By Tammy Ayer
The Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA COUNTY, Wash. — When Lindsay Figueroa was 4 years old, the dryer caught fire. She remembers standing outside and staring up at the big red truck that responded.
“It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen,” said Figueroa, now 31.
These days, the big red (and pale green) trucks still thrill Figueroa, a member of the West Valley Fire Department for six years. She’s among several hundred firefighters in Yakima County, some full time but most volunteers.
As the recently contained 275-square-mile Range 12 blaze vividly demonstrated, fire season is intensifying in Central Washington. Humidity has fallen and brisk winds are whipping routine missions into full-blown battles.
More than 100 Central Washington firefighters responded to the Range 12 fire even as chiefs near and far struggle, as always, to fill their volunteer ranks.
Female firefighters help fill that critical need. They represent a wide range of ages and come from numerous backgrounds, with some turning to firefighting later in life.
About 11,000 women among the 1.1 million firefighters in the U.S. work as career firefighters, according to the International Association of Women in Fire & Emergency Services. The organization estimates that 40,000 women are in the volunteer, paid-on-call, part-time and seasonal sectors of firefighting.
Female firefighters in Yakima County will stress that they are not in perfect physical condition, but they strive to stay fit and are willing to work hard. They aren’t fearless, but they will do what must be done and know when to ask for help.
More than anything, they are committed to giving back to their communities despite the risks and the challenges.
“It is a demanding job; it is a hard job,” said Lili Causor of the Highland Fire Department. “But if you put your mind to it, you can do it.”
Always a need
Most fire stations in Yakima County rely heavily on volunteers, with that number varying widely from department to department. At Highland, Causor is among about 30 firefighters.
On the other hand, Figueroa is one of eight full-time staff on the West Valley Fire Department, which is among the largest fire departments in the county. With 95 people — a total that includes three elected fire commissioners — the department is outstaffed only by the Yakima city fire department, which employs about 100 people, and Yakima County Fire District No. 5, whose nearly 200 volunteers (including about 25 women) staff 16 rural Lower Valley stations.
More than 90 percent of Yakima County Fire District No. 5 firefighters are volunteers, according to its website, www.ycfd5.com.
In West Valley, even 84 volunteers is not quite enough for Chief Dave Leitch, whose district includes four stations.
“We’re always actively recruiting” for volunteer firefighters, Leitch said. “Ideally, we would like to be at 100 volunteers spread out among the four stations.”
And that’s why volunteers such as Mandy Wellner, 38, are so important. She, like many other firefighters, has a full-time job, as an emergency room nurse at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center.
“I actually joined because of my dad, Ross Long,” Wellner said recently during a break from training at West Valley’s main station on Zier Road. She’s been with the department for 11 years and is among the 11 firefighters who staff the Tampico station.
“He was pushing me to do it, and I fell in love with it,” she said.
Formerly of Selah, Wellner now volunteers for West Valley along with her father, husband Scott and brother-in-law Josh.
They work well together, and she enjoys giving back.
“It’s good for your community,” Wellner said.
Carol Roth, 59, hadn’t considered becoming a volunteer firefighter before she moved to Naches from the west side in 2000 so she could care for her father, who is now 98.
But the former English teacher — who served eight years in the Navy Reserve, where she received firefighter training — soon saw how important local support is in a small town such as Naches.
“The siren goes off in town if there’s a call,” Roth said. “I would stop and pray when the alarm went off.”
She started thinking about volunteering and joined the Naches Fire Department in 2004 after a neighbor’s house burned.
“It was clear they didn’t have enough volunteers,” Roth said.
While aware of her limitations, Roth knew she could contribute. But that didn’t mitigate the fear factor.
“I remember the first time I went interior. I was terrified,” Roth said. “I heard this noise, like tapping, and I realized it was my teeth chattering.”
Several years ago, she was among firefighters on three brush trucks about a quarter mile from a ranch complex that stood in the path of a seemingly unstoppable fire.
“It was clear it was going to overtake that whole complex, the trucks, the horses,” she said. “We started praying.”
At that point, two Department of Natural Resources helicopters appeared overhead, dumping water and crippling the fire.
“There’s always danger,” Roth said.
Narrow escapes
A thick web of silver metal hangs within a frame just inside a side door of West Valley’s main station on Zier Road.
It’s not a public entrance for this newer station, which serves the West Valley area at large as a gathering place for organizations and their events.
What looks like a piece of modern art is what’s left of Engine 31, which melted in a flashover during 2010’s Cowiche Mill Fire. That day, Tammy Pettis, Michael Rhine and Rollin Caryl ran for their lives through the blaze that engulfed their truck.
