By Marina Green

Kate Hamberger remembers pulling her sky blue bandana up over her nose to ward off the hot, smoky wind of her first forest fire.

Even then, she knew that the flimsy fabric would do little to shield against the smoke created by flames devouring trees and ponderosas all around her in the Ochoco National Forest of Oregon.

“It was totally not effective,” Hamberger, now 57, said in a recent interview with Surfers & Chess Players. “But there was some element of comfort. As far as keeping bad stuff out, it can’t.”

The year was 1986 and she was 18-years-old. It was her rookie summer as a hotshot, a highly trained wildland firefighter.

In those minutes, she was transfixed by the sound of the fire — a frightening noise akin to a white-water river bursting through a tight channel.

It was the first of six summers that she would spend as a hotshot, coming of age and earning her way through college by rigorous days and nights of hiking, digging fire line with a hand-held Pulaski, and crewing helicopters.

She documents her experiences in a book entitled “Dances with Fire: Lessons in Life, Faith & Firefighting,” published on Amazon the summer of 2024.

At once powerful and exquisite, her words capture the beauty, laughter and pain of that time in rich detail, from the sizzling rattlesnake on the grill to “So Far Away,” by Dire Straits playing on her Walkman. Her story is punctuated by tears and smoke burning the back of her throat, by the music from Top Gun and the chemical smell of the Nomex fire retardant clothes she wore.

What she doesn’t talk about much in the book is the toll of those days and nights of smoke inhalation. You know Surfers & Chess Players were curious, so we asked.

Would she still do it knowing everything she knows now?

“I would do it all over again,” she told us. “When you’re young, if there’s tissue damage, it will heal. If I had a daughter, would I recommend it? Hard to say.”

What has been the cost from a health standpoint?

“Yes, I am more prone to upper and lower respiratory infections,” she said. “Other firefighters I know, a lot of us as we age say, “If there’s a cold or bronchitis, I’m going to get it.”’

But she has developed a strategy for coping. In fact her family and friends also use her system. It’s NAC N-Acetyl-Cysteine, a supplement her naturopath showed her that is supposed to support healthy respiratory function.

Dosing herself with the capsules keeps her from getting severely sick, she said.

“It’s been kind of a miracle supplement to me,” she said. She takes it in 500 mg or 1,000 mg doses, as often as three times a day, to ward off or treat illness.

Although she was around smoke and could smell it throughout much of those summers, she and her team tried to stay out of its direct path. The only exception would be during an inversion situation where the smoke was unavoidable, she said.

During an inversion, smoke becomes trapped near the ground by a layer of air above.

She remembers seeing a camp bulletin board warn that the air they were breathing was equal to smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. Still, firefighters around her would pull out cigarettes and smoke, taking solace in the shot of nicotine they afforded after a rough day.

She didn’t worry about the smoke back then.

“When you’re 18, 19, 20, you take your cues from the people around you,” she said. “I feel like this is a newer development, this fear of smoky air. That was never a thing in the 80s.”

When the Pneumonia Diagnosis Came

The money from firefighting was a godsend, paying her way through college, but she kept the work in perspective.

“It’s a young person’s job,” she said. “I never intended to make it a career.”

Ultimately, it was a doctor’s warning about her health that sealed her decision to leave. He told her that she was on the verge of pneumonia and should stop fighting fires. She was also anemic.

She believes her body was ravaged by grief. She had just lost nine Prineville Hotshot friends who were among 14 hotshots and smoke jumpers who died in the Storm King Mountain fire in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1994. She was neither surprised nor saddened by the doctor’s warning.

“For me, hearing him say that was kind of a relief,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to be out there anymore. My friends had been killed in the most horrific way. He had given me permission. I think I was dealing with some survivor’s guilt.”

If not for the needs of her horse she might have been on that crew.

Hamberger stayed in the forest to heal after losing her friends, worked another month and closed out her final fire season.

There was a Scary Time Since Then

With all that smoke exposure, did she ever worry about her health?

“I did get pretty sick and it did kind of scare me,” she said. “For weeks, I had a low-grade temperature. I couldn’t get rid of the deep cough.”

That was the winter of 2013, right after her mom died, Hamberger said. She had a touch of pneumonia.

She had learned in massage school that the lungs are the place of grief, so her illness made complete sense.

In retrospect, so did what happened right after her friends were killed.

She traveled on a bus with some of the survivors and found herself with strep throat and on antibiotics within days. She wasn’t alone.

“Some of the survivors’ need for antibiotics, I’m convinced was tissue damage,” she said. “They were all running for their lives while breathing heavy smoke.”

It is well known that there is an inexplicable link between physical and mental health — a thin line between the two that blurs and turns permeable under stress.

Where Are Today’s Hotshots?

The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, and State agencies sponsor more than 100 Interagency Hotshots Crews, mostly in the Western United States.

They are an elite group of dedicated, specialized and extremely physically fit firefighters, assigned to the most challenging terrain and/or priority wildfire incidents throughout the country.

Not much has changed in firefighting since Hamberger’s days as a hotshot current hotshots confirm. It’s still a lot of manual labor.

Do Hotshots Worry About the Dangers of Smoke?

“I wouldn’t say it’s something we discuss a lot,” said Dan Mallia, a 21-year veteran hotshot in Redding, Calif. “But we’re constantly aware of it.”

In his current role as Hotshot Superintendent for the United States Forest Service’s, Pacific Southwest Region, he oversees 24 hotshots.

“It’s always something heavy on my mind, how can I get my crew out of the smoke,” he said.

The constant dust and dirt that crews churn up and send airborne is another significant breathing concern, he said.

Still, in all his 25 years of firefighting, there have been only a handful of times when Mallia, 49, has felt severely impacted by smoke.

Hotshots, who already carry 50 pounds on their backs, can’t encumber themselves further with the added weight and bulk of a respirator, he said. It would jeopardize their ability to do their job.

So, they work without protection from the outside air. But they do keep track of known hazardous encounters by filing exposure forms.

For instance, he and his crew recently spent nine rough days at a fire in Idaho where the air currents created an inversion, keeping them in smoke throughout their stay. After that experience, and after any assignment at Happy Camp, Calif., also well known for inversions, crew members completed exposure forms.

The records keep track of firefighters’ contact with smoke in case there are health problems down the road, he said.

Such forms also are filed anytime they participate in what they call an “urban interface,” where forest fires come right up to houses. These fires are potentially more dangerous because of the fumes and particulates from plastics, rubbers and other toxins that can be released into the air and inhaled.

“More and more, we are being called into those environments,” Mallia said.

Take Heed

“As fires get bigger, hotter and faster, the risks to firefighters loom greater as well,” Hamberger writes in the Afterword of her book. “I witnessed extreme fire behavior, but it’s more common now.”

Surfers & Chess Players has written about the fires in Canada and Greece and the western U.S., only getting worse with global warming.

Hamberger is grateful for her chance to “dance with fire.” She admits that watching forest fires devour millions of acres and entire towns makes her restless. She longs to do something to help.

We can collectively make a difference, she suggests. One way is to volunteer to protect our wildlands by visiting https://www.volunteer.gov/s/.