Stopping what they are doing at a moment’s notice when the tones drop, High Country women are playing a crucial role in their communities — firefighting. They jump into fire trucks and speed off to structure and brush fires, which can last anywhere from minutes to hours. They perform chest compressions, assess and administer care to wounds and help people through their darkest times.
These are mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and friends who all have a huge heart for their community and complete some of the hardest work imaginable, and do so as volunteers.
Amy Snider serves as the 911 Services Coordinator for Watauga County, working with the Emergency Management team and within the Communications Center to support and improve services to the citizens in Watauga to the best of her abilities. She has been a volunteer firefighter/EMT since 2010. She began her career in the fire service as a at Creston Volunteer Fire Department while she lived in that fire district. She later moved to Meat Camp Volunteer Fire Department in 2012.
“I consider myself very fortunate to be a part of the Emergency Services world,” Amy says. “This is an incredible community of people that work hard and put in enormous hours as a volunteer in order to train and respond to the standards demanded by the industry. I am lucky to consider them my extended family.”
She discovered a passion for this field in 2005. In college, she had no idea what career path she wanted to follow, but she stumbled upon the idea of being a dispatcher, she found it to be greatly appealing.
“At the time I had no idea how to train or get started so I decided to take an EMT-Basic
course in order to start learning some details about the field,” Amy says. “That was the beginning and the rest has sprung from that one class.”
One of the challenges she has faced as a woman in firefighting is balancing family life and her career.
“I have been attending meetings, training, and running calls since my child was born so there have been times when I had to make a choice to participate in normal mom duties or participate with the fire department,” Amy says. “Fortunately my family has stood behind me and helped to make those choices possible and my son is amazingly understanding. He sees that there are people that need help and that I can sometimes provide that help, so his strength and ability to understand has helped tremendously.”
When asked what she thinks is a unique contribution that women bring to the fire service, she describes compassion and empathy. She says typically women are good at
working with the people and family members that are involved in emergency situations.
According to Amy, the state of North Carolina is currently developing new training standards in an effort to make it a little easier for volunteer agencies to better themselves without necessarily following the intense demands placed on career firefighters. This will allow the department’s chief a little more flexibility because the members do not have to be certified through a school and the department can focus on the training needs of the department, which are still demanding.
“There is a lot to learn and members need to be keenly involved in order to remain safe on active scenes,” Amy says.
She encourages any women who are interested in pursuing a career in the fire industry to go for it.
“This lifestyle can be hard but it is also very rewarding,” Amy says. “Being involved with your
community and doing what you can to help honestly brings more wealth to your life than any
monetary gain will.”
She describes her department’s biggest accomplishment this year as staying strong throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Their department is one that spends a lot of time together training and it was especially difficult for them to enforce social distancing in order to be safe without impacting the quality of service they provide.
“We have done everything we can to support each other and keep meeting the needs of those around us,” Amy says.
Serving in Ashe County on Lansing Volunteer Fire Department is mother-daughter duo Ruth Henson and Hiliary Finley.
Ruth was the daughter of a preacher who moved to the High Country from Michigan when she was 16 years old. Her late husband, Larry Henson — who passed away in 2011 — was a firefighter. She lived in Watauga County until 2003 and previously served on the Meat Camp Volunteer Fire Department.
She says as a woman she has to know her physical limitations. However, she has never had anybody say anything against women in the fire service. She describes her fellow male volunteers at LVFD as a great, helpful bunch of firemen.
She and the other women who volunteer at the department know how to run the trucks and a lot of times it is a great help just to get the trucks to the scene. She said she completes more medical calls than fire calls.
One piece of technology that LVFD recently acquired that sets it apart from other local departments is its Lund University Cardiopulmonary Assist System (LUCAS) device. This life-saving device provides mechanical chest compressions to patients in cardiac arrest. LVFD was able to make this purchase with an EMS grant they received this year.
Ruth and Hiliary say this device makes a huge difference because in their response area many calls that come in require CPR. Having this device as a fire department allows patients to receive treatment in less time versus having to wait for an ambulance to arrive. The fact that having this device can help save a life is worth it to them. Another accomplishment that the LVFD has underfoot this year is opening a substation in Helton.
