Faces of wildland fire: meet Joe Schindel and Steven Gaskill

With the approach of National Wildland Firefighter Day on July 2, we’re highlighting some of the amazing individuals who make up this community – and today is a two-for-one! Meet Joe Schindel and Steven Gaskill, audiovisual specialists for the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) training development program, located at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).

Steven supervises the NWCG “media shop” of AV specialists, of which he and Joe are the most senior members. One of NWCG’s core priorities is producing standard training materials for the entire fire service. To that end, the media shop produces videos, narration, animations, graphics, and more. This work requires specialized expertise, plus a solid foundation in wildland fire.

As a kid, Steven was at a family ranch in 2000, “when the Stag Fire blew up and rolled over the top. Being there when the fire crew showed up and started making order out of that chaos, that was the moment that planted the seed,” he says. Seasonal firefighter work supported him between semesters at film school and became his full-time gig after graduation, with off-seasons spent making videos to support mitigation and recruitment efforts. Meanwhile, Joe spent six years on an initial attack crew, and another five as the lead prevention officer for Idaho City. In 2016, he started working as a public information officer (PIO) while earning a degree in communications and dispute resolution. He and Steven met on respective details within the media shop in 2018 and have been working together in their official roles since 2021.

While in their day jobs Joe and Steven have traded pulaskis for tripods, both maintain field qualifications. Joe is an incident commander 5 and has been a PIO on incident management teams for five years, recently signing off as a PIOC (the highest-level qualification). Steven is a task force leader, incident commander 4, and an engine boss, and takes operational assignments regularly. Continued participation in the field is a key component of the media shop’s credibility and excellent reputation.

At this stage in their careers, Steven and Joe both say that their favorite part of working in wildland fire is the people. “Everyone is a leader in fire,” Joe says. “It’s the nature of the work that you arrive at the scene already behind the curve, and it’s incredible what I’ve seen teams accomplish in that environment.”

“No one stays in fire for the riches and glory,” Steven says. “But we get to work with interesting folks, about as different as you could imagine at face value. But we all like being on the road, working hard, and knowing at the end of the day that we hopefully did some good.”

As for working with each other? "There's been years where we were operating with a very lean organization," Steven says. "We have an unusual job that's creative but also technical, in service of a specific audience. Within that, we've learned each other's strengths and weaknesses, where the other is happy and where the other gets ticked off, and how we fill those things in."

"It's been a heck of a ride," Joe says. "It's been a lot of fun."