's course was set by the massive blaze that blackened thousands of acres in Yellowstone in 1988.

As an intern with the National Park Service through the Student Conservation Association, Kazmier served as a backcountry ranger. With the fire reaching overwhelming proportions, she received firefighting training.

"I just thought it was pretty fascinating," she said. "I knew nothing about wildland fire before that summer."

Packing a degree in recreation, she shifted course and headed to the Everglades as a firefighter. There, she got involved in the air-attack end of the trade.

She never particularly considered herself a pioneer.

"I didn't really think about it that way," she said. "I was just drawn to it."

Jinny Pitman was also drawn to the service, but it took her a while to determine on a career in fighting fire.

Her first experience with wildfire was on the civilian end, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

"I was evacuated in 1986," she said. That sparked an interest that has ebbed on occasion, but never went out.

Moving back to her native Central Oregon to take forestry classes at Central Oregon Community College, she took summer work on an engine in the Fort Rock Ranger District in 1988 - but she didn't think of firefighting as a career.

"It first started out as a good way to put myself through college," she recalled.

She was a seasonal employee for the Forest Service for 10 years while earning associate's degrees in forestry and in wildland fire management.

In 1994, she - along with countless other firefighters - was confronted by a tragedy that caused her to question her course. Fourteen firefighters died on a mountain called Storm King in Colorado on July 6. Nine of the dead were Prineville Hotshots. Pitman knew them, and their deaths hit her hard.

"I didn't think I wanted to fight fire anymore," she said. "I took 1995 off."

She spent a year working on a thinning crew in 1996 ("I wanted to learn everything there was to know about a chainsaw") and worked in timber marking in '97.

But after years of soul searching, she came to an understanding of the Storm King deaths: "I finally figured out, they died doing what they loved to do best. They loved firefighting - every one of them."

She realized that she did, too.

In 2006, after more years on the fire line, Pitman moved into management. She's now training to be a division supervisor.

"I'm interested in safety officer work and planning section chief," she said.

In the off season, Pitman "fights fire before the fire comes," working as an Assistant Fire Manager in Fuels in the Sisters Ranger District. In that capacity she works on projects designed to reduce fuels that have made the past decade's Sisters Country wildfires so

extreme.

For the most part, Pitman believes women are truly accepted in the wildland firefighting world. At first, some questioned whether women should be working in what had been a man's trade, but 30 years of proving themselves has mitigated those issues.

"There's more acceptance," she said. "I run into less people... that think women don't belong in fire. People used to outwardly say that."

A few lingering concerns remain. Pitman thinks it's hard for a woman to have a family and a firefighting career.

"There's a sense of resistance to women having both," she said.

Basically, it's hard to be a mom and be on call for fires all season long.

"The expectation is, when you're called, you go," she said.

But with commitment, there are no barriers, Pitman believes.

"There is no glass ceiling," she said. "There are endless opportunities for me and women in my field. The opportunities are grand."

All three women would recommend a career in firefighting to girls who are just now exploring their future - if the motivation is

right.

Firefighting requires a positive outlook, perseverance and a commitment to maintaining a high level of physical fitness. It's not for dilettantes or young women who just want to be around the boys. The wrong intentions and their consequences can set back progress.

"It puts a burden on the women who can do the job," Pitman says.

Lamoreaux recommends that any woman interested in firefighting should "be patient, be positive and have fun."

As more and more highly motivated women move into firefighting as profession, the presence of women on the line and overseeing wildland battles becomes less remarkable. As Pitman says, "It's just normal life in the 21st century."

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
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