What is it like to become a Maple Grove firefighter? During the next nine months, Maple Grove Magazine will follow events in the lives of two of the city’s newest firefighting recruits, Stephanie Firestone and Justin Siemieniewski. This year the Maple Grove Fire-Rescue Department will train nine recuits as paid-on-call firefighters working out of neighborhood fire stations. “Our people are a combination of paid and volunteer,” says deputy fire chief Tim Bush. “We used to post signs at the stations saying, ‘Looking for paid on-call firefighters.’ Now the signs says, ‘Looking for part-time firefighters, no experience necessary. All training provided.’”
It was just such a sign at that caught Siemieniewski’s attention. “It immediately hit me as something I wanted to do,” he says. Twenty-five-year-old Siemieniewski knows what it means to serve: His father and an uncle were paramedics. He now lives in Maple Grove with his wife and two dogs. By day, he is an accountant with Cargill in Wayzata.
Public service is also high on the priority list of 40-year-old Stephanie Firestone, who works full-time as a business analyst in health care. Her history of service includes joining the army directly out of high school and serving three years, much of it overseas. She met her husband, Dan, in the army, in Germany. The two oldest of their three boys (17, 16 and 9) are currently part of the Maple Grove Fire Explorers, a program for youth interested in firefighting. “When we moved back here in 2000,” Firestone says, “we went through a lot of years just trying to pay the bills.” Dan worked nights; Stephanie worked days. Then, four years ago, Dan decided to become a Maple Grove firefighter. The fact that the kids were older left open the opportunity to “give it a shot” herself.
The Firestones represent a trend toward the “more seasoned recruit,” Bush says. “Historically, we might have gotten the 18- to 21-year-old living in his mother’s basement. Now we’re getting homeowners whose kids can be left alone for a few hours.” There’s also been a trend toward people with full-time day jobs. “In Maple Grove, we’re unique in having ‘night available’ and ‘day available’ positions,” Bush says, adding that it seems there’s always a need for firefighters who are available in the daytime.
Firestone feels she knows what to expect of the upcoming year of training. “Or at least I know my husband’s perspective of the experience,” she says with a laugh. That helps a bit, but there’s still a “healthy nervousness that comes with it. It’s new. It’s fire! And I want to do well,” she admits. Siemieniewski imagines the work will be both physically and emotionally demanding; he is prepared to learn the long list of how firefighters “go about doing everything.”
They both take an extra pause to imagine what might challenge them most, personally, about the next several months. “Maybe just nerves, or anxiety,” decides Siemieniewski. He recalls his first experience scuba-diving and how his body and brain expressed resistance to the idea of breathing underwater. “I think it might be similar the first time we do a live fire drill. I’ll have to overcome that ‘Fire! Get away!’ impulse.” Firestone thinks the hardest part might be that she is a perfectionist. “There are the facts that I’m a woman, I’m older and I’m short,” she says with some humor. But she quickly grows serious. “I want to represent myself and my family well. I want to show my worth.”
Watch for future issues in which we follow the training exercises of our newest firefighters.
