While Mikaela Balkind was working on her degree at the University of Washington in 2018, she was looking for a way to bridge her two interests in natural resource management and climate science. So when she came across a friend’s Instagram post about a women in wildland firefighting bootcamp, she thought to herself, “Wow, this is perfect.”
Over two weekends in Vale, Oregon, she learned skills like how to dig a fire line and use different tools and equipment during a fire deployment, all part of training she would need for a red card, the main certification a wildland firefighter needs to work.
But the bootcamp offered something else, too — a less intimidating entry point into the male-dominated field where approximately 13 percent of firefighters are women.
“It’s just sometimes easier to take that first step when you feel like you’re supported by your peers,” she said. “I think it just gave me a little bit of reassurance.”
Part of what made the training special for Balkind w... Read more
