The forty-seven chilly, physically fit, mostly young people lined up outside the fire station on Madison at 305 early this morning, November 4, were hoping for one thing: to get on the Bainbridge Island Fire Department’s job waiting list. Several dozen firefighter hopefuls spent the night camped out, having arrived as early as 7 p.m. Sunday night. Although the fire department has announced they are accepting applications from firefighter candidates until November 15, they will cut off the list at 150, and that’s why candidates camped out and lined up early.
Assistant Fire Chief Luke Carpenter said there isn’t even a job opening: “We are testing to establish an eligibility list for the next one to two years. The fact that they are willing to camp out just to get on a list is a comment about the job.” Full-time firefighter jobs are so coveted that last week 8,000 candidates took the Seattle firefighter test. And many of the candidates on Bainbridge today said the same thing: There aren’t enough jobs to go around so when you hear that a department is taking applications or offering a test, you show up.
Most of the people in line are already firefighting volunteers from all over Washington. Jeff had come in from Kirkland this morning, Ted is a volunteer on Vashon, and Mike drove in from Port Orchard. Ted said, “Most of the time you don’t even know if there’s going to be a job when you apply.” He added that with the Seattle exam, he won’t even find out until mid-November if he will advance to the next step in the application process.
Phoebe from North Bend and Nathan from Maple Valley, who are both volunteers in Black Diamond, got up at around 4:30 to get to Bainbridge this morning. Their nearby line neighbor Ryan, who is a volunteer at Central Kitsap Fire and Rescue, spent the night in a sleeping bag in a camp chair. He said he queued up at about 11 p.m. A lot of candidates said that any firefighting job would be good, but Ryan was specifically interested in a Bainbridge job. He said the location, right in the middle between Seattle and the rest of the county, is ideal because it means staff keep busy and “get a lot of Seattle transports.”
Shawn and James from South Kitsap arrived at 7:30 last night and set up tents along the west side of the station where they had been given permission to camp. Unlike Ryan who seemed slightly frozen, they were merely chilly, but they said there had been ice on their tent when they woke up.
Juanitta, who lives in Kingston but is a volunteer in Poulsbo, was one of the older candidates. Like Ryan, she had spent the night in a sleeping bag in a chair. She said that when the first candidates arrived, they had a discussion about the honor system and agreed that planting your chair meant you could sleep in your car or your tent. Juanitta said that she works as a designer-contractor. She and her husband used to work together, but then he became a firefighter volunteer and eventually got a full-time job. She started volunteering too and, like him, fell in love with the work. She said, “Plus, our kids are used to the lifestyle by now.”
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Photos by Sarah Lane.