Braiding The Personal with the Ecological, with HOTSHOT Author River Selby

Welcome to our second episode with women and non-binary firefighters who have written books about their experiences working both in fire and on hotshot crews more specifically. Our guest for this episode is HOTSHOT author River Selby (they/them), who spent seven years as a wildland firefighter—four of which were as a hotshot—from 2000 to 2010. They've since gotten their undergrad and MFA (in fiction) at Syracuse, and are currently working towards a PhD in Nonfiction with an emphasis in postcolonial histories, North American colonization, and postmodern literature and culture. This unique background allowed River to create a phenomenally in-depth book that covers not only their own experiences of working on crews and personal vignettes of life on and off the fireline, but it also paints a rich history of different fire ecologies across the American West (and world), and how colonization and fire suppression in the Western US (and elsewhere!) have set the stage for our modern relationship with fire. In our conversation, River and I talked about how firefighting allowed them to heal and grow, in a way, from the addiction, homelessness and violence that they had experienced in their youth. We spoke about some of the more academic themes of the book, including how colonization really informed our modern culture of fire suppression and—by extent—the culture of hotshotting. We spoke about the importance of Indigenous practices and land stewardship in righting this ship, as it were, and chatted a bit about our own experiences with hotshot culture and how it framed our experiences on fire crews. Click here to buy River's book HOTSHOT: A Life on Fire!Click here to read an excerpt of HOTSHOT, which was published in High Country News in August.Click here for River's book tour dates over the next few weeks. Click here to support Life with Fire's Patreon, which is helping keep this ship afloat while Amanda is in grad school.  

We're bringing you two, count em TWO, episodes with women and non-binary firefighters and writers who have written books about their experiences working both in fire and on hotshot crews more specifically. The first in this short series is with author Kelly Ramsey, whose book WILDFIRE DAYS was released in June. Kelly and I spoke about some of the emotional toll of fighting fire—including the terrifying feeling of not feeling like you belong, especially in such an intense work environment—as well as the process of writing a book (including the nearly 50,000 words she wrote in her Notes app during her time in fire). A large part of our conversation centered on the many intricacies of hotshot culture that we both witnessed (and which, in some cases, left us both confounded). Many anecdotes, laughs and shared experiences ensued. This was a fun one to record and hopefully it's just as fun to listen to!Here's another link to Kelly's book in case you missed the first one ;) Here's the Life with Fire Patreon, in the event you'd like to support me through the transition to grad school (where I will continue to publish podcast episodes, and will have much more access to lots of smart fire people as I'll be in Missoula!)

Welcome to our second episode with THE Stephen Pyne! Stephen is a renowned author and fire historian who, in addition to his academic life, also spent over a decade working on a fire crew on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon early in his career. Given this background, he seemed like quite possibly the perfect person to chat with about the recent Dragon Bravo Fire in Grand Canyon National Park. For a quick primer, the Dragon Bravo Fire started three miles north of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon during a lightning storm on July 5th. On Sunday, it destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge and dozens of other buildings in the adjacent complex. It was being managed for resource benefit, or was in other words a "managed fire". I’m not going to go into all the details on the fire itself, but here’s a thorough, measured analysis from my friend Zeke at the Lookout regarding what took place over the week or so that the fire was being “managed for resource benefit” (I’ll get into what this means in a minute). Zeke also provides some of the behind the scenes context on wildfire decision making and some other educated thoughts that are very deserving of your time.Stephen, as you'd expect, had some great perspective to share about this event. While we avoided armchair quarterbacking the decision making on the fire, Stephen was able to speak a bit about the decades of precedent for this kind of wildfire tragedy in the Southwest, about the background of managed fire use in the National Parks, and how important managed fire can be to reducing wildfire risk—but only if we acknowledge the limitations of managed fire policy and take more strides to improve our processes and learn from our mistakes. One of the improvements Stephen advocates for is being more forthcoming about managed fire with the public, which would include agencies being very clear about what managed fire is and isn't, what the objectives of managed fire typically are, what preparations have been made to make managing a fire the right decision and also—importantly—that mistakes can happen and how we can better prepare in the event that they do. The biggest takeaway from this episode is that we've done a poor job of building trust with the public, and especially so around the practice of managed fire. Perhaps now is a good time to have that conversation, and to figure out how we can reframe this conversation so that people get more of a glimpse at managed fire when it goes right?For more background on Stephen, check out his TED Talk on how fire shapes everything, or this great essay he published in Scientific American last spring.

