SH girls get taste of firefighting at academy

Sarah Brown

Of The New Era

Twenty girls attended the second annual Linn County Young Women’s Fire Academy, hosted last weekend by the Lebanon Fire District headquarters.

Among them were Sweet Home ladies Chloe Tyler, 14, and Madison Harris, 15, both of whom are daughters of battalion chiefs at the Sweet Home and Lebanon fire departments.

Chloe’s dad, Nick Tyler, goes home from work and tells stories about his job, which, to Chloe, always sounds pretty cool, she said.

“I’ve kind of been looking into it as a future career, so I came to get a gist of what it would be like,” she said.

She knows she wants to go into a medical field, but after experiencing the fire academy, Chloe believes becoming a firefighter is “definitely” an option for her.

Maddy also indicated she wants to follow in the footsteps of her dad, Eli Harris. She said she wants to help people and help the community.

“I also want to do something that’s active. I don’t want to be inside all the time at a desk. I want to do something that I’m actually moving around,” she said.

Her favorite activity of the weekend was the search and rescue, a training that requires the girls crawl on their hands and knees in a dark, smokey room while dressed in full gear to search for bodies. She also liked the Denver Drill, a training to rescue people from tight spaces.

“Just working all your body and doing that is really fun,” Maddy said.

The free, two-day fire academy was open to young women who might be interested in pursuing a career in firefighting or related field, or just wanted to try it for fun.

Female firefighters from across Oregon volunteered their weekend to train the girls how to gear up, use the hose, suppress a fire, enter a building forcibly, create ventilation, and perform the Denver Drill and search and rescue. Resumé building and interview skills were also taught.

“It’s hard, but you don’t realize it while you’re doing it because your adrenaline is up so much,” Chloe said.

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