When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

Anthropologist and former Los Padres hotshot wildland firefighter Thomas spent the 2021 fire season with the Los Padres hotshots at various locations throughout California and Arizona. In this engrossing work on wildfires and the environment, Thomas skillfully weaves together how historical events, genocide, politics, and the logging industry have all contributed to climate change, creating megafires throughout the American West. While most U.S. readers grew up with Smokey the Bear admonishing citizens about their responsibility for preventing forest fires, Thomas explains how the Indigenous peoples of California used fire to burn the forests carefully. While purposely burning forests sounds counterintuitive, this practice cleared away brush that could otherwise inadvertently catch fire, readied the land for agriculture, and regenerated the local flora and fauna. Colonization nearly wiped out these Indigenous fire practices, replacing them with modern-day fire suppression techniques and treating firefighting as war. Thomas also highlights the low pay and lack of a social safety net that plagues many fire crews today, discusses how firefighting turns a profit for private disaster response companies, and how this wealth affects environmental politics.