Welcome to the third and final episode of our Community Wildfire Resilience Series, supported by Fire Aside!In this episode, we spoke with Butte County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Taylor Nilsson. Butte County, CA has seen more catastrophic fire in the last eight years than most places in the West, possibly even the world. Starting with the Camp Fire in 2018 (85 killed, 14,000 homes lost), then the North Complex in 2020 (16 killed, 2,300 structures lost), then the Park Fire in 2024 (700+ structures destroyed), Butte County has seen 50% of its Wildland Urban Interface impacted by wildfire in the last seven years, and over 90% of its WUI impacted since 1999. This being the case, folks in this area have a deep understanding not only of preparing for wildfire, but of the long process of recovering from it—while knowing from experience that they simultaneously need to be preparing for the next one. Taylor spoke about the challenges of preparing for more fire while also recovering from—in Butte County's case—multiple deeply impactful wildfires that communities are still reeling from. In what has become an increasingly common occurrence in California, communities can still be deep in the recovery phase as a fire scar cycles back into susceptibility to wildfire. The Camp Fire scar, for example, is becoming increasingly at risk to more wildfire, particularly as these previously forested landscapes have become more brush-dominated post-fire. Reforestation and restoration in such landscapes (particularly those undergoing a vegetation type conversion) is tricky, and Taylor speaks to this too—to the realities of salvage logging and how this practice can fit into sound restoration planning, as well as to the lack of technology to handle the significant biomass that needs to be removed to make recently un-burned landscapes in Butte County more resilient to future fire. We talked about the immense community trauma, and how Taylor and the Butte County staff have worked through their own healing processes while facing this community trauma firsthand. Above all, this episode highlighted the critical work that Fire Safe Councils in California do, in part because they are working one-on-one with community members in many cases and can therefore be a consistent, guiding presence through the wildfire preparedness, response and recovery phases. Communities and residents recovering from wildfire need a sustained, familiar presence like this, and this is exactly the type of thing that reduces recovery timelines and helps communities heal. As we wrap up this series, we want to once again thank Fire Aside for their support of the last three episodes of the podcast. Support like this allows us to keep this thing rolling, and we can't express how grateful we are to our supporters—past and present, including on Patreon! Thank you, thank you, thank you for believing in what we're doing!Check out Butte County FSC on their socials (linked below)! Whether you live in Butte County or not, I think their website and some of their programming is very replicable elsewhere, so give them a follow and remember—imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buttefiresafeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/buttefiresafe/?hl=enWebsite: https://buttefiresafe.netLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/butte-county-fire-safe-council/ Time Stamps: 00:00 - Episode Start00:42 - Amanda Intro07:39 - Taylor's Background09:45 - Recent Fires In Butte County12:08 - Dealing with Hazard Trees14:56 - Trauma-Informed Care Post-Fire17:36 - Recovery Takes Multiple Years18:52 - Current Butte County Work On Burn Areas21:45 - Cost Of Removing Hazard Trees22:41 - Presence of Blue Stain In Recently Burned Areas24:56 - Salvage Logging as Part of Restoration Planning25:45 - Mill Infrastructure In Butte County28:26 - Butte County Population Response29:47 - Participation Rates in Fire Safe Council Programming31:35 - How Fire Aside Has Bolstered The Work the Butte County FSC Is Doing38:04 - Communities Are Struggling With Staffing—What Does This Mean For Recovery?40:12 - Fire Safe Council In Collaboration with Other Local Entities41:06 - Butte County Collaborative Group43:51 - The Importance of Sharing Lessons Learned 45:43 - Prioritizing the Knowledge and Practices Of Local Indigenous Tribes46:45 - Amanda Outro47:32 - End Of Episode

Welcome to the second episode in our series about community-level wildfire resilience, supported by Fire Aside! We spoke with Fire Aside CEO and co-founder Jason Brooks about how Fire Aside—a home assessment platform that allows agencies to have direct 1:1 engagement with residents on resilience actions they can take—fits into bigger picture policy, data and decision making around community wildfire resilience in California and beyond.Fire Aside was developed in Marin County, CA alongside the county fire department there, a partnership that was spurred by Jason's own interest in improving the wildfire resilience of his own property and not knowing exactly where to start. That was in 2020—now, Fire Aside is being used by over 100 departments in nine states to increase the efficiency of their home assessment processes and improve engagement with residents who want to improve their defensible space and home hardening. It's become clear that increasing resilience actions at the neighborhood level, rather than just the homeowner level, is the best way to meaningfully reduce risk in the WUI, where fires often spread home to home rather than via vegetation; this scale piece is a huge part of what Fire Aside does, and is what makes it such a compelling technology in an era of urban conflagrations like those in LA this winter (or Boulder, Lahaina, Paradise etc before). Jason and I spoke about the impetus for developing the platform, as well as how it can potentially be utilized to help inform decision making and even funding needs at the city or county level. Down the road, the data procured from Fire Aside may even be useful in informing state policy or other big picture decision making. (Disclaimer: Fire Aside does not own any of the data that is compiled through the app/platform. Residents and departments using the platform own this data.)We appreciate Fire Aside's work and their support of this series on community resilience—if you or your organization are responsible for wildfire risk assessments, we really can't recommend this technology enough. A few action items!Consider following Fire Aside on Linkedin. Check out some Fire Aside testimonials on Youtube. Slightly unrelated but please consider supporting justice and exoneration for firefighter Brian "Hakiym" Simpson. You can read about the case here. You can sign the petition here, or donate to a local mutual aid organization supporting Hakiym here. 

