LOCKWOOD- There’s a new era at the Lockwood Fire District as the department is leading the way in diversity with a third of its positions held by women.
In the United States, only 9 percent of firefighters are women. Volunteers consist of 11 percent women and when it comes to women wildland firefighters, it's 12 percent.
Lockwood though recently made history for its department, when a 24-hour shift was covered by an all-female crew.
Lindsay Lambert, Shandy Erhorn and Katie Haider held down the district that day.
“I think it’s important that fire departments represent the demographics that they serve,” said Lindsay Lambert.
Lambert, who is a mother of three daughters, led the way here at Lockwood, becoming the agency’s first full-time female firefighter.
“I feel like I had prove myself every day,” said Lambert
“I had a three-month-old baby at the time, so being a breastfeeding mom at the station it was a whole new world of things,” she said.
After that she wrote the department's maternity policy and opened the door for other women to follow in her footsteps. She credits a great mentorship with the women serving at the Billings Fire Department as well.
“We’ve kind of broken the barrier,” said Lambert.
It comes at a time when the number of firefighters across the country is declining, especially with volunteer fire departments struggling to draw new members.
But departments like Lockwood are placing new emphasis on attracting women to the industry.
"We want girls to see it’s a normal thing. A girl is going to get out of the seat of that fire truck and she’s going to do her job just like the males do,” said Katie Haider.
Haider, who is also a mother of a daughter, admits she never intended on going into the fire industry, she originally thought she wanted to go straight into the medical field.
“We want girls to see this is absolutely something you can do,” she said.
The standard for women in the fire service is the same as their male counterparts.
Haider says, there’s no separate testing for women. It’s the same gear, same weight to carry and the same expectations.
But she says the difference is women are learning how to use their bodies in different ways than men to get the job done.
“We wear the same amount of weight, we carry the same amount of weight,” said Haider.
After a career in the army, Shady Erhorn was used to the expectation placed on women in a predominantly male field.
“If you give me a challenge I’m going to rise to it,” said Erhorn. “I had one patient say, ‘I don’t know if you can do this’ and I said, ‘well we’ve got 15 minutes to the hospital, let me change your mind,” she said.
All three women say that recent day when they carried the district on their backs for an entire 24-hour shift, the work just felt easy.
They look forward to doing it again and seeing more women enter the fire service.
“We are just as capable, just as smart we are just as strong,” said Erhorn.
