Camp sparks teen girls’ career choices
Among the hundreds of people fighting fires across B.C. this weekend were nearly two dozen high school girls who each donned firefighting equipment for the first time.
The girls, from cities and towns across the province, blasted water into a building engulfed in flames, searched blindly through a smoky structure room-by-room, and tore apart an old Cadillac with the Jaws of Life. The duties were all part of Camp Ignite, an annual mentorship program for girls put on by female firefighters from the Lower Mainland.
Hailey Lemon was among those who dressed in more than 25 kilograms of gear — boots, heavy pants and jacket, balaclava, helmet, respirator and oxygen tank — then entered a smoking, three-storey building at the Justice Institute campus in Maple Ridge to observe a growing fire.
After the Delta teen emerged from the building safely, she pulled off her helmet and mask, panting and sweating from the intense heat.
“It was incredible,” Lemon said. “When we went in, you see all the smoke and you could just feel it starting to get hot. Even when you get low, the back of my neck was burning up.”
Lemon said she’d never done anything like it.
That statement was probably also true of the handful of graduates from previous camps who went on to become firefighters themselves, including one 18-yearold who this year was hired to help battle wildfires.
As Jenn Dawkins put it: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
What Dawkins, a firefighter with the City of Vancouver, meant by that is that exposure to something can open it up as an avenue that may not otherwise be explored.
The first time Dawkins entered a fire for training was at the very same campus and in the very same building when she was a volunteer firefighter for Maple Ridge.
But as realistic as it is, the camp isn’t intended to be a recruitment tool for fire departments, Dawkins said.
“It’s a mentorship program … We want to really empower these girls and let them know they can do whatever they want in life.”
Camp Ignite is a registered nonprofit society and its organizers can be contacted through their website, campignite.com.