By Dan Judge
Vallejo Times Herald (California)
Copyright 2007 The Times-Herald
All Rights Reserved
NAPA, Calif. — Most rookie firefighters would probably get rattled if faced with one of the biggest wildfires in California history during their first month on the job.
Katherine “Kate” Dargan had a different reaction: She fell in love.
“The experience was so overwhelming and it was so impressive to me what we were doing,” she said Monday. “I fell in love with firefighting and never looked back.”
That burning passion has served the 48-year-old Napa resident well.
Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named Dargan as California’s first female fire marshal.
“Kate’s expertise in the public safety field as a hands-on firefighter and in high-level management positions within the department greatly qualifies her to fill this position,” the governor said.
Dargan said she is not overly focused on the role her gender plays in the job. “I have been a firefighter for 30 years,” she said. “Personally, it has long ceased to make much difference to me that I was a woman in a traditionally man’s world. It means a great deal to me to simply be state fire marshal.”
Her career started when she graduated from Half Moon Bay High School in 1977 and applied for a seasonal firefighting job with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention in Santa Cruz County.
About a month later, lightning struck in the Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County, sparking the Marble Cone Fire that eventually covered almost 200,000 acres. Dargan was sent out on a crew to fight the blaze.
She was impressed that summer by the sense of family, tradition, camaraderie and sense of purpose of the fire service.
After earning a degree in natural resources management from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, she was promoted to fire captain and fire apparatus engineer in San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties. She then was battalion chief for the air attack base and conservation camp under Cal Fire in Nevada County from 1997 to 2000.
The next year, Dargan married Tom Berry of Napa, another firefighter for Cal Fire, and moved to town, where she became Napa County fire marshal.
While Dargan deeply missed being on the front lines, she also found that fire prevention efforts -such as public education, firefighter training, making sure buildings are safe and working toward proper land management - were equally important. “The fire marshal and fire inspectors are as much a part of the solution as firefighters that respond and save people so heroically,” she said.
Not long after, she met then-state Fire Marshal Ruben Grijalva, who eventually asked her to co-chair the Wildland-Urban Interface and Building Standards Committee.
In 2005, Dargan was named assistant state fire marshal. She moved into the top spot last week after Grijalva was named Cal Fire director.
Dargan has three goals.
She wants to reduce how many people die in house fires. One way she hopes to accomplish that is by supporting the campaign to require fire sprinklers in every new home built in California.
Dargan also wants to bring fire prevention to the forefront.
Lastly, she hopes to develop policies to save buildings from wildfires. She said that will include zoning and planning that would require the close cooperation of firefighting, environmental and land use agencies.
“At the end of my tenure, whether that’s a year or 10 years from now, if those three things are done, I would feel extraordinarily blessed,” Dargan said.
Dargan is taking some time off to spend with her son, Matt, 21, who is on leave from his military duties as a medic in Iraq.
Fire marshal’s job: To develop fire prevention engineering, education and enforcement. To review regulations and building standards, direct fire prevention within wild land areas, regulate substances that cause death and destruction by fire and regulate hazardous liquid pipelines. Responsible for training California’s 60,000 firefighters.
Katherine Dargan . . . at a glanceHome: Napa Occupation: State fire marshal, 30 years as a firefighter Education: Degree in natural resources management from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo
Quote: “The fire marshal and fire inspectors are as much a part of the solution as firefighters that respond and save people so heroically.”