From KERA News:
In her first week of fire academy at Tarrant County College, Alexis Dunn had to run up and down stairs in full gear. That’s boots, fireproof pants and jacket, heavy gloves, a helmet and an oxygen tank—all while hoisting a 45-pound hose. And the drill didn’t end there.
“Then you had to carry a 135-pound dummy, which I didn’t even know that existed until I came here,” she laughs.
Into The Unknown
On this particular day, she’s leading a team of three other fire academy students on a search and rescue mission into a dark, two-story building. The inside of their face masks are plastered with wax paper– so they can’t see a thing.
Dunn guides them through the house as they crawl around the perimeter, feeling for gaps under furniture where kids or a pet could hide during an actual fire.
She’s about two-thirds of the way through this training program and is excited to join up with a local fire crew. Dunn says after playing college softball at the University of Houston, she knew she needed a job that wasn’t a typical 9 to 5 office gig. She wanted to be physically active, she wanted a challenge, she wanted teammates.
“I can’t wait to just go to a station and work,” she says. “Just being able to love what I do every day, it’s going to be something different every day.”
