Last Saturday was the first ever Women’s Fire Service Expo put on by the Eden Prairie Fire Department as well as Bloomington, Chanhassen, Edina, Hopkins and Minnetonka. The idea was to give women that were interested in the fire service an opportunity to experience some of the challenges first-hand.
The planning and coordination for this project was intense and has been going on for several months. Each of the six departments provided a staff person or two to be involved in the planning and coordination efforts. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that firefighter Kim Hanlon from the Eden Prairie Fire Department was the overall leader of the effort. She would be the first to tell anybody that she couldn’t have done the event by herself and the additional help was critical to the success of the big day.
Forty-six women attended the event and spent an entire day on-site. The comments that were received on the evaluation cards were strictly positive in nature. Already we have received 4 new female applicants to our current recruiting process and I have been told that Minnetonka has received applications from last week’s group as well.
We hope to make this an annual event and expand the range of our efforts to include additional interested fire departments. Thank you to everyone that helped to plan and execute this ground-breaking program!
