Answering the Call: Felicity Lang Steps Up in Waipara

After 17 years as a volunteer firefighter, Felicity Lang is stepping into the role of first female officer for the  Waipara Volunteer Fire Brigade.

Felicity Lang has been answering the pager for nearly two decades.

Now the Waipara volunteer firefighter is stepping into an officer role at the brigade, becoming the first woman to do so - although it’s not something she makes much of.

To her, it is simply the next step.

“I’m just one of the guys,” she says. “That’s how I look at it.”

Lang has been a volunteer firefighter since 2009.

 She started in Hanmer Springs, where she grew up, before moving to Waipara to farm with her husband Michael and joining the Waipara brigade in January 2011.

Like many people raised in small rural communities, the idea of volunteering was never unusual.

“Growing up in a small community, I always thought about giving back,” she says.

Her father was involved in search and rescue, and when someone suggested she give the fire brigade a try, she decided to go along and see what it was about.

She stayed.

Over the years, Lang has worked her way through the ranks.

 Each step comes with its own training. Recruit courses, firefighter courses, senior firefighter training, officer training. Each one means days away on courses, more study, and more responsibility.

“It’s a lot of courses, a lot of learning to get to here,” she says.

And like most volunteer brigades, everyone doing that training is also juggling the rest of their lives.

Many have full time jobs. Families. Farms. Kids.

“It’s a lot that people do,” she says. “It’s a massive sacrifice. But we all do it because we enjoy it.”

 When Lang first joined the Waipara brigade she was one of only a few women. For a long time, she was the only one.

But she says it never felt like something she needed to dwell on.

“I didn’t see anything different. I was just like; this is what I want to do.”

She says the brigade treated her the same as anyone else, although occasionally people tried to step in and do things for her.

“You get some guys that want to do everything for you because you’re a female,” she says. “And you’re like, no, I can actually do this myself.”

Firefighting is physical work. Full breathing apparatus gear can weigh close to 20 kilograms. Forestry packs are heavy. Hoses are heavy.

But Lang says it comes down to working as a team.

“You just make it work for yourself. And if you struggle doing something, you work with your team and someone else does that job and you do another.”

Today the brigade has around two dozen members, including several women.

Lang says the group is tight knit. That matters when you are relying on each other at two in the morning on a callout.

Her first call in Waipara was a grass and scrub fire near Scargill.

“It was in the middle of the night, and I had no idea where I was,” she laughs. “I’d only been here a few months.”

“But you just do what you’ve got to do.”

The job is not just fires. Volunteer brigades are often the first people on scene at medical calls and car accidents, especially in rural areas where emergency services can take time to arrive.

“Sometimes we go to a call and we’re waiting twenty minutes, half an hour for an ambulance,” she says.

“That’s where we come in.”

Over the years there have been plenty of callouts, but Lang says what stays with her most is simply knowing the brigade can help.

“When you go to a medical and you can actually put that person on the ambulance,” she says. “Or someone walks away from a crash and goes home. That’s a good day.”

Stepping into an officer role brings a new challenge.

For Lang, the hardest part is not the physical side of the job. It is the leadership.

“It’s having the confidence to go right, this is what we need to do,” she says.

Training nights help. The brigade trains every Monday night, and she has spent time practising the officer role during exercises.

“It’s taken time to realise that actually; I can do this.”

At home, life is busy too.

Lang and her husband have two children, Adele, 11, and George, 9. The pager going off is part of normal life for them.

“If I’m outside mowing the lawns or doing something, they come running with the phone going ‘you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go’,” she says.

But family always comes first.

“If the family’s not right, then you don’t go,” she says.

“You have to have your head in the game when you’re at a job.”

That support matters, because volunteering is a big commitment.

And without it, rural communities would look very different.

“That’s the backbone of your community,” Lang says.

“If people don’t volunteer, you don’t have that sort of community spirit.”

For anyone thinking about joining, her advice is simple.

“If you’re interested, come along and have a go,” she says.

“You’re never going to find out whether it’s right for you if you don’t try.”