A new book explains the burn that motivates the people defending our forests and wilderness

What’s he thinking? A new book explores the secret lives of firefighters, like this one from the documentary “Wildland.” Photo: Wildland/Kahlil Hudson

By Chuck Thompson, September 8, 2022. Bré Orcasitas is on a one-woman mission to teach us about firefighters. And get us beyond the easy platitudes that often keeps this insular community at arm’s length from a society—even as society is increasingly dependent not just on its service and courage, but its ability to muster enough bodies to protect our forests, grasslands and other fire-prone spaces.

Last year we published the firefighters’ heartfelt essay explaining the “great exodus” of men and women away from a job that often fails to pay them a wage commensurate with other hazardous professions. Or take care of them in times of tragedy.

Now Orcasitas is taking a different tack. As editor of a new book, Hold and Improve: A Collection of Awesomeness from the Edge of the Fireline, she’s out to demystify the culture of firefighters.

Fighting for fighers: Bré Orcasitas. Photo Marie Wood

Gathering more than 20 extremely candid stories, poems and artwork from firefighters, Hold and Improve is an unexpectedly entertaining and often lighthearted look at a world filled with gallows humor, crazy experiences and insider jargon.

If you’re interested in firefighing you’ll definitely want to check out the lengthy glossary of firefighter terms and slang.

“So many books on the fire community are fatality related, tragedy related,” says Orcasitas. “I want to provide a secret passageway into what it’s like to be a wildland firefighter. It’s an all-access pass to what it’s like and I think that’s pretty cool.”

We think it’s pretty cool, too. So we asked Orcasitas about her latest project.

Columbia Insight: What does “Hold and Improve” mean?

Bré Orcasitas: “Hold and improve” is a fire command that essentially tells, say, a row of firefighters digging with their tools, that something has happened where they need to stop their forward progress. It’s a command that’s passed from one firefighter to the next and it means stay where you’re at and work in that space.

But it’s turned into this catchphrase used in all sorts of moments when you’re out in the field and you’re held up for whatever reason. So it’s kind of like we’re gonna sit around for an undetermined amount of time. And that’s when people have those moments of maybe sitting around a warming fire or waiting for something to happen and that’s when a lot of the storytelling happens. So it felt like the perfect title for this book.

CI: What qualities in a story made you think, “OK, I need to include this one”?

BO: I wanted to capture the camaraderie of the fire community on the page. I didn’t have any specific theme in mind except I really wanted it to be clear I wasn’t going to include stories that were traumatic, because we have spaces for people to read about those circumstances. There are some legendary things in the fire community that have happened. I wanted to hone in on those things.

CI: Wallace, Idaho, has a special place in the story of firefighting. The Ed Pulaski legend was born there, right?

BO: There’s a lot of folklore and legend in the fire culture and the story of Ed Pulaski [of the namesake Pulaski tool used by firefighters] is one of those. Wallace, Idaho, especially focuses around the Great Fire of 1910. It was catastrophic not just in Idaho but it was far-reaching across the country.

That was the home turf of Ed Pulaski. He had a significant standoff getting entrapped with a quite a few other firefighters and keeping [many] of them alive by shoving them into a mining cave and not allowing anyone to come out, as bad as people were panicked and ingesting smoke.

What’s the story? Firefighters like these at the Shasta Trinity National Forest Backbone Fire have lots of them. Photo: Bré Orcasitas

CI: Your fire lingo glossary runs 52 pages. To the outsider does it sometimes feel like firefighters are speaking a foreign language?

BO: Oh, absolutely. That’s like a third as long as it could have been!

With this book I wanted to keep the storytelling component true to the storyteller and how they would be telling this story to other firefighters out on the fireline or around a warming fire. I didn’t remove any of the fire terminology as they were telling their story. But I didn’t want people to get lost in the story if they didn’t know a certain term. It was pretty labor intensive to come up with the glossary.

CI: What should the public better understand about firefighters?

BO: The first thing that springs to mind is it is the largest community of altruistic people that I’ve ever been around. It’s a community of people truly driven by doing what’s right for the greater good. There’s a lot of pride in this job and people feel a significant sense of purpose in doing the job.

CI: Well, we certainly know firefighters aren’t in it for the money.

BO: That (altruism) is what drives people to continue to do the job in the face of the fact that the level of pay is essentially offensive versus the amount of risk involved in doing the job and what is expected of folks—like time away from home. It could be compared to someone who is in the military, with exception that in the military it’s recognized that a lot is put on them, so there are a lot of resources and assistance programs provided to members of the military. Whereas the fire community doesn’t have any of that.

CI: How would you like to see that corrected?

BO: Whenever it comes up if people hear talk of legislation for wildland firefighters I would say do what you can to support those measures, because they are desperately needed by the firefighting community.

Why are these men smiling? “Hold and Improve” offers perspective. Photo: Delaware Dept. of Agriculture

CI: Can you give us a quick overview of your own career as a firefighter?

BO: I started my fire career through Americor, a couple years (1998-2000) on an emergency response team. I started fighting fire in the Midwest. Lots of fires. I’ve (since) worked on an engine, on a hotshot crew, as a helicopter rappeler, been a smoke jumper, done heat-stress research stuff. I was a field ops specialist. A pretty wide swatch all over North America fighting fire.

CI: Are you still active?

BO: I don’t work for the agencies anymore but I go out as an as-needed resource. I’m still active but not (working) as frequently.

CI: Are you already gathering submissions for Hold and Improve Volume Two?

BO: Not yet. The submission dates for volume two will run January to February 2023.

Hold and Improve is available for purchase through independent bookstores. It can be ordered via Barnes and Noble. More information is available on Orcasitas’ blog The Evolving Nomad.

Chuck Thompson is editor of Columbia Insight.