PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Prescott National Forest is hosting a Women in Wildland Fire Bootcamp starting Thursday morning. Participants will get basic fire training and a leg up on seasonal employment in fire.
"When they come here, they’ll be doing four days of field training exercises," Ansgar Mitchell said. He's a Forestry Technician with Prescott National Forest.
Mitchell said there is a shortage of seasonal workers right now as we approach wildfire season here in Arizona.
"We do have temporary hiring going on right now, and there are shortages across the board in a lot of functionalities of the Wildland Fire Service."
The boot camp this week aims to specifically recruit more women in the male-dominated field.
"To date, at least for the federal side of things, we’re looking at roughly 86 percent male and 13 percent female so we’re looking to increase those numbers within the organization," Mitchell explained.
"I’m in chiefs meetings at least twice a month and they’re all men," Mikayla Baker added. She's a Fire Science Instructor at Yavapai College.
Baker will be a guest speaker at the training.
"My message to the women is t’s going to test your physical and mental limits like no other, but it’s amazing."
She’s there to help extinguish stereotypes.
"Sometimes you have to stand up and it's like 'no, I belong here too, this is what I love,' so don’t ever, ever, ever let anybody dissuade you from what you want to do," she continued. "So if someone is like 'I don’t know, maybe you should just stay home and be a mom, well you can be a mom and be a firefighter too!"
The boot camp ends on Sunday but Baker will continue to share her story and hopefully inspire women and young girls.
"I had this little girl run up to me before and she said 'what are you?' I said 'I'm a firefighter' and she said 'what!' She looked at her mom and said 'but she's a girl' and then said 'can I be a firefighter too?' And I was like of course you can!"