Aside from responding to fires and medical calls, LVFD is also very involved in the community. They host a chicken barbecue fundraiser once a month, which they use to raise money to take care of local children and their families. Every December, the department hosts a Christmas lunch and buys presents for children in low-income families. Santa makes a special visit and all children receive bags of candy, presents and get their picture taken with Santa. LVFD has been doing this in Ashe County each year since 1992. They also host fun activities for children for Halloween and during the summer as well as host a Safety Day In August so the community can learn more about fire safety.
Ruth says she cannot imagine seeing herself do anything else and she would encourage those in the community to get involved as well.
Hiliary is a mom of four who has three sons and a daughter. Due to her full-time job working at a pediatric office, she is not able to run calls like others on LVFD. Her husband, Chesson, is also on LVFD and occasionally they respond to calls together.
Since she is not able to frequently run calls, she volunteers for Christmas festivities and any other community outreach the department participates in throughout the year.
Her sister also works in the medical field and some of her best memories are of them growing up spending time together at the fire department while their parents worked.
Hiliary is a huge advocate for fire safety and wants to ensure that children know it is OK to call 911 if they need to. She expressed her concern about fire safety talks ending in second grade and not being as prevalent in schools now as they were in the past.
She shared that at one of their training meetings, they burned a trailer. Hiliary recorded a video and within about 5 minutes the trailer was fully engulfed.
“That was an older trailer, but there’s a lot of people that live in older trailers,” Hiliary says. “It was a little bit nerve-wracking and scary.”
She spoke of the importance of firefighters, first responders and paramedics. She describes volunteer firefighters as the lifeline of small rural communities. She reminds those who are mothers that they can still be a part of the volunteer fire department and encourages them to bring their children to meetings if they need to.
Both Ruth and Hiliary love the people in their community and make great efforts to help them in any way they can.
Amy Miller is a member of the Zionville Volunteer Fire Department where her husband Don serves as the chief. When asked what led her to this work, she says she married into it in 1979 because Don, his father and his brother all worked in the fire service. During that time, she was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary. This group of women would join together to help raise money for the fire department since there was not a fire tax. This was a time when fire departments were funded solely through donations and the Ladies Auxiliary would host dinners and fundraisers.
Amy describes women in the fire service as coming a long way over the years. The First Responders Program began in 1988 and women who joined the department during that time joined as EMTs. These ladies were not considered firefighters in the beginning, they were viewed as solely medical personnel. Amy recollects that in mid-2005 or mid-2006 is when women started to be added to the firefighter side.
Amy was not a part of the First Responders Program at the time because she was raising her young children while her husband was on calls. She later joined as a first responder in 2000 when her children were older.
In the early 2000s she became a First Responder Captain, taking care of the medical side of the ZVFD. This is a role she has kept for nearly 20 years. Formerly, she worked in education for 28 years. Prior to retirement, she was a reading specialist at Mabel Elementary School. She has kept connections with local schools for Fire Safety Education. ZVFD has also conducted several active shooter drills in the school system. Although they hope to never have to use this training, she says it’s important to be prepared.
While in this role as First Responder Captain, she also handles logistics and accountability. She has spent a great deal of time writing grants, which is very important to continue providing their services. As a small department, they have a smaller budget allotted to them.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently awarded them $50,000 to install dual band radios in all of their fire apparatuses this year. This will greatly benefit the department because they previously only had one band available to them.
Amy says this will pay off greatly, not only helping them serve their community but also helping to keep their firefighters safe. Communications are important because as volunteers everybody goes about their daily routine until the tones go off.
“You get real close and personal,” Amy says about the men and women she works with. “You have to take good care of each other to do what we do. It’s like your family.”
She describes the fire service as having her back the same way family would have her back. Most of the women at ZVFD have a husband or significant other who also serves.
As far as challenges she faces being a woman in the fire service, she says there are several things that she does not have the physical ability to do. She has participated in active shooter training and can get anybody out of a building safely, if necessary. The process just may not go as smoothly as if a 250-pound man were to be the one carrying them to safety.
She encourages women who are interested in the fire service to visit with their local fire departments and find the one that is the best fit for them.
One benefit she mentioned for active members of paid or volunteer fire departments is waived public safety courses at Caldwell Community College, which include both Technical Rescuer and Firefighter certification.
Amy describes the men and women in the department as being complementary to one another.
“There are a lot of people who think ‘Well, I can’t run into a burning building with an air pack on,’ but that’s not the only thing on scene that needs to happen,” Amy says. “There are plenty of other things, and even if you don’t want to be on scene, there are things that you could be doing to support our fire department. You take whatever strengths you have to help us be successful.”