Tulip Photos by Rhonda Lee
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Dean Hall doesn’t know the meaning of quit…
By Kim Thielman-Ibes In the winter of 2010, Dean Hall hung up her volunteer ski patrol boots after twenty-five years of volunteer service and was looking for another
door to open, another way to use her emergency medical training (EMT) another way to give back. Then the Baxendale Volunteer Fire Department rolled by and as they say, the rest is history. Ever since, Dean, an outdoor enthusiast, has poured her time, energy and newly charged passion 100% into her community fire department. She originally signed up to work as an emergency responder, putting her 25+ years of EMT to good use. Today Dean responds in her own truck stocked with two medical bags, a radio, and her Baxendale issued fire department suit to accidents and fires within her district, part of which includes busy Highway 12 west of Helena. Due to her home’s proximity to the highway, often she is the first on the scene of an accident.
“I just do what I’ve been trained to do,” says a modest Dean. Quick on her heels is Baxendale’s rescue chief and a myriad of well-trained volunteers. Dean did not intend to go to fire school, but after a few months on the job as medical rescue, she realized part of her responsibility was to take care of her fellow fire fighters. To do this right she felt she needed first-hand experience. Typical of Hall, she jumped in with both feet and went to fire school where she learned equipment procedures, fire psychology, wildland fire control, structural fire suppression, utilization of oxygen masks, and even the safest way to climb spindly ladders. “I’m five-feet tall and of the forty that started fire training, five were women. By the end of training the five women were still standing but the men dropped like flies,” Dean says smiling. Only eight of the men made it out with the women. “They kept waiting for me to scream and holler and rip the oxygen mask off my face,” Dean recalls. What they did not know is that as a scuba diver for a number of years, the (Continued on page 34)