Editor’s note: This interview with Kylie England is the second in our “My Fire Journey” interview series, in which we feature conversations with fire practitioners from a variety of backgrounds. These conversations are meant to offer a window into how practitioners approach their work, draw inspiration, and keep going in the face of challenges and setbacks. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity, and represent the views and opinions of the interviewees. Read our first in the series, an interview with cultural fire practitioner Chanel Keller, here.
Kylie England is Prescribed Fire Operations Specialist with the Mt Adams Resource Stewards (MARS) and Mt Adams Prescribed Burn Association in Washington State. She works with local landowners, MARS staff, and neighboring fire agencies and partners to conduct prescribed fire activities, monitoring, and training in the area, as well as support fire suppression activities with the stewardship crew. Kylie began her fire journey in her home country of South Africa, where she worked as both a volunteer and professional wildland firefighter for several years before moving to the US fulltime in 2023. Outside of work, Kylie and her wife, Lacey, can be found adventuring with their dog, Lily, and enjoying the wonders of the Pacific Northwest. Photos credit to Kylie England unless otherwise noted.
Fire Networks Staff: How did you find out this field exists? How did you get into it?
Kylie England:
While living in Cape Town, South Africa, our peninsula experienced a devastating wildfire. At the time, I was working part-time at a school in the winters and part-time in a call center for the summer. I sat on my balcony every night of that fire watching the emergency lights and headlamps working in the mountains, wishing more than anything that I could be of help. At this point I was still working under the assumption that the folks in the big red fire trucks fought all fires. I didn’t know anything about wildland fire.
Some time after that I came across a flyer on my desk advertising a volunteer wildland firefighting organization in my home town. I immediately reached out and signed up. It was here, on my first day of training, that I knew this is something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was a volunteer firefighter for three seasons, and then in 2019 was headhunted to join the professional realm of wildland fire.
What skills have been most beneficial for you in your career? And where or what do you turn to for continuous learning and skill development?
One of my most fine-tuned skills that has served me well in fire is my honed situational awareness and perception of potential danger. As a woman from South Africa, we are massively affected by gender-based violence and are often seen as easy targets. We learn a type of street smarts that involves looking up, around and down. To plan escape routes, and never go into a situation that we cannot get out of. It may sound morbid, but I see it as a big strength. I led an all-female crew for two years, and this is where I really noticed its power and my intuition for danger. A crew of mostly new-to-fire women were doing solid and hard work, incredibly safely at all times.
I worked one summer for a paragliding company before I stumbled into my fire career. I learned about the local winds and weather patterns of our mountains, atmospheric stability and what different clouds meant. I learned to sense small changes in the weather without any instruments, and make forecasts from the conditions I was seeing. This taught me the relevance and importance of weather, but also dialed me into our specific, local conditions, and the different microclimates in my area. I still to this day check the weather first thing in the morning after I wake up.
I am also a qualified teacher. Working with children (my other big passion in life) taught me to be a better trainer and a leader who leads with empathy and understanding. Just like it was once my job to serve my class as their teacher, it is now my job to serve as a leader and follower on the line.
I have found many other skills that I have learned in life play a valuable role in my fire career. But I also find having a desire to learn more, always, and being a lifelong student of fire, is what really makes all the difference. Every course, every wildfire, every prescribed burn, every person I work with, every book/article/podcast I consume is a learning opportunity, and something I am very grateful for in this country is that there are a lot of amazing resources out there!
Are there specific networking strategies or techniques that have worked for you?
Coming from the bottom of the African continent, one might wonder how I ended up living in the United States. One word: networking. The online fire community is a growing collaboration of international fire practitioners seeking solutions and collaboration for similar problems. I discovered prescribed fire while leading my all-female crew, and at the end of my first burn I was left with way more questions than answers. All I knew is that it felt completely different to wildland fire suppression, and it felt really good and wholesome. I began to navigate my international networks, seeking mentorship and guidance in this realm of fire.
That said, networking alone is not enough, it’s the relationships you build over time from these networking opportunities that stand the test of time and where the real magic happens. Fire is and should be collaborative, built on relationships of trust, support and understanding. The results can be pretty amazing. After all, this is how I met my wife.
Who is someone who has influenced or supported your career trajectory? Tell us about how that person impacted you.
When I first started navigating the online fire community in 2019, Facebook had a mentoring program for wildland firefighters. I requested Jane Park from Alberta, Canada, and she accepted. Jane has been with me from the start of my professional career and to this day I am honored to call her a close friend. She helped me find my feet, taught me about prescribed fire and a lot about leadership. She has faced challenges in her career too, and I have learned so much from how she navigated her way through any obstacle that came her way. She also taught me how to advocate for myself and invest in my mental health.
Powerhouses like Jane Park are out there – seeking out mentorship from quality leaders in the industry is a game changer.
What are you proud of in your career so far? What do you wish you would have done? What would you do differently?
I am proud of the journey that I have travelled thus far in fire. It has been challenging, beautiful, hard, exciting, brutal, and rewarding (in that order and then some). While I have had some incredible experiences and opportunities in my career, I am most proud of where I am today. I am working for an incredible organization doing the work I dreamed of.
There is nothing that I would change about it, because every part of my journey has brought me to where I am today. I have learned (and unlearned) so much along the way, and continue to learn and grow every single day. Even the painful parts have taught me fantastic life lessons, if not about fire, about myself. We perform After Action Reviews (AARs) not to change what we have done, but to improve on what we do next by reflecting on the lessons we have learned. I learned about having a growth mindset from my teaching days, and it is a humble lesson that I wear like a badge of honor.
