It’s Fare to say she will be a firefighter

Only 14 girls from the United States attended an intensive week-long firefighter training school earlier this month, and one of them was Valley Stream’s Jessica Fare.

Jessica, 14, a junior firefighter with the Valley Stream Fire Department, spent five days at Camp Fully Involved in New Hampshire during the first week of August. The training was very comprehensive, as Jessica learned how to fight fires, conduct search and rescue, climb ladders and put on firefighting gear.

Oh, and she had to learn about the schedule of a firefighter, too. After she and the other girls went to bed at 9:30 the second night, they were awaken just an hour later by an air horn. They had to go across the street from their dorm to the firehouse, and were timed in putting on their gear. “They say when you’re a full-time firefighter,” Jessica said, “you have to be used to waking up in the middle of the night for calls.”

Jessica attended several classes — her favorite was the visit from an arson dog — but she was also able to get some live training. On the third day, the girls learned about forest fires, and had to make a fire break to prevent the flames from spreading. They also had to put on protective gear, known as encapsulation suits.

The girls fought car and dumpster fires, and each one got to take a turn at the nozzle. They had to climb and aerial ladder and enter a second floor window, practice forcible entry with inward and outward swinging doors, break open a roof and repel off the side of a building. “Wednesday and Thursday were the fun days when we got to do all the cool stuff,” Jessica said.

On the third night, the girls were again woken up. That time, not only did they have to put on all their gear, they also had a simulated fire scene. A “may day” call was given out, meaning a firefighter was down inside, and the girls had to perform a search and rescue operation. They had to pull out the “body” of the injured firefighter.

All of the fires the girls fought were controlled, until the last day. That Friday, a pile of hay was little on fire and the girls had to put it out on their own. This time, there was no one operating the controls to simply turn the fire off. Jessica remembers it being smoky and very hard to see, and the heat from the fire was pretty intense.