Editor’s note: Annie Leverich is the communications manager for FAC Net, and manages the Fire Networks blog and TREX/WTREX social media channels. In April 2024, Annie supported a Women-In-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) in north-central Nebraska as the Public Information Officer, or PIO. In this blog, Annie shares some photos to recap the event. More details from the event can be found on this WTREX Nebraska fact sheet.
Picture this…the golden, honey yellow of the grasses makes for a gorgeous contrast to the cornflower blue of the sky. It’s early evening, the wind picking up just a little bit and brushing itself through the strands of the Nebraska prairie’s grassy mane. Participants in the Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange, or WTREX for short, are arriving in clumps, some in crew cab trucks with agency logos emblazoned on the door, others trailing a UTV, others toting a camper. WTREX in Nebraska is officially starting; this time, in the calm, ocean-like prairie of the Niobrara Valley Preserve – 56,000 acres of land owned and stewarded by The Nature Conservancy.
WTREX brings together underrepresented fire practitioners and their allies for two weeks of hands-on training and certification opportunities. It was modeled after TREX, Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges, a training curriculum that started in Great Plains Fire Learning Networks in 2008. The first WTREX event was in California in 2016 – since then, several have been hosted domestically (in North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia) as well as abroad (in South Africa, Canada, and Portugal, with more in planning stages). Check out more about WTREX and TREX on the Fire Networks website.
I was part of the Incident Management Team (IMT) at the WTREX event that took place in Nebraska this spring, serving as the Public Information Officer (PIO). The IMT model and the roles within it come from the Incident Command System (ICS), which is used in wildland fire and many prescribed fire operations. As PIO, I was responsible for any communications surrounding the event – like working with journalists, training participants in media interviews, and posting on our social media accounts…among other things. It was really a fun role.
The best part of being a PIO was shutterbugging my way through the event – snapping pictures of people hanging out, learning in the classroom, or dragging a drip torch out on the burn unit. Below are five of my favorites that I captured, curated carefully (I took A LOT of photos) and accompanied by a little reflection. If you’re left wanting more after seeing this selection, check out all the great photos and stories we posted during the event on Facebook and Instagram.
This photo was taken on the first operational burn day for the full crew at WTREX. We were working with some fickle weather patterns, but we finally got a beautiful day with great conditions for burning several hundred acres of grass in a unit on the Preserve. Smiles were vibrant that day, and energy was high. This is a photo of the partial “FEMO” team, which refers to “Fire Effects Monitoring.” These folks (from left to right: Tracy Katelman, Lyndsey Lascheck, and Rachel Hendrickson) were responsible for taking measurements on the hour to notify the larger group of weather conditions and changes.
The Niobrara Valley Preserve is home to two herds of bison. Pictured here is a small flock of “yearlings,” adolescent bison that were babies not too long ago. These animals have it good out on the Preserve…acre upon acre of tasty grasses to munch on, big skies to look up upon, and a team of caring Preserve stewards that support their needs and patterns. We loved having bison around at WTREX. Many squeals of delight erupted from truck windows as we passed them by. Springtime is bison calving season, so every now and then driving from one unit to another on the preserve we would encounter clusters of little ones under the care of their watchful mothers. Don’t mess with mama!
Trucks are cool. Add a big ol’ pump on the back and it’s by default even cooler. Participants and IMT members alike generously brought all sorts of equipment for our use during WTREX. We had opportunities to train on the use of different types of pumps, a famously mystifying yet easily clarified aspect of prescribed burning (although I may just be speaking from my own experience with pumps). Pictured here is Fanny Tricone, a participant welcomed from Belize, creating a hose line for our blacklining operation on the second operational burn day for the whole crew. Blacklining is a tactic to establish a burned area around the perimeter of a burn unit, removing flammable vegetation, to be used in future operations on that unit.
You might ask…”what the heck is happening in this photo?” And I’d be happy to tell you that there’s a lot of love, validation, and recognition happening in this photo. On the last day of WTREX, before we all took off in our respective directions away from the heart of the prairie, we rounded everyone up to participate in the “Talking Behind Your Back” activity, a tradition at WTREX. Folks tape a sheet of paper to their backs, and we shuffle around writing a quick note of appreciation on each other’s backs. Once everyone has written something on everyone else’s back (it did take a minute), pages are peeled from our backsides and everyone takes home a heartwarming (and frame-able) page of kind and loving notes. Recognition and mutual support are at the core of WTREX. Even though these events are just two weeks in time, the connections, relationships, and memories are truly life- and career-changing.
Lastly…our group photo. I could have included the serious version, where we all lined up like dutiful fire practitioners in our matching shirts, but this shot of the “silly one” just fits better as a summary of our energy as a group. Fire can and should be joyous, something to rally around and bring everyone together. Plus, everyone was in a good mood…we were about to eat delicious enchiladas prepared by our amazing catering crew, Tara Quinn and Ariel Hanson (Ella).
This selection of five photos just scratches the surface of the action. WTREX is something special – no two events are the same, but the throughline of respect, acknowledgement, and recognition of ALL fire practitioners runs strong in every WTREX. Everyone at WTREX has something to teach and something to learn. It was my pleasure to serve on the IMT as the event PIO and to absorb the wisdom of my mentors and peers. A few months on, I’m still feeling the breezes and seeing the waving grasses of that gorgeous prairie landscape under a big dramatic sky.
See more photos and keep up to date with WTREX on Facebook and Instagram, where we’ll announce upcoming events and other opportunities, and check out this WTREX Nebraska fact sheet for more details on this particular event.
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