It was two in the afternoon, and Milena Rockwood couldn’t see the sun.
On that day in late June 2002, the sun should have been just past midpoint in the sky, blaring down with heat and intensity. But behind a billowing cloud of white smoke, it disappeared from sight, creating an overcast day from an otherwise typical summer afternoon.
Even without the sun, Rockwood wasn’t denied heat as she drove toward the smoke. This was her first fire, and it was hot.
To be fair, all of the fires Rockwood fights with the U.S. Forest Service are hot, but this one was especially warm.
“I remember being surprised at how hot the brush burned and just how much smoke there was,” she says. “I didn’t know what to expect before that.”
Her squad was the first crew on-site and part of the initial attack. Four of the five members, including Rockwood, were newbies, fresh out of training.
“We were obviously, very much rookies,” Rockwood laughs, remembering her own inexperience.
The four had never seen a forest fire before now.
As they drove toward the fire, by Flaming Gorge in the Ashley National Forest, the smoke changed from white to black. They stopped their car. The flames had jumped the road, surrounding them. The fire burned hot through brush and juniper before hitting the forest timber, with flames as high as 40 feet.
“It was just a wall of flames in the timber, and it was moving up the mountainside,” Rockwood says. “I remember on the first fire being really nervous, mostly because I didn’t know what we were supposed to do.”
Her squad leader, known as an incident commander, barked out orders, and the crew began cutting off limbs from the trees to stop the flames from spreading. They also dug lines around the fire, but nothing seemed to work. The fire had what Rockwood calls “extreme fire behavior.” The crew couldn’t predict what was going to happen next.
She fought the flames for 24 hours straight, not stopping to take a break. When Rockwood’s shift ended, she slept at a local elementary school but was woken abruptly because the fire jumped the Green River and another road. It was now moving toward a nearby town.
Rockwood sprang into action, throwing on her blue work helmet and Nomex flame-resistant cargo pants. Her 110-page fire manual, with a bright orange cover, was nestled in her pocket, barely used, although it would become weathered in the next few years.
She grabbed her 30 pound backpack with a first aid kit and a fire shelter, and returned to the fire, running on little sleep.
“Usually, you’re not exhausted until you stop moving. I think there’s a bit of insanity in that,” she says. “While you’re out working, you’re just busy, and time goes by fast. You don’t necessarily notice how long you’ve been out there.”
Rockwood worked on the forest fire for another 13 days after that, diverting water from the gorge to put out the flames and radioing the progress to dispatch. She returned to the site for another two weeks after the fire was extinguished for cleanup and reconstruction.
Now Rockwood, 41 years old, is a veteran firefighter with 12 years of service under her belt. But she says the memory of that first fire continues to teach her.
“I think back to the time when I was on that first fire and didn’t know what I was doing,” Rockwood says. “I try to remember that’s how my first year guys feel. I try to direct them that way.”
That first fire began when a trailer dragged a chain along the road. It took one spark from the chain to start the fire that burned 20,000 acres of land. That spark also sparked something inside of Rockwood.
“I knew right then that this is what I wanted to do with my life,” she says.
Rockwood reflects that every fire she fights is different, each with its own “personality,” but that first fire exposed her to a whole gamut of aspects and was “definitely a good introduction.”
When Rockwood attended the U, graduating in 2000, she studied accounting. But she spent more time staring out the window than totaling spreadsheets. She longed to be outdoors. Being outside was what she knew, having grown up in Farmington on Jeep rides, mountains, and hiking.
She stumbled upon the Forest Service job while working at a ski resort, looking for summer work. Rockwood didn’t anticipate finding her passion in fighting fires.
Rockwood recalls that her boss at the fire station hired her because of her accounting degree. And she agrees it’s made her a better firefighter. She is able to calculate how much fuel a fire can burn, the speed of the wind, and other factors — something other firefighters praise her for.
Bret Bowthorpe, an assistant squad boss in the Spanish Fork Ranger District, hasn’t met Rockwood, but knows of her and her work.
“I mainly know her by reputation.” Bowthorpe says. “She works hard.”
Bowthorpe’s squad wears the same blue helmets as Rockwood and her crew, but he has a completely different experience with forest fires. The majority of the fires he extinguishes are caused by lightning and are in isolated locations.
Most of the fires Rockwood works on, about 90 percent, are human-caused from abandoned campfires and fireworks.
Bowthorpe, while passionate, also worries about the dangers of fighting fires in “the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s risky for everyone involved,” Bowthorpe says. “We do train for this, but we can’t train for every circumstance and everything, so we just try to do our best.”
For Rockwood, the most difficult part is educating people on fire safety, for which she relies on some traditional marketing of the U.S. Forest Service — Smokey Bear.
When Rockwood first started fighting fires she wanted to dress up as the mascot to teach kids about prevention. So she donned the woolly bear costume and headed out to a couple parades. She joked that while fighting forest fires is hot, that experience was “pry the hottest I’ve ever been.”
“It was like 103 degrees out, and you’re wearing a fur suit,” she says, laughing. “It’s kind of warm, [but] it’s way fun to watch how excited kids get about it.”
Rockwood is now a fire engine operator working in the Logan and Wasatch areas for the Forest Service. So far this year she’s responded to two or three fires — a slow year for her. Her crew does prescribed fires to help the ecosystem and clears hiking trails when they’re not busy.
“I love my job as much this year as I did my first year,” she says.
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