Spokane Valley Fire adds two female recruits

In the last 20 years, the Spokane Valley Fire Department hasn’t had any women firefighters in the department. That changed this summer, when the department signed on two women firefighters as part of a group of 14 new recruits.

Fire Chief Bryan Collins said he’s been focusing on increasing the department’s diversity.

“We’ve been actively working on outreach, trying to diversify the workforce,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. It’s showing up at job fairs and college campuses. We’re making progress. It’s slow, and it’s hard.”

The problem is a lot of other fire departments are doing the same thing, Collins said. “It’s a competitive market,” he said.

The department previously had a woman firefighter who was with the department in the late 1980s and 90s. After she left no other women were hired. It made Spokane Valley Fire an anomaly, particularly among large departments, Collins said.

But adding women to the department has always been a part of the discussion, Collins said. In recent years when new fire stations were built, they were built to include bathrooms and living quarters for women. “We’ve been having an internal conversation for a number of years now,” he said. “It’s not if we have women in our department, it’s when.”

In recent years the department has also had regular diversity training, which includes diversity in age, gender, race and sexual orientation, Collins said. He said the department is ready to welcome it’s first women in decades.

“We’ve had the conversations,” he said. “This is a profession, and it’s a business environment. We’re not doing anything different, we’re just continuing that conversation.”

New recruit Janelle Britton did not have previous fire experience and is attending a Fire Academy in North Bend until December. Recruit Sharayah Mullerleile, however, already had some experience as a firefighter and is completing a shorter training course at the Spokane Valley Fire training center through the end of September.

The local training course is to teach the department’s standing operating procedures in a variety of scenarios, Battalion Chief Andy Rorie said.

“It’s Valley Fire Department specific,” he said. “They’re a little different with every department.”

Rorie has been involved in training Mullerleile and four other recruits.

“She’s doing awesome,” he said. “All five of them are.”

Mullerleile took an unusual route to becoming a firefighter. She grew up in Spokane Valley and graduated from East Valley High School. She’s worked as a certified personal trainer at the Spokane Valley YMCA for the last decade.

But the firefighter seed was planted after she took her children to an open house at the Otis Orchards fire station, which is part of the Spokane Valley Fire Department, in 2016.

She thought her children would be excited to see the fire trucks and other equipment, but instead she was the one who wanted to try on the gear and climb in the trucks.

“I was just way more about it than they were,” she said.

The seed became firmly rooted when one of the firefighters there that day asked her if she had ever thought of becoming a firefighter and suggested she consider it. At first she was unsure because it wasn’t anything she had thought about as a career.

“You know in the back of your mind that women do this, but you don’t really think of it as a career,” she said.

She decided to take the plunge and signed on as a volunteer firefighter with Spokane County Fire District 10. She went through the Fire Academy in 2018 and earned many of the certifications she would need to become a full-time firefighter.

When she learned Spokane Valley Fire was hiring, she applied. “The community of Spokane Valley is where my heart is,” she said.

When she applied, she didn’t realize that there were no women in the department, Mullerleile said. She learned that before she was hired, but said that didn’t deter her, though it is nice that there will be another woman joining at the same time.

“I think I can do this,” she said. “It’ll be hard, but it’s hard for everyone. I don’t think I had any worries about being physically capable. I am nervous about skills, maybe not having as much experience as the rest.”

So far she’s been learning the proper procedures for placing a 24-foot extension ladder and how to do extended hose stretches, search procedures and making roof cuts. “They are working us hard,” she said. “It’s good. I like it. It’s phenomenal training.”

She said she appreciates that her instructors let her try and make mistakes so she can learn well.

“This department has been so good in coaching and training,” she said. “Every captain, every firefighter who has come down to train us has been so knowledgeable. I feel lucky and grateful to be on with this department.”

Rorie said he’s glad to see women back in the department.

“I know it’s bothered a lot of people for a long time,” he said. “It was highly unusual. I’m a fire commissioner in (Spokane County) District 8, and they have a lot of women, always have.”

He hopes to see more women hired in the future. “I think it may have deterred some women, that there were none here,” he said.

Nina Culver can be reached at nculver47@gmail.com.