Cooperative Living March 2023 - 14

COOPERATIVE FOCUS
Where There's Smoke
(continued from page 11)
her to get her firefighter certification.
" Seeing how excited all the girls were last
year really inspired me to prove to myself
that I could do it and go all the way, " she
says. " I used to be a blue helmet EMT,
which meant I had limited access during
calls, but I went ahead and got my
certification. Now I'm a yellow helmet,
which means I can do it all, " she says.
While Jennings-Brink's story is
uplifting, Deputy Chief Marci Stone of
Roanoke Fire-EMS agrees that there is
an overall downward change in
recruitment for firefighter positions.
She attributes the decline, in part, to
the idea that many young people are now
encouraged to go to college and end up
leaving their hometowns and entering
the white-collar workforce. Stone says
that a fire-rescue career is often seen as
blue-collar work because only a high
school diploma is required.
" Another part of the reason it's so
hard to recruit both men and women
is that many fire-rescue agencies require
employees to work 24-hour shifts,
making it difficult for new employees
to take care of family obligations, "
Stone says.
She adds that she has been involved
in discussions about possibly changing
the requirement but there has been
resistance to change.
" We do have to look at the future to
ensure that all the policies and practices,
including our shifts, are inclusive, "
she says.
According to Stone, the Roanoke
department had 243 full-time career
fire-rescue personnel in 2022, but only
six of them were women, including her.
In 2022 in the city of Salem, only
four out of 70 full-time fire-EMT
employees were women, says Deputy
Chief Matt Rickman of Salem FireEMS.
And only about eight to 10 of the
department's 25 part-time employees
were women.
The fire-rescue agencies in Salem,
Botetourt, Roanoke and Roanoke
County use a joint-hiring process. In
a typical hiring cycle, Rickman says, the
team of four departments typically has
no more than four women applicants
eligible for hire.
" Some years we don't have any, " he
says, adding that Salem has hired about
five women in the past five years.
When Stone began her career as
a firefighter, she said she initially had
to show her male colleagues that she
could measure up and then had to
prove herself again each time she
was promoted. Stone says she and a
colleague became the first women to
be hired for fire suppression duties
in Roanoke in the late 1990s.
" I had to have grit. I had to have
drive and ambition, " she says. " There
was a microscope on me. "
Stone became a volunteer EMT
Botetourt County promoted last year's fire camp with images such as this one. From
left: Christina Blankfifififififi L aura Kate Jennings-Brink, Kayla Jones, Macy Thompson,
Caitlin Mitchell, Kourtnie Orth, and Catherine Amos. All either work for Botetourt FireEMS
or are volunteers.
Christina
fifififififififififififi
at age 16 when she was a student at
Franklin County High School. She had
been in a car accident at age 15, and a
then-16-year-old fellow Franklin High
School student was one of the volunteer
EMTswho responded to the scene.
While they were in the back of
an ambulance, she asked him about
volunteering and later went on a ridealong
with him. When she was on
crutches because of her knee injury,
the young man even helped carry her
things when they were at school.
" I wanted to serve in the community,
and I wanted to help people in need,
and I wanted to be outside, " Stone says.
" I love the job. I can't imagine doing
anything else, and I really feel like it's
a calling. " 
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This article comes from Cardinal News,
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Southwest Virginia.
12 ● Cooperative Living ●
March 2023
co-opliving.com
" My favorite part of
the Girls' Fire Camp
experience is watching
how empowered the girls
are during the camp. "
- Christina Blankenship,
Botetourt Fire & EMS

http://www.co-opliving.com

Cooperative Living March 2023

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