Fire Fighter Profiles

FIRE FIGHTERS

FIRE NEWS

Aniak is in central Alaska. Even though Alaska is part of the United States, it is located on the northwest side of Canada.

Are the girls ever scared? “The only thing that scares you is the sound of the pager startling you at three in the morning,” says seventeen-year-old Erica Kameroff. She joined the crew as a sophomore. “But the adrenalin takes over. You don’t think about anything but doing whatever has to be done, whether it’s medical or fire.”

It is important to work together as a team to handle emergencies.

A Unique Rescue Mission

Lydia Hess is a seventeen-year-old firefighter from Boulder, Colorado. She came to Aniak last year to become a Dragon Slayer. “I read about them, and I wanted to work alongside kids my own age,” Hess says. She finds the quality of care and the level of professionalism equal to that of a big city department. But there are two significant differences.

Getting to the victims in arctic Aniak is far more challenging than in an average city. The Dragon Slayers can’t just drive an ambulance to the scene of an emergency. Most of the people they help are Yupik Eskimos and Athabascan Indians, like the Dragon Slayers. Aniak is a landlocked village of 600 people. It is surrounded by rivers. The nearest major city is Anchorage.

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