FLYING IN THE FACE OF DANGER

BY KELLY VAUGHN KRAMER PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL MARKOW It's windy on the helipad at Springerville Municipal Airport, a one-building terminal and a slip of an airfield - a place pulled from a scene in some nameless 1960s film about crop-dusting or a long-distance love affair. Over the coming months, the wind will usher clouds and the chance of a summer monsoon storm over this tiny, rural community in the foothills of the White Mountains. For now, though, it's just an annoyance, whipping hair and rattling light diffusers.

But Natalie Bench is unfazed - in part because she's more focused on the demands of the photographer who's traveled here to make her portrait, and in part because she's experienced far worse wind on the front lines of wildfires across the West.

At 24, Bench is in her sixth season of firefighting. She's attacked and helped contain fires in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Texas - sometimes working 16-hour shifts and 30 days at a time.

After three years on hand and engine crews in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, backburning and clearing timber, she was promoted to Springerville's Round Valley Helitack crew, the equivalent of the forest's first responders.

Bench is the team's quiet leader, and she's risen rapidly through the ranks of a field that's traditionally dominated by men - she ventures that there are only a handful of female firefighters who fall into the permanent-employee category on the Apache-Sitgreaves.The crew - which consists of Bench, seven other firefighters and a pilot - is close. It has to be: Communication, teamwork and watching out for one another can mean the difference between life and death. But that won't stop the men from giving Bench her fair share of grief.

As she and the photographer walk through the door of the helitack office, an old house that doubles as a gym and kitchen, the men stand, applaud and burst into guffaws of laughter.

Bench rolls her eyes but isn't at all embarrassed.

"I grew up with three brothers, so this environment isn't new to me," she says. "It's definitely different than hanging out with a bunch of girls."

As A TEENAGER, Bench spent her spare time working as a hand at South Fork Ranch, a 200-acre spread nestled in the Payette National Forest along the south fork of Idaho's Salmon River. The ranch manager's daughters were smoke jumpers, and Bench fell hard and fast for their tales of travel and danger.

"It was the adventure part of it all," she says. "I was interested. I couldn't let it go."

So she didn't. And at 18, she began applying for work on hand crews. Meanwhile, she studied another passion, horses, in the equestrian-science program at the University of Idaho. When a position on a McCall, Idaho, crew fell through, she had a chance to name a second-choice destination to jump-start her career.

"My now-husband grew up in Lakeside," Bench says. "The McCall supervisor knew an engine captain there - had some connections - and it just fit. I got hired on an engine crew in Lakeside."

Later, she completed the Wildland Firefighter Apprenticeship Program, a rigorous multiyear course that trains some of the nation's best firefighters to become fire and aviation managers.

"It's a really tough program to get into and complete," she says. "I had to complete hundreds of hours on different modules. Luckily, I had enough hours on an engine; then, I went to work on a hand crew in Clifton and spent a year on a helicopter crew. I never thought I would like aviation, but I fell in love with it during that year, so I stuck with it.

Now, she and her team act as initial attackers on wildfires during the fire season, which runs March through September.

“We don't rappel, but there's a lot we can do,” she says. “If there's a fire call, we're the first people there because the helicopter is the fastest route.” For each dispatch, three firefighters, plus the pilot, fly to a clearing near the fire and land. The firefighters deploy, and the pilot prepares to drop water over the flames.

“Then we're on the ground and he's helping us suppress whatever we need,” Bench says. “Sometimes we're called to bigger fires. Then you have more helicopters and a bigger [helicopter base]. Then we're mostly used for reconnaissance operations.” Bench worked on one such fire, Wallow, during the summer of 2011. Although she worked on the Strayhorse hand crew, rather than up in the air, she remembers it as one of the most frightening fires she's ever fought.

“That one had a voice, a roar,” she remembers. “There was an awe factor to it. You could hear it screaming out of the wilderness.” Indeed, wildland fires are mighty. And Bench is tiny. Shy of 5 feet 6 inches tall, it's hard to believe that she weighs more than 100 pounds, but she can carry a pack that weighs more than 35.

She works out with the guys every day. She's been trained to endure long hours, little sustenance and plenty of heat. And she's earned the respect of the firefighters she works with.

“Natalie can hold her own,” says Pete Tucciarello, a seasonal firefighter from Oklahoma. “She is, in a word, tough.” But she has a soft spot for her toddler daughter, Ari, and her husband, Jeremy, for whom she does the job, and because of whom the job has taken on new meaning.

“Every situation now - just the angle I look at it through - is a little different,” she says. “Life meant a lot to me before, but now I'm here for someone. You never know when we're going to be dispatched. I think, I might not be going home tonight. Every morning, the goodbye kiss with my daughter is a little more meaningful because I don't know when I'm going to see her again.” Bench believes, though, that through educating the public about wildfire prevention and through responsible forest management, there's hope for preventing devastating fires. “As a firefighter, you see the direct effects of people and the environment,” she says. “You see how things could have been different if people had made different decisions. We need to understand that the forest is a place that's been around for a long time - longer than us - and we have to protect it.” H