Q. What is the highlight of your career?
A. I am proud to have been working at MFD for over ten years. Recently, I had the opportunity to go back to college to complete a paramedic program. It was one of the most challenging things I have done, but it has been very useful and rewarding to have more medical capabilities when taking care of our patients on medical calls.

Q. What are challenges you encounter in your career?
A. We respond to almost any emergency reported to 911, except for law enforcement issues. We have a very good training program to help us prepare for incidents, but you never know what you will be called to do each day. Some days can be routine or even mundane, while others can be busy with stressful, fast-paced incidents. Never knowing what your day will bring can be challenging, but it is also what makes this career interesting.

Q. How did you get to this career?
A. I started out working on wildland fire crews with the US Forest Service for five seasons. During that time, I became interested in medical training and took a course to become an EMT. Those two things combined led me down the road of becoming a structural firefighter, where we respond to both fire and medical calls, along with many other types of incidents

Q. What is something unique about your career most people might not know or understand about what you do?
A. We respond to and assist with more than just fires. The largest percentage of our calls are for medical incidents, but we also respond to water, high-angle, and backcountry rescues, hazardous materials incidents, gas leaks, fire alarms, wildland fires, retrieving animals from trees or storm drains, and even tasks as simple as helping someone back into bed. When we’re at the fire stations, we spend a lot of time writing reports, cleaning, and conducting equipment inventories.

Q. Are there scholarship or internship opportunities available with your career? If so, where can more information about those be found?

A. We do not offer any internship or volunteer opportunities at MFD, but there are many other fire departments that have volunteer and resident programs. This is a great way to gain experience and knowledge about what being a firefighter is all about.