Trailblazers: Women in Fire

Burning to Learn at WTREX

Getting here was not easy.

On this cool, clear spring morning, a long-delayed gathering of wildland fire professionals is finally taking place. Some participants traveled long distances, crossing a continent or an ocean. Others have undertaken different journeys, overcoming myriad life and career challenges.    

All routes have converged here at TNC’s Piney Grove Preserve in rural Sussex County, Virginia. And while Piney Grove frequently hosts fire teams conducting controlled burns, the crew assembled here today is far from typical.

A first glance might not register the difference. Everyone here wears the protective gear that comprises a wildland fire uniform: fire-resistant forest-green (or tan) pants and yellow shirts—some still neon bright, others with a patina seasoned by grime and soot—leather boots and gloves, and helmets in a variety of colors. But a closer look reveals that extending from many of those helmets is an uncommon variety of braids and ponytails.

At least 90% of the participants are women. Look at virtually any other fire crew across the country—whether they’re fighting a wildfire or conducting a planned burn—and you’ll see the reverse. In fact, many of the women here today have experienced being the only woman working with an otherwise all-male team.

They’ve come to the Virginia Pinelands for the 2022 Women-in-Fire Training Exchange, better known as WTREX. While everyone involved agrees that the fire profession needs more balanced representation, that’s not why the participants and organizers say they’ve endured a two-year pandemic delay and gone to such great lengths to be here.

Ignition and the Origins of WTREX

Spanning two weeks of intensive workshop and field experiences, WTREX 2022 aims to support and retain the women who are already working fire lines from Virginia to the West Coast, into the Canadian Rockies and at the southern tip of Africa.

As low flames creep toward the interior forest, Monique “Mo” Hein tells me about the origins of WTREX. The idea was born in a cabin in 2015. Hein was one of six women, including TNC-Virginia’s Nikole Simmons, bunking together during a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (or TREX) in North Carolina.

“None of us knew that we were going to show up at a TREX and there’d be six women there,” says Hein, who, when not deployed on a wildland fire, drives a 40-foot ladder truck for the Lafayette Fire Department near Boulder, Colorado. “Most of us were used to working in an environment where we were the only female on our crew.”

Thanks to a major ice storm, the cabin-bound women found themselves with a lot of unexpected down time. Along with a bottle of wine, they began sharing their stories. After a fair amount of venting, Hein says, “We started to talk about how to make things better, not just for us but all women in fire.”

One of the best-known physical requirements for fire-work certification is the infamous pack test: completing a 3-mile hike in less than 45 minutes with a loaded pack. But a 45-pound backpack feels light compared to the weight many of these women describe carrying daily in the male-dominated fire profession. They feel pressure not merely to succeed, but to avoid any mistakes that might reflect onto their entire gender.

Obviously, perfection as a standard is neither reasonable nor sustainable. Hein says it becomes an obstacle to gaining the skills and self-confidence that the job demands. The insight that the North Carolina cabin crew arrived at was to use the proven TREX model but to flip the gender dynamic. “We needed an environment that we felt safe in to learn,” Hein says.

Jane Park, Hein’s fellow incident commander on the burn, agrees that the WTREX experience accelerates the learning process. “Being in an environment where you aren’t the minority or in an underrepresented group—what some people would call a systemically oppressed group—it really allows people to rise up to their full potential very quickly,” Park says.

Paul formed Crew Juliet, which she describes as Africa’s first all-women team of volunteer wildland firefighters. But it wasn’t until bucking up against the professional realm that she realized she was different. “Suddenly I became aware that I was a female firefighter and that there were very few of us,” she says.

When Paul learned about WTREX, she was determined to reach out, even though she considered herself a long shot for the limited spaces. “I didn’t think anyone would be interested in someone sitting at the tip of Africa,” she says.

Being accepted brought new challenges, but Paul was determined to get to Virginia. “I quit my job, I packed up my house, and a bunch of folks got behind me and helped me to raise money to be here,” Paul says, with obvious gratitude. “TNC’s been amazing, helping me with travel costs and accommodations.”

For Paul, the rewards of WTREX seem to greatly outweigh the sacrifices she has made in pursuing a call to fire service that she has felt since her very first day as a volunteer. In addition to finding mentors like Jane Park and co-organizer Nikole Simmons, she now feels welcomed into “an international family in fire of women sharing that journey.” (The next phase of Paul’s fire journey would take her to Warm Springs Mountain with Simmons and her Allegheny Highlands teammates.) 

What’s Next for WTREX: More Diversity?

As for where WTREX needs to go from here, there’s at least one clear consensus: Demand far exceeds supply. Many more women are applying for the limited slots than the program can accommodate within its current limitations—especially limited funding. 

Park points out another burning issue: While women comprise less than 10% of the fire work force, other communities are barely represented at all. “I am a woman of color,” she says. “All types of diversity are really important.”

Given a growing understanding that the benefits of a diverse workforce flow both ways, perhaps we will soon see other TREX spinoffs that add letters besides W.

Virginia's Fire Women

For now, it’s fitting that WTREX—and conversations about expanding the program—are taking place here in Virginia. Judy Dunscomb, one of TNC’s first female burn bosses and now a senior scientist, started the fire program here more than two decades ago. So it’s not by accident that Virginia’s robust fire programs employ more women than one often sees elsewhere. It’s because of investments in fire and in women. That long-term commitment now extends to organizational support for WTREX.

Virginia's female fire professionals share their stories in their own words below.

The Nature Conservancy invited REI to the October 2017 WTREX to film the training and introduce viewers to more of these forces of nature.