Most high school students have hobbies or extracurricular activities, like theater, baking, or sports, but not many high school students contain raging brush fires in their spare time! Isabel Klawiter, a junior at Mount Vernon High School, does just that during her time volunteering as a Junior Firefighter at the Stanwood Fire Department.

Being a Junior Firefighter means being responsible for a lot of important work. Isabel is tasked with hauling hoses and air packs, maintaining equipment, and cleaning up scenes. “It’s pretty much the job of a firefighter, but you can’t go into like, burning buildings,” Isabelle described. The first Sunday of each month Isabel and the rest of the force have a meeting to plan things like work schedules and equipment maintenance. “The meeting usually lasts about an hour, and then we do training for about an hour,” Klawiter said.

Although she can’t go into flaming houses, there’s still a lot that Isabel can do to help at the scene of a fire. “If it’s in my district I can go to it. I can be on the outside with the trucks and work truck work, turning hoses on, getting them set up for people to go inside,” Klawiter said. While Klawiter has never actually served at the scene of a house fire, that’s because she only officially joined the fire department this last year, when she turned 16. She has, however, had the chance to serve at the scene of several brush fires since she joined the force. She operates a fire hose and keeps the fire at bay while the other volunteers dig firebreaks in an attempt to extinguish the inferno.

Firefighting has been a part of Isabel’s life for a long time. When Klawiter moved to Stanwood, her father joined the force, and so she and her older sister have been helping around the station since they were small. “Once I turned 16, I joined as a Junior Firefighter, just to kind of help the community. Now my whole family’s on it. I kind of just joined with my family I guess,” Klawiter said. “If we’re counting unofficial volunteering, I’ve been on for ten years now.” 

Isabel’s whole family is on the Stanwood Fire Department, her mom, dad, and older sister. Up until about a month ago, Isabel’s father was the chief of the Fire Department, and had been for four years. “Since we’re moving in about a month, we had to resign from all the positions, but he’s still helping out to get the new fire chief running,” Klawiter explained. This is because if someone does not live within the district of a local fire department, then they cannot move through the ranks, be paid like Isabel’s parents were, or hold any kind of position, and the Klawiter family is moving 40 minutes away from Stanwood.

However, once Isabel’s family leaves Stanwood, that will not be the end of local firefighting for them. Isabel likely has more fires in her future. While she can no longer be a member of the Stanwood Fire Department, Isabel plans on joining the fire department in her new town as a full-fledged firefighter once she turns 18. For her, professional firefighting is “kind of like, a backup, because if I don’t make it into what I want to get into, I’ll look into it a bit more. It’d be like a second to my career of choice, and I’ll most likely join a local fire department just as a volunteer.” 

While the debate team and chess club are interesting, Isabel Klawiter, Stanwood Fire Department Junior Firefighter,  has one of the most exciting after school activities there is, and plenty of firefighting in her future.