"Kicking Ash"

Meet the Dragon Slayers, remote Aniak, