When It All Burns takes us into a fire season with you and the Los Padres Hotshots—a special forces group of wildland firefighters. How did you get into that line of work?

I started hearing about the Los Padres Hotshots as soon as I moved to Santa Barbara in 2018. They’re local legends. At the time, the mountains around town were still black from the worst wildfire in California’s history. The community was really traumatized. Most people I met had either lost something or someone or knew someone who had. I was unemployed, but I had just finished my thesis at the University of Cambridge researching how people in southern Mexico burn the land to sustainably manage forests. My research had hooked me on fire, so fighting wildfires seemed like a great way to get closer to fire, closer to my community, and to be able to pay rent in the process. I started on a beginner crew, but I performed well enough to be invited to interview with the hotshots.

What did training entail and what were your first few weeks like?

My first two years fighting wildfires for a less advanced crew were more or less training for the hotshot crew. Once on the hotshot crew, the first few weeks were intense—physically, mentally, and socially. You race up mountains with loads of gear. At the top, you spend hours simulating wildland firefighting by cutting through thick brush. You learn how to call helicopters and guide airdrops. You also spend a lot of time in a classroom cramming your brain with as much information as possible and taking exams. Meanwhile, you’re negotiating your place in a tight knit group of very macho tactical athletes. Then, as soon as you hit the bare minimum requirements to be deployed, you’re shipped out to start fighting wildfires. The rest of the training happens on the fireline.

What does an average day fighting a wildfire look like as a Los Padres Hotshot?

The job is so dynamic that it’s difficult to speak of an average day. I guess a classic day would involve getting kicked awake before sunrise by your superintendent. You’re sleeping on the ground in the forest or on the side of a dirt road. Soon you’re hiking up into the mountains toward the wildfire. The hike can take anywhere from one to three hours. When you find the flank of the wildfire, where the flames aren’t very intense, you work with your crew to cut the vegetation from its edge to stop it from spreading. Your route is dictated by the path of the fire, not convenience, and fires love steep terrain, so you’re essentially mountaineering with chainsaws in extreme heat all day. You do this until dark. Then you hike back to your camp or your vehicles, sharpen your chainsaw or hand tool, eat, crawl into your sleeping bag, and try to sleep, knowing you’ll do it all again tomorrow.

In addition to being a Los Padres hotshot you’re also an anthropologist who has studied the history of how wildfires grew into megafires. What drew you to this subject and what did you learn in your studies that made you want to become a firefighter?

I’m fascinated by the social and cultural factors driving the climate crisis. The history of how wildfires grew into megafires provides an excellent case study. The most violent impacts of climate change are often shaped by historical factors that make some people and places more vulnerable than others. In the present sense, you can ask in an abstract way how people are navigating the climate crisis, but for wildland firefighters this question is concrete. It is vital. Their lives depend on their abilities to navigate these incredibly extreme and unprecedented conditions. As an anthropologist, you get as close as you can to your object of study.

Did any of your experiences as a hotshot help you understand your academic work more clearly?

Absolutely. My experiences really drove home the idea that natural disasters are created by society. The framing of natural disasters as “natural” really serves to obscure the power dynamics at their root. For example, I was continuously awestruck by the skills and knowledge my hotshot colleagues possessed which allowed them to survive on the edges of these fires. I experienced an equal sense of dismay at the realization of how little our society values people with these sorts of skills, preferring instead to invest in futuristic hypothetical technological solutions to issues. This is true in regards to hotshots, but also Indigenous peoples and other fire practitioners with skills that, with proper investment, would allow us to significantly increase the resiliency of our land to climate change.

Forest fires seem to have grown in frequency and size in recent years. Is this true and what has caused this?

