Could you be a Hotshot? Take our quiz!

Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters
Firefighter Justin Romero of the New Mexico based Silver City Hotshots uses a drip torch to build a backfire up the mountain off Potrero Road to control the Springs Fire near Newbury Park, California, in May 2013.

Hotshots are elite firefighters who are specially trained in wildfire suppression. They are the nation’s “first line and our elite line in dealing with fires,” said Tom Nichols, division chief for fire and aviation management of the National Park Service.

Hotshots are highly trained and qualified to ensure the safety of the public and of firefighters.  

“Safety is stressed and woven into every aspect of the fire community, from basic to advanced training, from daily work to incident operations,” said Randy Eardley, deputy chief of external affairs for the Bureau of Land Management.

Because safety is the top priority, hotshots must pass difficult fitness tests and undergo intense training. Do you have the knowledge and skills to battle the nation’s worst fires?

1. Which member provides day-to-day leadership for the crew?

Squad leader

Senior firefighter

Assistant superintendent

Superintendent

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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