(slow dramatic music) - We're cutting fire line up a Ridge and the fire is below us.

I'm 19 years old.

I had no knowledge, no experience, no training.

I'm watching helicopter go over.

I'm watching the flames.

And then all of a sudden, the crew boss yells out, "Slurry coming in, everybody on the ground," and here comes a B-17 World War II era plane, couldn't have been more than 60 feet off the ground, right overhead.

The ground is rumbling, dropping retardant, and I couldn't do any work.

I was so excited to watch everything.

(dramatic music) - Coming out of high school, I didn't understand that there were jobs that were traditionally men's and jobs that were traditionally women's.

So I didn't know, I couldn't do it.

And I was fortunate enough to be there when agencies were being told they should do it.

(gentle music) It was the mid eighties.

It was a time that that glass ceiling was breaking for a lot of women.

And I think there was a real push at that time, especially with federal agencies, with state agencies, to bring a little more equality to the workforce.

So I really was at the right place at the right time.

At the end of the summer, my boss said you did pretty well.

I mean, nobody wanted you on their crew.

We were told we had to hire a woman and you were the only one who applied, but you did good.

30 years ago, the national average was 4%, 4% of firefighters were women.

And then it went up a little bit and everybody got kind of excited, "Yeah, we're getting more women."

And then it went down.

Now we're less than 4%.

We're lower, we're going the wrong direction, right?

And the question is, why?

For a lot of us, when we grow up, we don't really consider the fire service as a career because we never see other women in those positions.

And it's not just for women either.

There are people who look all kinds of ways, that speak all kinds of language.

You know, they just don't see people that look like them on fire trucks.

My friend said, "You will be a part of the team, but you will always feel like the outsider," and she was right.

- If you're standing with your crew, a female captain, 9 times out of 10, the public is going to walk up to the guy who works for her.

If I was a tall male with a beard or a mustache, and I looked the part, those guys would automatically respect and follow.

But when they show up and it would be me, they're gonna be questioning, and they're gonna be wondering, and you got to prove yourself.

They follow a strong leader.

And if you don't feel like a strong leader, you still have to act like one.

(water whooshing) (fire flickering) - Camp Blaze was started in the nineties, up here in the Northwest.

It's a week-long sleep away camp for 16 to 19 year old girls who are interested in the fire service.

You create a conducive environment for young women to fail in.

And we show them that it's okay to fail.

But then it's about standing up and trying to do it and being successful.

(girls chattering) I'm not built the same way, like a man.

I can't just use my upper body to pick up a ladder.

If I had never had a female show me about the balance point on the ladder and how to launch it and squat it and use my legs, which is where my power as a female comes from.

I probably would not have ever been as successful at the ladder as I am right now.

So there's a little balance.

- There's something really special about learning some of these skills from someone who looks like you and can speak your language.

It's nice to come somewhere where you immediately get that sense of inclusion.

People see your value right away.

They appreciate you.

And they just wanna support you.

- I would very much like to see more women come into fire and stay in fire.

Somehow we've got to bring them in, give them the opportunity and then coach and mentoring, get them the exposure to different aspects of fire so that they want to stay and they want to move up.

- Who are we?

- Mean green firefighting machine!

- The big fire 40 years ago.

It was 10,000 acres.

That was a huge fire.

- [Reporter] California's largest wildfire is still growing tonight.

- Now it doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

Now we say, "oh, it's 100,000 acres".

Some of our fires get 2 to 300,000 acres.

I don't see what we're doing as sustainable.

We're not getting ahead of the environment.

You know, as things are hotter and drier and the fires are bigger and longer and everything.

We're not really adapting quickly enough.

And the workforce is a part of that.

Just from the strictest standpoint of wanting to make sure you have the broadest, largest hiring pools to choose from.

We should encourage diversity.

- As much as I'd like to say that men and women are treated entirely equally and we can perform exactly the same in all situations, I think we approach problems differently.

And in firefighting, if you ask 10 experts, they'll give you 10 different ways to do something.

And none of them are wrong.

But if we have more inputs and coming at a problem from different directions, we're gonna have a better outcome.

You're dealing with people that are having the worst day of their life.

People that look like you, listen to you differently.

It's not somebody telling me what to do.

It's somebody who's trying to help me.

And that makes a difference.

- I was on a fire one time and I had spent days doing burnout operations, you know.

burning out the fire line to protect the subdivision and lots of work.

(soft brooding music) And then the fire came through and it was a big firefight, and we saved most of the houses.

They were interviewing me in front of this lady's home.

And she was so excited that her home was safe.

And the news reporter is interviewing me and the camera's on me, and this lady grabs my hand on camera and she says, "look, and she has nails too!"

She was so impressed that I saved her house, and I had nail polish.

I was so embarrassed at the time, but looking back, it just makes me laugh because this idea that you can't be female and a good firefighter is just so... it's just ingrained in us.

As much trouble as I had over the years with the workforce and the crew dynamics and that sort of thing, the fires just kept me coming back for 40 some years.

(fires flickering) (slow solemn music) - [Narrator] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Port of Seattle.