Female firefighters battle more than flames.
The documentary Anchor Point, which screens Thursday night at the Santy, is the work of local filmmaker Holly Tuckett. It shares stories of the sexism that women firefighters encounter in the field - and how some are fighting back and changing the culture.
After a 35-year career in firefighting, Kelly Martin retired from her role as chief of fire and aviation for Yosemite National Park and turned her attention to another fight – the fight for safety, respect, and equality for women working in the industry.
“I just really felt a higher calling that said, ‘you know, we're better than this,’” she said. “And the public deserves better than this. And they really need to know a peek behind the curtain as to what are some of the pitfalls that women feel in a male dominated environment. That was part of my reasoning for coming forward in 2016 when I testified before Congress about misconduct and mismanagement in our public land management agencies.”
Martin’s story and activism led to her being named one of Time Magazine’s Silence Breakers, a feature that helped launch the #metoo movement.
Martin is featured in the 2021 documentary Anchor Point by local filmmaker Holly Tuckett. The film is now on the festival circuit and will be shown this Thursday, Oct. 7, at the Jim Santy Auditorium in Park City.
Tuckett said this week that telling a broader industry story through two generations of female firefighters gives audiences perspective into these particular workplace dynamics.
“I thought it would be an interesting look at this two-generational way of navigating a very male-dominated environment so that people can really understand the different ways that women approach the work that they do when they work with men,” she said.
Thursday’s showing will feature a q and a session afterwards. Joining Tuckett will be firefighter Lacey England, another firefighter featured in Anchor Point, and Lenya Quinn-Davidson. Quinn-Davidson is Director of WTREX is the women in fire prescribed fire training exchange, an all-gender, 12-day program that combines incident training with management and leadership skills, policy planning, fire ecology.
The showing at the Santy is a fundraiser - A portion of ticket proceeds will benefit the WTREX scholarship fund to support skills development in female firefighters.
Tuckett said those goals tie in with what the firefighters in Anchor Point convey through their stories.
“They really don't want the focus to be on them being victims,” she said. “They want the focus to be on how they do the work that they do and their hope is that you know, the things that they're trying to do and changing the culture of fire from within from the ground up, that that that is going to help retain women in the fire service.”
Martin is now president of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Committee, which advocates for proper classification, pay, benefits and comprehensive well-being of all wildland firefighters. Those subjects affect all genders, she said – federal starting pay for firefighters is $13.45 an hour, though President Biden has pledged to raise it to $15 an hour. And she said mental health issues need focus – the work can be tremendously stressful as well as dangerous.
Still, she said many industry challenges are unique to women. Martin described the discrimination and sexism she encountered through the years as death by a thousand paper cuts: bullying, oppression, lack of recognition and other methods of being undermined.
All of those ignore the fact that women are just as capable as men of fighting fires.
“We get very physically fit agile endurance athletes that apply as wildland firefighters and that includes women,” Martin said. “They're there, they can do it. And that's dare I say the least of our worries. There's a tremendous amount of women that can come in and physically do this job. It's once they get in what are the other oppressive factors that that really can push, push women away and have them drop out.”
Tuckett agreed but said she believes it’s gradually changing.
“A lot of forest service employees have seen the film and actually we're in negotiations right now to give them an educational copy of the film to use in their training,” she said.
Tickets to Friday’s showing of Anchor Point are available at parkcityfilm.org.
Watch the film’s trailer and find more information about its making at anchorpointfilm.com.