For me, the growth in the size of fires in recent years is the more interesting question. Why do these fires, when they begin to burn, now become so extreme so quickly? Just a few days ago, an article published in Science found that fires in California now spread about four times faster in 2020 than they did in 2001. Eighteen of the largest fires on record have burned in the past two decades. In 2000, when a few hundred thousand acres burned over the course of a whole fire season it was considered a bad season. Now, it’s not uncommon to have multiple different fires burning several hundred thousand acres simultaneously. On the ground, us wildland firefighters were frequently told that the fires we were battling week after week, month after month, would have been a once-in-a-career fire just a generation ago. So, what changed during this time? Forestry policy didn’t change substantially, and even if it did it would be difficult to imagine policy changes that could trigger such extreme fire growth in such a short period of time. But the climate has changed significantly, and it is beginning to devastate forests that were already unhealthy due to several centuries of market-guided forest management. We’re living through a serious acceleration of climate change. These wildfires provide a violent snapshot of that.

How does the climate crisis play into the rise of megafires?

The rise of megafires, in my opinion, provides a crystal clear example that can help us understand climate change more generally. First, you have a broad trend. In this case, forests are suffering from more extreme droughts and overall higher temperatures. This dries out vegetation and kills lots of trees, creating conditions for more extreme fire behavior. Second, we have punctuated bursts of extreme climate events, such as record heatwaves. These function like gasoline poured over the flames. There is basically nothing that can stand in the way of a megafire when the temperature is 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Third, you have the historical factors that shape climate impacts. An essential feature of climate change is that its most violent impacts are often shaped by historical factors that make some people and places more vulnerable than others. In California, the stage for this climate violence was set by colonialism, genocide, corporate forestry, and political collusion. Finally, you have the social factors. Climate change is straining our capacity for adaptation, making solutions more difficult to implement even as they become more necessary. Prescribed burns are the most effective means of building short term resiliency against megafires, but climate change is making them more difficult to implement, while divestment from the public sector means there are less skilled people capable of implementing them. It’s a perfect storm.

Is there a way to prevent megafires from growing? What do you think needs to change in America’s approach to fire management?

Yes. We need to stop burning fossil fuels, full stop. There is no form of forest management that will work if we keep burning fossil fuels. Beyond that, we need to start providing our landscapes with more of the flames they need. The latter task could be accomplished with the creation of a well-funded workforce that is based in local communities and dedicated to prescribed burning. Right now this often falls on the shoulders of wildland firefighters in the offseason, but nowadays they’re typically either fighting winter fires or are too burned out to accomplish forestry objectives at anywhere near the scale needed.

The low pay and lack of benefits for the hotshots is shocking. Why are wildland firefighters so poorly compensated, and what can be done about it?

This is a good example of climate change altering working conditions faster than our bureaucracy adapts. Hotshots are saddled with the work expectations and low compensation of a bygone geological era when fires started later, rains came earlier, and record heat waves were centennial rather than annual occurrences. But the failure of our bureaucracy is not an accident. Attempts to increase compensation are often thwarted by a handful of right wing politicians intent on privatizing our public land. The best thing most people can do about it is vote for leaders who are responsive to science and value the public sector. The Biden administration passed reforms that, while nowhere near meeting our needs, significantly enhanced our wellbeing. I think it’s also important to note that this isn’t just about the hotshots. The low pay and lack of benefits is symptomatic of a society-wide devaluation of essential labor. You can play whack-a-mole with different careers, from wildland firefighting to farm working, but the most effective means of addressing this disparity would be to expand social safety nets through policies such as universal healthcare. This will only become more pressing as climate change makes people’s lives more precarious.

What is a key moment or decision in the history of wildfires and federal forestry that still affects us today?

A key moment historically, and generally speaking, is the shift toward fire suppression policies by Euro-American governments. While this shift is often pinned to the formation of the United States Forest Service in 1905, fire suppression policies in much of the world, including California, actually originated several centuries before that and were directed toward the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. In California, more specifically, the most pivotal and least discussed moment in the history of wildfires is the genocide the United States orchestrated against California’s Indigenous peoples from roughly 1846 to 1873. Before this, most fires in California were lit by the region’s Indigenous peoples. The genocide all but eliminated ecologically appropriate fires from the land. It is not hyperbole to say that the root of megafires in California can be found in colonialism and genocide. This fact has major implications for initiatives that seek to remedy the wildfire crisis today.