Welcome to the first episode in a three-part series about community wildfire resilience, sponsored by Fire Aside. This episode explores a number of big, meaty topics you've likely been hearing about in the wildfire space, from wildfire insurance to categorical exclusions to NEPA to wildfire resilience policy in the era of urban conflagrations like those in LA this winter. Our fearless leader on this journey is former CAL FIRE Chief Deputy Director Chris Anthony, who has worked with some major players in the wildfire space since retiring in 2023. His consultation clients have included entities in the nonprofit, academic, philanthropic, agency and private industry (including Fire Aside) spaces, while also serving as a board member for the Earth Fire Alliance and California Fire Safe Council.Chris has a deep understanding of wildfire resilience at both the landscape scale (think fuels management and big-picture restoration projects) as well as at the community scale (think home hardening, defensible space and how counties and cities engage with homeowners). This breadth of experience has made him instrumental in informing and advancing critical wildfire policy at the state level in California, while also getting involved in projects that leverage technology to help us better understand and mitigate risk to wildfire. After 30 years in CAL FIRE, his goals upon leaving the agency were simple: 1. Bring fire back to fire-adapted ecosystems.2. Build more understanding around what strategies and mitigative actions can meaningful reduce risk in communities.3. Develop and support policies that help us meet these two goals.4. Find innovators and technologies that can help scale up some of the critical actions we need to take to move the needle on fire resilience. We would like to extend a huge thank you to Fire Aside for sponsoring this series. Fire Aside is a home assessment platform that helps fire departments, conservation districts and other entities perform more thorough wildfire risk assessments, while also providing a platform for directly engaging homeowners in taking meaningful action to improve their resilience. Learn more at FireAside.com.

Today's episode is all about post-fire—how to plan and prepare for post-fire challenges like debris flows and landslides, how to recover at a community and landscape scale, how to maintain a love of place after it's impacted by fire, and how we can reduce suffering in this often dynamic phase of wildfire response and recovery.Our guest on this topic is Collin Haffey, the Post Fire Recovery Program Manager for the Washington DNR, who prior to working with the DNR worked as the Forest and Watershed Health Coordinator for the New Mexico Forestry Division during the catastrophic 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire. This fire burned over 340,000 acres in largely rural areas that were also, subsequently, impacted by intense debris flows and mudslides, spurred by monsoonal rain events only weeks after the fire burned through the area. These debris flows were in many cases more devastating to residents in these areas than the fires themselves—they destroyed wells and water systems, devastated roads and other infrastructure and destroyed hundreds of homes, including century-old adobe homes that had housed multiple generations of native New Mexicans. If you're interested in learning more about the HP-CC Fire, I highly recommend the in-depth reporting of Patrick Lohmann at Source NM. I also wrote about the post-fire impacts of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon, as well as potential policy solutions, for Land Lines Magazine back in 2023. For some background: post-fire concerns range from erosion and flooding events that can have major impacts on infrastructure and watersheds (and systems), but also includes the process of reforestation, erosion reduction and reducing the incursion and spread of invasive species in delicate post-fire landscapes. How communities prepare and plan for these challenges can make an immense difference in how quickly they recover, and Collin's work focuses heavily on encouraging communities to better prepare not just for wildfire, but for what comes after it. One of Collin's biggest projects at present is the After the Fire Washington website, where you can find tried-and-true recovery practices, resources for landowners, community members and community leaders, case studies and other information. Finally, if you'd like to read a bit more about Collin's experiences and insights gained from seeing the HP-CC Fire impacts first hand, check out this great blog post he wrote for the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network: Stuck in the Mud: Gaps in Post-Fire Recovery Programs - Fire Adapted Communities Learning NetworkTimestamps: 00:00 - Episode Start 00:38 - Amanda Monthei Intro 06:54 - Start of conversation—Collin's background 08:17 - Gaps In post-fire conversation, preparedness and planning 09:57 - Lessons From Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire12:41 - Good examples of post-fire response 14:25 - Need someone to direct post-fire tasks16:14 - Is the only way to learn about recovery through experience? 16:52 - Suppression vs. recovery teams—a need for both18:39 - The importance of community recovery collaboratives 21:00 - Developing a CWPP 24:35 - Overthinking CWPP documents26:35 - Common post-Fire challenges 29:02 - Managing mental & emotional trauma (both community and practitioner) during the post-fire period33:12 - How community and resident relationships to the land change after wildfires32:33 - Fostering a love of place after (and despite) wildfire35:03 - Getting community involved in post-fire preparedness36:43 - Disconnect between FEMA & local organizations 38:36 - What does a community that is well-prepared for post fire challenges look like?

