In 1974, the US Forest Service started hiring female wildland firefighters. They also hired the very first woman to be on a hotshot fire crew... Finally, in June 1975, policy was made where women could finally be hired and paid for fighting wildland fires for the State of California Division of Forestry. Only two women applied.
A memo went out to all of the CDF units that they must try to hire personnel according to the female-to-male ratio... Even though the door was finally opened. However, here were only 26 female seasonal firefighters (including me) working for CDF in the summer of 1978.
The original patch Jan Mendoza wore on her uniform in 1978
By 1988, there were over 468 female firefighters working for CDF - still a very small ratio. We were in a man’s world, but in that world, we firefighting suffragettes endured, paving the way for women wildland firefighters for years to come.
The current CalFire Patch
