When It All Burns

by Jordan Thomas ★★★☆☆

Jordan Thomas didn't believe everything he was hearing about wildfires. A Marshall Scholar with a Masters in Social Anthropology from Cambridge, Thomas is atypical for a firefighter. But in 2020, he wanted to get closer to the truth, and he figured the only way to do so was to get closer to fire. He enrolled initially in a Santa Barbara beginner firefighting crew, but before long it became apparent that his fitness and stamina could position him for more. He pursued—and won—a position on the crew of the Los Padres Hotshots, an elite wildland firefighting unit akin to the Navy Seals of the firefighting world. Hotshot crews are federally-funded, and so they are dispatched to wherever the need is greatest and handed the most challenging tasks to fight wildfires in those places.

When It All Burns is Thomas's account of his time with the Los Padres Hotshots, but it is more broadly a dissection of the complex relationship between fire and humans over time. Thomas, as an anthropologist, tackles everything from the brutal colonization of California and suppression of Indigenous fire burning techniques, to climate change (or the "climate crisis" as Thomas frequently refers to it) and its role in amplifying the effects of wildfires, to the rise of "Fire Industrial Complex" and how fire suppression evolved into a highly funded and politically influential industry.

Thomas spent just one fire season with the Hotshots, and his first-hand account of the physical and mental toll that work takes on every member of the crew are the best portions of the book. It's a behind-the-scenes look at a group I was completely unfamiliar with, and an interesting glimpse into the specialized knowledge and skills required to fight fires at an elite level. It also underscores how futile so much of the effort is. More often than not, the Hotshots would work tirelessly only to have the fire spread beyond their intended containment zone.

The first-hand accounts are interwoven with Thomas's researched history of large fires and the more recent "megafires" in the American West. He unflinchingly relates the murderous colonization of California and how the combination of logging with the suppression (and in some cases eradication) of Indigenous people left forests and environments out of balance in the modern world, exacerbating the frequency and intensity of modern megafires. He goes on to talk about the politicization of fire across history, and in doing so falters in some of his arguments. He cites extreme examples from the political right—most notably Marjorie Taylor Greene's "Jewish space lasers" Facebook post from before she was in office—and makes blanket "trust the science" statements while suggesting all arguments contrary to his narrative are politically-funded misinformation campaigns.

The problem is that the scientific community is not unified in its understanding, nor in its recommended solution, of how we should best deal with wildfires. Thomas would argue the lack of unity are dissenting opinions funded by the Koch brothers, but as someone with a vested interest in finding a solution (I live in a high-risk fire zone in California), I need a more compelling argument than "the other guys are lying." To his credit, he does also acknowledge that there are opponents on the political left, most notably those that oppose prescribed burns on the grounds of a perceived harm to the environment and atmosphere, but in those cases he writes that position off to ignorance rather than greed-funded misinformation.

Overall, Thomas may be 100% right about all of it, but he fails to make a fully compelling case for his version of the truth. I appreciated the deep dive into the world of the Los Padres Hotshots, as well as the anthropological exploration of the role that profitability and politics have played in establishing fire suppression policy. I finished the book armed with far more knowledge than I had when I started, but far fewer rock-solid resolutions. It's an interesting read, but a less compelling argument for a specific solution.