What ‘Fire Country’ Star Diane Farr Wants You To Know About Wildfires

Diane Farr isn’t a firefighter. But she does play one on TV, specifically division chief Sharon Leone in the CBS series Fire Country. That’s entailed her working closely with wildland firefighting experts on the set. Farr’s living in the Los Angeles area has also brought her close-up views of the havoc that wildfires can wreak. Therefore, it isn’t too far a stretch, so to speak, for Farr to want more people to know the facts behind wildfires and the many wildland firefighters who have selflessly been combating this increasing threat. After all, there’s a whole lot of—surprise, surprise—misinformation and disinformation out there about wildfires that’s been spreading like, well, wildfire.

Fire Country Is Diane Farr’s Third Firefighting Role

Fire Country actually isn’t the first time that Farr has played a firefighter. As Farr related during a recent conversation, “[When you are starting as an actor], you don’t really know where you’re going to end up doing most of your work. But for whatever reason this is the third time I’ve played a firefighter, so I have about 25 years of working with three different kinds of firefighters.” She chronicled to me this firefighter acting journey: “The first one was a structural firefighter, which is what everybody knows, when I was on Rescue Main. I trained in three different firehouses because at the time it was really hard to find a woman in a firehouse.”

As Farr indicated, structural firefighters are probably what first comes to mind when you hear the word “firefighter.” These are the ones who respond to alarms and calls when a building, car or some kind of structure may be on fire. But structural firefighters aren’t the only kind of firefighter around.

Farr then jumped to her second fire fighter role—that of a smoke jumper, which she described as “a firefighter who jumps out of airplanes for wildfires. That was unreal I had to learn how to fly a Cessna to play that part because you’d fly you’d fly like airdrops of sludge and you’d fly in firefighters.” She added, “And then they camp and they’d have to sort of work their way out as they take down the fire.”

Farr’s third role as a firefighter in Fire Country, which premiered in 2022, took an even more wild turn— where she played a wildland firefighter. The plot of Fire Country began with the character Bode Donovan, a young convict who tried to shorten his prison sentence by volunteering for the California Conservation Camp Program in which prisoners assist the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, otherwise known as CAL FIRE. This brought Donovan to work with various friends, inmates and elite firefighters—including the character Leon, played by Farr. Together, across the three seasons so far of Fire Country, they’ve been battling the various wildfires plaguing different parts of Northern California.

Farr Has Seen Los Angeles Wildfires Up Close And Personal

The plot is timely because here’s a news flash: wildfires have become bigger and bigger problems with each passing year. Just take a look at the August 2024 post on the World Resources Institute website entitled “The Latest Data Confirms: Forest Fires Are Getting Worse.” Take a wild guess as to what that post said. Yes, it provided lots of data, you know the stuff that should be used to make decisions, showing how wildfires have been getting worse—increasing both in frequency and intensity recently. For example, from 2001 through 2023, the area burned by forest fires increased by about 5.4% each per year.

The latest pieces of evidence that the wildfire situation is getting worse are the 14 wildfires that destroyed large swaths of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Diego County from January 7 through 31, 2025. Yes, that was Wintertime in Southern California, which Farr pointed out is not your typical wildfire season. Yeah, wildfire season traditionally has been more of a cruel Summer thing, running from the late Spring to the early Fall in California, because that’s when the vegetation is driest and most able to catch fire. But things seem to be changing for the worse with climate change—you know that thing that scientists have been warning everyone about sort of like how scientists were warning people about pandemics in 2016. Hotter and drier conditions over longer parts of the years coupled with changing wind patterns could make the wildfire threat more of a year-round thing, which would be bad news to everyone but the fires.

Farr’s home was rather close to where the wildfires were raging in January. In fact, she mentioned how the fires were moving in the direction of her home, forcing her to evacuate her house for nine days, before they shifted directions. She also talked about how she learned how to pump water from the swimming pool on to the house to make the house less hospitable for flames. However, she did emphasize that her training on the TV and movie sets doesn’t make her a firefighter, “I have a good deal of training to know what [wildfires and places at risk for wildfires]

look like. But I couldn’t actually help in a fire.” It’s sort of like how they don’t announce on an airplane, “Is there anyone from Grey’s Anatomy here,” when a passenger needs medical assistance.

