Last week, when most people were out shopping for gifts, Bayley Heider was involved in a different kind of search.
And instead of getting the house decorated for the holidays, she was breaking into one. But saving people’s holidays, not destroying them, was the reason behind her activities.
These physical challenges were part of the state skills test for students at the Metropolitan Community College Blue River Fire Academy, where Bayley is one of five female students. Two are in the day class, which she’s in, she said, and three women are in the night program.
Bayley graduated from the Fire Academy last Saturday, Dec. 16, but was hired in October by the Clinton Fire Department, where she is the first female career firefighter with the department.
“They had a woman who was a volunteer firefighter,” she said, “but not a career firefighter.”
It was her captain at the Blue River Fire Academy, which is Independence, who told her that Clinton F.D. had a job opening. And the Clinton firefighters are happy to have her.
“Right off the bat, I felt very welcome, from the department and the community,” she said.
Bayley is from Archie, south of Kansas City, where she played basketball, volleyball and softball. Basketball was her top sport, she said. At 5-foot, 11 inches tall, Bayley was the center on the girl’s basketball team.
“I was a Whirlwind,” she said of the Archie School team name.
Her father is 6-feet, 4, she said, and her younger brother, who is 17, is 6-2.
Bayley said she didn’t always want to be a firefighter, but originally trained as an EMT, an Emergency Medical Technician. She often went on ride-alongs with firefighters, however, and knew an EMT who was also a firefighter, and realized she would enjoy the work firefighters did.
She didn’t know if the Fire Academy would be mostly “book learning,” but discovered it gave her a lot of good hands-on training that prepared her for the job. Firefighting requires physical strength and dexterity. To be considered, she had to pass two agility tests, one at the Fire Academy and one in Clinton. The tests involved hoisting a ladder, and climbing five flights of stairs carrying a fire hose while wearing a weighted vest, which simulates wearing firefighters’ gear.
She also had to find her way through a maze. The test replicates conditions on a fire site. In Clinton, the agility test was held at the Benson Center.
“I enjoyed the challenge,” Bailey said.
She can do a fireman’s carry, she said, depending on the size of the person, but firefighters don’t sling people over their shoulder any more, but are taught to lift them under the arms to move them.
“We can carry and cradle a child in our arms,” she said.
Bayley’s uncle, a firefighter with Central Jackson County in Blue Springs, was a good source of advice on what to expect, she said.
“He’s got a lot of good firefighter recipes, too,” she said. “Firefighters like to cook, and like their sweet tea.”
For the state skills test in December, Bayley used an axe to break down a door, and also demonstrated how to use a hallagan, a crow-bar like tool used to pry open doors. She extinguished a Class A fire with a fire hose, and successfully completed a search and rescue mission blindfolded, with her mask covered.
“It simulates finding a person in a situation with poor visibility, like a smoke-filled house,” she said. “We found him.”
Last Saturday, Hayley graduated from the Blue River Fire Academy. Clinton Fire Chief Mark Manuel, Deputy Fire Chief Matt Willings and Captain Wade Glasscock, Bayley’s shift captain, attended Bayley’s graduation and presented her with her department badge.
At the Academy, Hayley passed certification exams 1 and 2 for Missouri Firefighters, and now is a fully-trained firefighter as well as an EMT. She has the rest of a six-month probationary period to complete, to learn how the Clinton Fire Department operates, she said. There have been a few adjustments. They had to put stalls in the bathroom, she said, and she gets the back bedroom all to herself.
She’s also learning her way around Clinton, including orienting to landmarks that people who grew up here were familiar with, even if the buildings don’t exist any more or are occupied by new businesses.
Besides the physical challenges, and the adrenaline rush when the fire bell goes off, what she likes about being a firefighter is helping people.
“I want to be the person who is there for them during what may be the lowest point in their life,” she said.
What she’s not wild about: being awakened in the middle of the night to go on a call.
She’s already helped host her first school tour of elementary students. It was a little noisy, she said, but what the girls were excited to see close up were the fire trucks, which they thought were neat.
With her background, experience and training, it’s been an easy transition for her and for crew members she works with.
“Everyone’s been very helpful,” she said. “They’re right there any time I have a question, ready to help me by giving me the answer.”
