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As fire season begins to wrap up in much of the Western U.S., women who fight fires for the U.S. Forest Service are looking ahead. Women only make up 13% of the service's fire positions, and there's a new effort to help them stay in their careers and balance family life. Montana Public Radio's Ellis Juhlin has more.
ELLIS JUHLIN, BYLINE: Sarah King is a first-time mom in Bozeman, Montana, whose infant daughter is napping nearby as she looks down at her hands, reminiscing about how they used to look.
SARAH KING: Half my fingers are like, taped up, you know, from just, like, blisters, you know, and just cuts and things like that, you know? But - and then it would just be, like, black.
JUHLIN: Black from ash. King has been a wildland firefighter since graduating college.
KING: For me and for a lot of firefighters, it's just, like, this, like, sense of pride.
JUHLIN: King loved traveling across the country to fight fires at a moment's notice, carrying a 50-plus pound pack miles into the backcountry or deftly wielding a chainsaw to cut down trees. Then she got pregnant and had to rethink things.
KING: Oh, my gosh. What is my career trajectory now? No, we were planning to get pregnant, but I don't think that that thought process really sank in until I had, like, gone on that fire and then found out I was pregnant.
JUHLIN: She transferred to a job preventing fires. King's glad to still be working for the U.S. Forest Service. But taking a break to give birth and then a more office-oriented job has consequences, like having required firefighting qualifications laps. For King, that means she'll be starting from ground zero when she's ready to go back on fire assignments.
KING: I really miss that aspect of my job, you know, and just balancing, like, life and a career and a kid and also just, like, desires. It really takes a toll on your mental health, you know? And I'm learning that the hard way.
JUHLIN: King wants help trying to achieve that balance. Jamey Toland has navigated being a woman in this male-dominated field for close to 30 years.
JAMEY TOLAND: Through my career, I always felt like I had to prove myself, like, prove that I could be there and keep up and do the job. So there still is a lot of that, like - the good old boy network.
JUHLIN: Toland always wanted to fight fire, like her dad and grandfather before her, but faced tough choices put on women when she had her son 14 years ago. She recently started the U.S. Forest Service's Women in Wildland Fire Advisory Council. Taking lessons, she's learned to try and help other women. There are now 22 women in different fire jobs across the country on the council. They're looking at things like daycare at forest service facilities or changing pregnancy and postpartum fitness requirements and solutions for all women, like mental health resources and building women-only training camps.
TOLAND: That made my heart so happy, you know, that we had this group, and now we could all work on this together to make this systematic change for our agency.
JUHLIN: The new council's work comes as the Forest Service is having a hard time recruiting and retaining firefighters. At the beginning of this season, a quarter of fire jobs were still vacant. The agency's new head of fire and aviation says the new council's work is a priority, but it doesn't have dedicated funding at this point, and it's not clear if it will. The Forest Service is anticipating large budget cuts next year. Still, new mom Sarah King is hopeful it will help her stay in her chosen profession.
KING: This is amazing. I have wanted something like this to come to fruition for a long time. So it's, like, so validating, like, being with these women and, like, just hearing their stories.
JUHLIN: The women will meet in person for the first time this winter. For NPR News, I'm Ellis Juhlin in Missoula.
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