Burn, baby, burn

: Alumni Profiles

Burn, baby, burn

by Allyson Mann (MA ’92)

Shan Cammack is not a pyromaniac, but it’s understandable why you might wonder. When she talks about fire, her eyes light up and her voice sometimes jumps a whole octave. She’ll gladly hold a flame to her sleeve to demonstrate that her Nomex shirt is fire resistant. She drives a fire truck named Ember and an all-terrain vehicle named Sparky that sports a flame thrower. And, oh yea, she sets fires for a living.

“Everybody thinks I’m a pyro. They call me pyro all the time; it’s really weird,” she says. “But it’s pretty cool to get paid for it.”
Cammack (MS ’94) is a fire ecologist employed by Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources. As part of the Wildlife Resources Department’s Nongame Conservation Section, she keeps track of Georgia’s rare species—both plant and animal—and helps to preserve their habitat. Prescribed burning is one of the tools she uses.

“Most of Georgia evolved with fire,” Cammack says. “The plants and animals here developed with fire for thousands of years. As people started putting out fires and breaking up fuels, we lost a lot of species. Biodiversity here has gone down due to fire suppression.”

Five years ago, Cammack’s boss at DNR asked her opinion on what to do with stewardship money. She was quick to respond: “I think we need fire.” It took her a few months to convince them, but eventually she built her program from the ground up, designing Ember and Sparky and training some 130 workers statewide.

Cammack began her fire training as a Nature Conservancy volunteer while she was earning a master’s degree in botany at UGA. As a volunteer, she remembers looking at the burn boss and thinking, “Oh my gosh, how do they do that? There’s just so much to remember. I would never do that. That’s crazy! If something goes wrong they could hurt people, you know, burn somebody’s house down. That’s so much responsibility.”

Now she’s the burn boss. Months in advance, Cammack writes a plan for each burn, setting parameters that define acceptable conditions. She considers factors including fuel, relative humidity, wind direction, rainfall and temperature, and defines contingencies like escape routes and safety zones for firefighters.

The burn season is busiest from December through April, and Cammack checks the weather forecast constantly. Based on the forecast and which units are ready to go, she moves the team around the state.

“You’re totally at the mercy of the weather,” she says.

On location, there’s more prep work: assessing on-site weather, inspecting fire breaks, checking for hazards and conducting a test burn. As burn boss, Cammack stays pulled away from the fire and looks at the big picture—sometimes calling it off if conditions aren’t right. She also mentors those who want to become burn bosses, staying in the background and letting them take lead.

Burn days run long—12 to 15 hours—and Cammack spends up to 20 days a month in the field.

“I always liked being outdoors and being active, so it’s a perfect job for that,” she says.

And she likes fire, although not quite as much as people think. A year ago Cammack fought her first wildfire—a 500,000-plus acre burn in the Okefenokee Swamp.

“It was a good experience,” she says, “but I prefer to set fires.”

Photo by Dot Paul
Fire ecologist Shan Cammack (MS ’94) has “probably the most complete collection in the world of fire songs” stored in her type 6 fire engine, Ember. The 12 cds were given to her by friends.