A Firefighter's Journey: Embracing the Complex Reality of Wildfires

The megafires sweeping across the Western United States are staggering in their scale, often captured in shaky videos on social media showing walls of blazing orange engulfing homes and turning lush forests into scorched skeletons beneath towering black smoke columns.

Jordan Thomas’s ‘When It All Burns’ offers a deeply personal perspective on these infernos, chronicling a season spent with the Los Padres Hotshots—an elite U.S. Forest Service wildfire response team he describes as the special forces of wildland firefighting.

Early in his narrative, Thomas describes descending rugged terrain to confront a football-field-sized blaze, its embers spitting and the roar of the fire swelling from a distant silence to a jet-engine-like thunder. He vividly captures the forest’s dark undergrowth glowing ominously as the fire advances.

This episode took place in the fall of 2021 within Sequoia National Forest, where ancient groves adapted over millennia to periodic fires—though not the intense megafires now common. This moment feels worlds away from the devastating Los Angeles fires of 2025, driven by fierce Santa Ana winds and heat waves that have redefined the boundaries between urban areas and wilderness.

‘When It All Burns’ blends a report on modern firefighting with an exploratory memoir. Raised in the Midwest and pursuing an anthropology degree at the University of California, Thomas joined the Hotshots while questioning the notion that humans are inherently destructive to nature. His journey is also informed by a visit to a Maya community in southern Mexico, which illuminated traditional fire management practices that have shaped ecosystems for centuries. He notes, “Nearly every terrestrial landscape has evolved with distinct fire regimes—flames tailored to each ecological niche and influenced by the people living there.”

Between accounts of training and wildfire deployments, Thomas provides concise histories of fire management policies worldwide. He traces early suppression efforts back to Spanish colonial settlements in North America, where Indigenous Californians were enslaved and persecuted as their customary burning practices were condemned and eradicated to protect grazing lands favored by colonizers.

This pattern of fire suppression spread globally: Pennsylvania banned controlled burns in 1749, New England followed suit, and similar bans were enforced by French colonists in Southeast Asia and English authorities in Ireland. Dutch traders even executed South Africans for using fire as a land management tool. Thomas observes that wherever European powers expanded, they extinguished traditional fire use.

The U.S. Forest Service was established in 1905 under the Department of Agriculture, implicitly treating forests as timber crops. Its first chief, Gifford Pinchot, prioritized timber profits and opposed fire, viewing it as a threat to valuable resources.

Pinchot’s successor condemned controlled burns as a dangerous ideology, while many newly designated national forests were formerly Indigenous territories claimed by President Theodore Roosevelt, whose admiration for nature was marred by his prejudice against Native Americans.

The aggressive targeting of fires ended countless Indigenous burning practices that supported plant and animal management, regulated snowpack to prevent floods, and influenced river systems through plant transpiration. For generations, fire was a regenerative tool—more effective than the static farming methods introduced by settlers. Yet, by 1890, regular fires across California’s forests had been nearly extinguished.

Within just two months of the 2021 fire season, Thomas and the Hotshots battled blazes in the Nevada desert, lightning-triggered fires in Arizona, and flaming redwoods in Big Sur. Although some passages resemble the adrenaline-fueled bravado of reality television, the book primarily reads as a sober dispatch from a protracted, often unwinnable conflict against increasingly destructive wildfires. Corporate interests often benefit short-term: in 2021, the Forest Service purchased 50 million gallons of the flame retardant Phos-Chek at about $2.50 per gallon, a product developed by Monsanto. Meanwhile, companies like Sierra Pacific Industries profit by salvage logging fire-damaged timber, selling it to major retailers.

Thomas recounts a moment when a wealthy homeowner offered cash tips to firefighters, which were declined in favor of urging the homeowner to pay higher taxes. Fire crews frequently rely on crowdfunding campaigns to cover significant medical expenses.

Today’s Forest Service includes research ecologists seeking to learn from Indigenous land management methods. Fire is increasingly recognized for its ecological role, such as restoring California black oak populations and enhancing soil carbon capture.

The key insight is that fire itself is not inherently harmful—rather, it is destructive fires that cause damage.

This nuanced understanding is sometimes challenging even for Thomas. Near the book’s conclusion, while observing flames flickering through grass in a Santa Barbara oak woodland, he instinctively reaches for a shovel. A visiting firefighter from the Nlaka’pamux Nation in British Columbia advises patience: “Why not sit down and let it burn a little longer?”