San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Running toward fires and breaking ground
If you live in California — or anywhere in the West, for that matter — fires are a constant threat, and they’re getting worse by the year. In 2021 alone, two of them, the Caldor and Dixie fires, burned more than 1.18 million acres. Tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. But what would it feel like to run toward these infernos instead of away from them?
In her extraordinary debut memoir, “Burnt,” Clare Frank answers this question in a fascinating, boots-on-theground account of her storied career as a firefighter. From her first push-up at Sandy Point Training Center southeast of Pescadero in 1982 all the way up to her job as California’s state chief of fire protection in 2013 — the first and only woman to serve in that position — she takes readers behind the scenes in a playby-play that is as riveting as it is informative.
Frank encountered her first wildfire, the Walden Fire, at 4 years old in a Los Angeles suburb. Her family moved often; by the time she was in 10th grade, she had gone to 16 different schools. The only constant seemed to be her interest in fire.
At 17, she took a high school proficiency test and followed her brother Mark’s footsteps to firefighting boot camp. The experience was grueling, but Frank knew she had found her calling. “These moments on burnt knolls with canned calories and dying wisps of smoke would become spiritual for me over the next thirty years — my version of home liturgy,” she writes.
From there, she jumped around throughout California from fire station to fire station and from position to position, firefighter to engineer to captain to chief and beyond; she also earned a bachelor of science degree in fire administration and a law degree. By the time she retired in 2015, Frank had been a part of daredevil rescue efforts, nearly flipped a fire engine (she never made that mistake again), endured a foot injury that knocked her out of work for five years, saved many lives, weathered devastating losses and made long-lasting friendships.
Every bit of “Burnt” is interesting, which is to be expected in a memoir written by a woman in uniform. But aside from Frank’s gruesome depictions of car accidents, suicides and infernos, some of the book’s most engaging passages deal with what happened when she was off duty.
Frank doesn’t shy away from describing just how tricky it was to avoid being thought of as a “yummy treat with no substance — a PopTart” and instead be respected as a fierce, intelligent, capable woman in a mostly man’s world. From the strategic thinking inside the fire station around when — and when not — to use the bathroom, group showers, what to wear to bed in preparation for a potential middle-of-the-night emergency call, and even which bunk to sleep in, she drives home the point that working toward gender equality meant more than deflecting the occasional wisecrack or calling out sexual harassment: “I took a subversive approach, hoping to change minds by proving bullshit stereotypes wrong to both myself and others, with occasional smart-ass callouts for overt misogyny,” she writes.
Frank also balances her candid descriptions of the trauma that comes with the job — insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, co-workers’ divorces, rampant alcoholism — with moments of levity. Two of my favorite characters and big influences in Frank’s life early on in her career are Mark and a Vietnam War vet named Norm, the first fire chief she worked under at Big Creek Fire Station, 15 miles north of Santa Cruz. Norm’s downtime hobby? Macrame.
According to a survey by the National Fire Association, there are approximately 15,000 female career firefighters in the United States. That’s roughly 4 percent of the national total. In Frank’s day, there were much fewer.
In Frank’s own words, “When people find out I spent a career in firefighting, two questions always follow. The first is, ‘Why — why did you choose to run toward fire?’ The second is, ‘How many are there — you know — female firefighters?’ ”
Her memoir is her attempt to answer the first question. Her response to the second is also telling: “It’s astonishing to me when I realize I was never a permanent direct report to another female. The odds are better now but not by much — not by enough,” she writes. “If you recognize that impulse of delight in any female in your life, tell her to follow it. Tell her there’s still much ground to be broken. Tell her it’s worth every scar it leaves.”