Sarnia Fire and Rescue Services is hoping to ignite interest in young females to pursue a career in firefighting.
The local service will be holding a five-day summer camp in July for women aged 15-19 who are interested in learning more about the industry.
Camp FFIT, Female Firefighters in Training, was launched in Ottawa in 2009, and has been running yearly across many Ontario communities since.
Firefighters Hannah Welch and Kim Lucier are the only two female firefighters in Sarnia, which is less than two per cent of the 125-member complement.
Welch said the camp will hopefully change that.
"If we exclude women from applying, we're losing half our candidate pool of good qualified applicants, so this camp will hopefully get more female applicants applying," said Welch. "The biggest doubters for women in the fire service are women themselves, so this is an opportunity for women to come out and to see "can I do this?" I think we're going to see a lot of women exceeding what they physically and mentally thought that they were capable of."
Lucier said women make up about three to four per cent of firefighters across the province.
She said the benefits of having more female firefighters go a long way.
"I think it makes a difference when you're going to a call and there's kids-- sometimes we don't look like we normally do, so hearing a female voice can sometimes be more comforting," said Lucier. "Just to get this exposed, I mean when I was in high school fire was never even brought up as an option for a career, so I want to encourage more girls to consider firefighting."
Lucier said 20 applicants, chosen for the camp, will perform a number of firefighting activities, including auto extrication, rappelling, and live fire extinguisher training.
"They need to be ready for a lot of physicality, because they will be in bunker gear, they will be in packs," said Lucier. "They will have a fitness portion of it where they have to workout just like we do to make sure we're fit to do the job."
The camp runs from July 15 to 19 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. The cost is $150 per person.
Those interested can send their applications to the City of Sarnia website before May 15.
https://twitter.com/SarniaFire/status/1103754534264991746