There's been a lot of postulating about whether the firing of some 4400 (and counting) Forest Service and National Park employees on Friday will have an impact on fire operations this summer. We spoke with Riva Duncan, who has decades of experience in fire operations for the US Forest Service (before retiring with the agency), and her answer couldn't be more clear: yes, these losses in capacity are already having an impact on our ability to suppress wildfires this summer. Riva is vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which advocates and provides a voice for the wildfire workforce. Consider donating to support their work! 

In our sixth and final episode of the Fire in the Southwest Series—sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative—we explore the complex, multicultural fire histories and management dynamics in New Mexico, with Deputy State Forester and Tribal Liaison Lindsey Quam.New Mexico's recent relationship with fire has been fraught with distrust in the aftermath of the 2022 Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Fire, which started from an escaped prescribed fire and an escaped pile burn. Lindsey's career has been bookended by such events, having started his career in Los Alamos, NM in the aftermath of the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which also started as an escaped prescribed fire. This has allowed him to witness first hand how public trust has ebbed and flowed around the use of prescribed fire. It's also presented opportunities for him to help shape and better understand the many mixed emotions New Mexicans have around this topic.Lindsey spoke to how the intersecting cultures and management values across New Mexico—including Indigenous peoples, the Hispanic population and, well, white people—presents challenges but also opportunities in trying to extoll the merits of prescribed fire."There’s no dispute amongst native New Mexicans who live off the land—there is a recognition that fire is important and necessary, but there's also a fear," Lindsey, who is himself a member of the Zuni Pueblo, said.Lindsey also shared how his agency is scaling up forest treatments through collaboration, and establishing priority landscapes to implement landscape-scale resilience projects.If you'd like to learn more about acequias, which are mentioned in this episode, I can't recommend Patrick Lohmann's reporting enough. He is a journalist with Source NM and did some stellar reporting on the impacts of the Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Fire on acequias and traditional (and often rural) communities in northern New Mexico. 

For our fifth episode of the the Fire in the Southwest Series, we're talking managed wildfires, which has a number of alter egos depending on who you talk to in the wildfire world, some of which include "wildland fire use" or "managing wildfires for resource benefit".Dr. Jose "Pepe" Iniguez, a research ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, is our fearless leader on this journey through the fraught, occasionally contentious world of managed fire. Pepe has had a long career studying wildfire impacts in forested landscapes while building a better understanding of how our public lands have been shaped by disturbances like wildfire. His takeaway? We can't effectively manage forests at the landscape scale without the help of wildfires, and managed fire is the most feasible answer to the question of how we reach "scale" in our ability to build landscape resilience.In short, managed fires are often lightning-caused wildfires that are determined to be burning in an area that is not likely to impact nearby communities, infrastructure, watersheds etc. As such, they are not managed with "full suppression" as the main priority. They are heavily monitored by ground resources (if the fire is accessible) and aircraft, though on occasion these fires become "wildfires for resource benefit" merely because there aren't enough resources to attend to them. See: the 2021 fire season in California. In many cases, these types of fires burn in wilderness areas where fire suppression can be extremely difficult because of a lack of access, and which is made all the more difficult by designations that disallow the use of things like chainsaws and helicopters. Want more information about managed fire? Check out this fact sheet from our sponsor for this episode, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium. This recent blog post from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network is also very much worth the read if you're hungry for more context around managed fire. This blog was  written by a recent guest of the podcast, Zander Evans from the Forest Stewards Guild. A huge thank you to both the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative for supporting this episode and all of the other episodes from our Fire in the Southwest Series. Timestamps: 00:00 - Episode Start 01:31 - Pepe's Background 07:56 - 1996 Fires11:04 - The Early Days Of Managed Fire 14:01 - Thinning Versus Fire, Thinning PLUS Fire16:00 - Prescribed Fire Scales As A Tool 17:40 - Pepe's View On Managed Fire 19:48 - Lessons Learned with Managed Fire22:24 - The Benefit of Starting Small in Building A Managed Fire Program 25:24 - Experimental Forests 28:27 - Hotshot Crews Work On the Long Valley Experimental Forest 30:47 - Smaller, More Local Incident Management Teams Often Work Better 32:56 - Social Implications Of Managed Fires 35:29 - Thoughts on Improving Public Perception of Managed Fires  38:30 - Prescribed Fire and Managed Fire Have Different Liabilities40:06 - Do We Need A Fire Influencer? Pepe suggests Britney Spears. 41:37 - The Work of the Southwest Fire Consortium 49:50 - Episode End