Some people think they spend a good portion of their careers putting out fires. But when Victoria Christiansen uses that term, she’s not kidding. Christiansen, one of this year’s Alumni of Distinction, excelled in the forest service as a wildland firefighter and manager, and she once served as the executive director of regulatory programs and Washington State forester at the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
She recently accepted a position as a state forester and director of the division of forestry in Arizona. The Peninsula High School graduate now has the responsibility to protect 22 million acres of the state’s and private forest land.
Since she graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor of science degree in forestry management, she has chalked up an impressive resume. Christiansen has held positions such as Hood Canal district manager, assistant division manager for operations with the Forest Practices Division, and region operations manager, executive management, with the state DNR.
When she first joined the field, Christiansen said there weren’t many female forest firefighters.
“It was the early part of women being in a non-traditional field,” she said. “It was somewhat unique. But when folks recognized that I had a pretty good head on my shoulders and a lot of energy, I excelled through the ranks with more and more responsibility.”
Christiansen said she got into fire fighting while she was in college.
“I got the fever,” she said. “I got hooked right away. I’m a highly energetic person. I like to physically work hard, and the camaraderie of fire fighting.”
Christiansen’s first assignment was to work on the reforestation of Mount St. Helens after the 1980 eruption.
“I was right out of college,” she said. “There was 5,000 acres of land completely obliterated. It took one year just to get it open. The second year, we actually put trees in the ground. Nobody had any idea how these trees would survive in the ash. But they did thrive.”
The forestation survey did an evaluation after one growing season to see what the viability of the forest would be.
Christiansen had plenty more adventures throughout her career. She advanced through the ranks as a resource boss, task force leader and division supervisor, and she earned credentials in fire line explosives, playing a part with the teams that deploy explosives during a wildfire to burn up fuel before the fire advances and has time to expand.
“We worked on the steepest, toughest ground,” she said. “You were out where helicopter crews were dropping explosives.
“I had good physical stamina. I could do fine on these slopes and had good organizational skills. I got to see the hottest, most dramatic, most leading edge of the fire.”
One of the sad incidents she recalled was finding out a helicopter had gone down just hours after the pilot led her team to safety.
“I was scouting a fire line in the Klickitat area of Washington,” Christiansen said. “We had a hotshot crew trying to tie a line together. We had had very severe fire activity when the inversion broke suddenly. We thought we had an hour longer.”
A helicopter that was scouring the area from above radioed the team and said, “You’ve got to get out of there now.”
The team planned to advance into a ravine. A fire team has to have an escape route, but Christiansen’s team wasn’t aware they didn’t have one until the pilot sounded the alarm.
“I didn’t think I was in that much danger,” she said. “I was blasting a long time. I was in the middle of this hellhole, and I was relying on his experience. But we were ready to commit. The helicopter pilot was doing his duty.”
The next day, the team learned the helicopter had gone down.
“The fire blew up — we retreated — we shouldn’t have been down there,” Christiansen said. “We got to camp and we found out there was a shift in the weather. Just hours before he went down, he had made the right call on our behalf.”
Fire fighting also brought joy to her life, Christiansen said, like meeting her husband, Mike Harris, also a firefighter. Their wedding centered around a fire theme.
“We had a restored antique fire truck,” Christiansen said. “And Smoky the Bear and Sparky the fire dog were our guests.”
For their first anniversary, the couple was on hand for a big fire storm in 1994, when fire was all around Wenatchee. They spent their anniversary night in a tent at the fire camp, complete with the top of their wedding cake.
The couple now has two sons, and Harris is the fire chief on Orcas Island.
During Christiansen’s years with the state DNR, she said she was involved with many important decisions and implemented numerous environmental programs. She co-founded a two-county fire prevention cooperative in Western Washington to help fire departments and wildlife organizations communicate more efficiently.
She also has served as a guest speaker at local schools and has led Earth Day hikes in Banner Forest.
One accomplishment Christiansen said she’s particularly proud of is co-founding an environmental education program in Mason County schools called “Students in the Watershed.” The program allows children to become a part of their natural environment by bringing them into the forest in order to document water quality and learn about the salmon habitat.
The DNR used the information students collected to gain grants in order to improve trails, keep silt out of salmon streams and continue to allow viable recreation.
“They collected real information and made recommendations,” Christiansen said. “The kids did real projects in managing those lands. The four walls of the classroom change for them when you open up an outdoor laboratory. They felt they were connected.”
The students’ research and information proved that years of massive recreation in Hood Canal had affected the quality of the water.
“We had a focus group that worked with the scientists, who actually applied their criteria on the ground,” Christiansen said. “We figured we needed to do it right and not have motorboats up and down salmon rivers. And the grants have shown that they were improving the water conditions.”
The involvement in the outdoor classroom also had a profound effect on a number of students, who blossomed with the environmental studies. Christiansen said several students who hadn’t been doing well in the classroom went on to work with the DNR or become biologists because of the program.
“It has changed the life of so many kids there,” Christiansen said. “I saw students go on to college that didn’t think they would make it.”
Christiansen said her work in Arizona is a long-term commitment. In the past, she said she had considered moving to the Southwest, but she didn’t think a job opportunity would present itself so soon.
“My husband and I had always talked about it, so I just took a leap of faith,” she said. “I wanted to practice forestry in a different environment. But we’ll always keep our foundation in the Northwest.”
This is the second in a series of three profiles for the second annual Alumni of Distinction program.
The three alumni will be honored as part of the eighth annual Students of Distinction banquet, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 27, at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, 7700 Skansie Ave. NW in Gig Harbor.
Tickets are available at The Peninsula Gateway, 3555 Erickson St. in Gig Harbor. Tickets will not be available at the door.
For more information, call Jennifer Colyer at 253-853-9227.
Here’s a look at future profiles:
May 6: Dele Gunnerson
Today: Victoria Christiansen
May 20: Gary Lee Moore
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