Portland Fire & Rescue will be hosting the 16th annual Portland Metro Fire Camp over the weekend. This camp was started in 2009 and has since been operated and staffed by professional female firefighters. Portland Metro Fire Camp, PMFC for short, is a non-profit organization with a mission “to regularly provide collaborative, supportive, and educational fire service environments with women, by women and specifically for young women with the goal of increasing knowledge and awareness of firefighting and other nontraditional career paths for young women and empowering those who participate.”
This year’s camp, as in all other years, is staffed by professional female firefighters from all over the PNW and greater Western United States. The community involvement of women firefighters from all over the US allows participants to see the opportunities in the fire service on a grand scale. The 44-participant camp will operate from July 12-14 at the Portland Fire Training Center located at 4800 NE 122nd Avenue in the Argay Terrace Neighborhood.
Portland Metro Fire Camp, having 14 campers its first year back in 2009, has since grown in popularity. So much so that the PMFC community engaged TVF&R to host a second Portland Metro Fire Camp in 2018. The first of the two camps occurred just a few weeks ago at the Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue training center in June.
Between the two camps, Portland Metro Fire Camps will introduce almost 100 young women this year to firefighting and other male dominated careers as well as empower and encourage them to pursue their most ambitious dreams! Now 16 years later, many of the instructors—professional firefighters—who staff Portland Metro Fire Camp were actually campers at this very camp before pursuing careers in the fire service. This year, one of the Portland Firefighter instructors is a former camp attendee herself who was recently hired and has passed her training time with Portland Fire & Rescue.
During the open media invitation, the camp staff will guide those visiting to each “station” in operation. The “stations” all address a different aspect of firefighting and include Search & Rescue, bailout of a window, fire hose handling, chainsaw operation, aerial ladder climb, learning to tie knots, Emergency Medicine, forcible entry, and vehicle extrication (Jaws of Life). This is an all-encompassing camp, and PFR is looking forward to introducing the campers to these skills and hope to see them pursing firefighting or other careers they may not have known were available to them in years to come.
Please contact PMFC Nonprofit President and Camp Director Lt. Terra Vandewiele for more information. Terra.Vandewiele@Portlandoregon.gov | https://www.portlandmetrofirecamp.com/about