Farr Emphasizes The Differences Between Wildland Firefighters And Structural Firefighters

Nevertheless, Farr’s experience on Fire Country has brought her more understanding of wildland firefighters: “I didn’t know what CAL FIRE was and I had been in LA for 20 years by then.” Farr wasn’t alone because you’ve got to wonder how many people in California overall have heard of CAL FIRE, which stands for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It’s not exactly a household name even though CAL FIRE and its firefighters has already battled over 1,080 wildfires that have burned over 61,200 acres, claimed 30 lives and destroyed over 16,250 structures in California.

Even though both structural and wildland firefighters are fighting the same flame thing, their schedules, equipment, conditions and processes are very different in many ways. While structural firefighters can work year-round, historically, wildland firefighters have worked more seasonally, over the four-to-six month wildfire season. Of course, this may change sometime soon, given that thing called climate change.

Farr related the following: “One of the most terrifying things that I had heard was after the LA fires, it was the beginning of the year that our departments had used up all of their overtime for the year, already. And we had not started fire season, so I don’t know how this is going to go this summer.” Entering wildfire season potentially without enough firefighters? Gee, what possibly could go wrong?

While structural firefighters typically wait in the firehouse before responding to calls and alarms, wildland firefighters spend much of their time in camps, close to where the wildfires may be. Their work involves not only putting out fires but also trying to adjust the direction that fires are going and protecting the buildings and areas that need to be protected. This can include cultivated fire lines, strips of land where the trees and other vegetation are cut away so that the fire can’t cross them due to lack of fuel. So, it’s not unusual for a wildland firefighter to be carrying around a chainsaw, map and compass.

Additionally, like structural firefighters, a wildland firefighter can rescue people. But rescuing hikers trapped on a path, for example, can be very different logistically from rescuing some folks in a 20-story building.

Farr Is Trying To Bring More Attention To The Incarcerated Program

As seen in the plot description, Fire Country is bringing more attention specifically to the incarcerated program for wildland firefighters. Farr described how this has been a very successful program since it not only fills a major firefighting personnel need but also helps those who have been incarcerated: “[The incarcerated program] has not only taught them a skill, it’s showed them what it’s like if you’re on the hero side of the situation.” Farr has additional perspective from her previous work. “I used to teach acting in a maximum security men’s prison. That was my pay-off-the-rent job before I worked all the time on TV,” said Farr. “It was so clear that they never had a place in society. They were food insecure, so young that the choices they had to make and to feed themselves were outside of society. So if we don’t give people a way in, it’s going to come back and hurt the people in society.”

Farr Is Trying To Bring More Attention To Wildfires In General

Speaking of “hurt” and “society,” that’s what’s going to continue to happen if there isn’t more attention and resources paid to addressing climate change and wildfires. I mentioned to Farr about the cycle of panic and neglect that exists when it comes to pandemic preparedness and response, as described my 2020 article in Forbes. This is where people go from oh-my-goodness-must-hoard-toilet-paper panic during a pandemic to a-what-people-are-wearing-is-more-important-than-p-whatever neglect that ignores pandemic preparedness in between pandemics. Farr agreed that this cycle is present with wildfires too. She is already seeing much less attention to wildfires after the January wildfires crisis passed. Farr talked about how more resources need to be dedicated to preventing and combating wildfires, how firefighters should be paid more and how firefighters are doing their work because “It is a calling. Otherwise, it is too hard.”

One thing that may be preventing more needed action is all the misinformation and disinformation about wildfires out there. This includes numerous conspiracy theories not supported by facts, because who cares about facts anyway. There’s that whole wildfires-being-caused-by-“space lasers” one, which I covered in Forbes back in 2021. To date, no one has found said space laser. You’ve also got the government controlling the weather, the United Nations trying to engineer a land grab or whoever is trying destroy evidence for the sex trafficking case against Sean “Diddy” Combs conspiracy theories, reported by Laura Doan and Erielle Delzer for CBS News. Might you say that anyone who believes these things without any supporting evidence knows Diddy squat?

All of this makes Diane Farr’s advocacy that much harder but also that much more needed. She may not be able to put out a wildfire in real life. But maybe she can help light a fire under our country to do more about preventing and combatting wildfires.