The Washington Post has published an interesting article about wildland fire. It was written by Amanda Monthei who had several seasons experience on hotshot crews. In recent years she has been busy writing about wildfire and climate adaptation for national publications.
In this case Amanda tells us about six former and current wildland firefighters from federal, tribal and private crews.
The excerpt below from the long article is about Jordin Schramm, a former rappeller and now an assistant engine captain for the US Forest Service in Oregon. The full article is here (subscription).
…Schramm knows a lot of women who work in the field, including four others who worked with her on her helirappel crew before she left to take a position as an assistant engine captain for the 2022 fire season. But as she nears 11 years of working in fire, there is one experience that she has found very few people can relate to: wanting to have children and stay on the line as a woman.
“I want kids, but I really don’t want to get out of fire,” Schramm said, suggesting that in wildland fire, that decision can feel like one or the other. “But it’s not one of those things where I’m going to stay in fire and have kids and be like, ‘I’ll show everybody.’ I want to stay and keep my qualifications because this is what I really like to do. But I’m not so naive to think that plan won’t change.”
[…]
“There’s nothing to complain about, but at the same time, maybe your expectations of your life have to change a little. And it’s hard to talk about this kind of stuff because there are only a couple of women who I know that are trying to stay in fire and have been able to make it work [with a family], while all my other female friends are like, ‘I don’t want kids.’ So I’m, like, ‘Okay, I can’t talk to you about this.’ Nobody ever really talks about this, which is understandable, because a lot of women [in fire] don’t want kids or don’t have kids. But at the same time, there’s a very small percentage of us that would like to have kids. And not having anybody to talk to in that situation is really difficult.”
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