“This is how close we came to losing three firefighters,” said Lt. Chris Pedersen, 45, who just started her 24th year with West Valley.
Pettis described it simply.
“It reminded me of being in a snow globe, only with fire. We couldn’t see each other,” Pettis said of being caught in the conflagration, running blind in the fire and the smoke. She’s in her 14th year with West Valley.
Pettis, 56, is the trauma coordinator for Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and an EMT instructor. She’s been a nurse since 1992.
It seems natural that nurses would also volunteer as firefighters. All volunteer firefighters learn EMT skills; roughly 80 percent of fire department calls are medical, with fire calls the remainder.
Situations like the Cowiche Mill Fire flashover reinforce how important training is.
They’re volunteers, but they have to be trained to the same level as career firefighters, and the basic class can take four months.
Additional training for emergency medical care, wildland firefighting, hazardous materials and other skills can require another year.
Figueroa is a career firefighter, hired full time last October thanks to a grant. Originally from Olympia, she moved to Yakima with her then-husband, who was in the military.
“My dad was a volunteer firefighter and I always heard about it,” she said. “My parents were climbers and I was raised as an adrenaline junkie.”
And while Sarah Flickinger, 41, has a full-time job as an assistant principal at West Valley High School, she had long been intrigued by the possibility of volunteering.
“I would hear the siren and that would always inspire me,” said Flickinger, who grew up in West Valley and has been a volunteer for four years.
“I was just waiting for my life to get situated,” she said.
In her job as assistant principal, “everything is politically correct,” Flickinger said, so she finds the freewheeling atmosphere of volunteering therapeutic. But she’s always ready to help, and is always willing to learn.
“I’m never afraid to say, ‘What do you need me to do?’ You need to make sure you know what you’re doing is right,” Flickinger said.
In their blood
Family support is critical — and a given in some families.
Kelli Mansfield, 51, grew up in Naches, graduating from high school there in 1983 and joining the Naches Fire Department that December. Her father, Jim Simpson, served on the Yakima Fire Department for years.
“We like to be around 30, 32 volunteers,” said Mansfield, whose husband, Dan, stepped down as chief in March. “I think it’s around 24 right now.”
Kelli Mansfield is petite but determined. And she’s in firefighting for life.
“You have to be committed. It’s not just for a couple years,” she said. “The department spends a lot of money on training. They send you through EMT school, swift water rescue training.
“Everybody is counting on everybody showing up.”
Pedersen, a lieutenant with West Valley, also is the daughter of a career firefighter with Yakima. She’s an investigator.
“I grew up wanting to do this. I wanted to be the first female firefighter ever, anywhere,” said Pedersen, 41.
Someone beat her to it, but that’s OK.
“I love being part of the community and giving back to the community,” said Pedersen, who works full time as a deputy fire marshal for Yakima County.
That’s the most important thing for Brenda Molano of the Gleed Fire Department. She also grew up among firefighters; her father, John Phillips, was assistant chief at Gleed. Now 68, he lives in Spokane. Her son, Lt. Jacob Charlet, 22, volunteers for the department he worked for, District 9 in Spokane.
“I grew up in a home where you could do anything you wanted to in this world. I was around volunteer firefighters my whole life,” so she knew she would also volunteer someday, said Molano, who is an assistant nurse manager of the hospitalist department at Memorial Hospital.
Molano and her husband, Joe, both 46, volunteer for Gleed. They wanted to give back to their community after the kids got older. She joined Gleed in August 2013; Joe had joined a year and a half before that.
“My family is full of giving back. ... That’s something we’ve instilled in our children,” she said. “It’s never too late to do what you want to do.”
Most fire departments and districts compensate their volunteers. In some cases, there’s a flat fee for responding to a call; more often, volunteers are paid by the hour.
“We’re volunteers but we still get paid,” said Causor, with the Highland Fire Department. “It’s nothing to live off of, but it does vary.”
Causor, 27, wants to become a career firefighter. She’s also in school for her journeyman’s electrical license.
Having worked hard on her parents’ farm her entire life, Causor saw herself in the military or working as a veterinarian, but changed her mind after attending a fire department recruitment meeting.
“When I first came back after the meeting, I talked to my mom and dad about it. ... They’ve always been supportive,” said Causor, who’s always “had an interest in going beyond and helping people,” she said.
She told Martin and Sara Causor that she wanted to volunteer. “They said, ‘Give it all you got.’”
Having “fallen in love with what I do,” she relishes giving back to her community.
People are depending on you, Figueroa noted.
“There’s no better job,” she said.
Copyright 2016 Yakima Herald-Republic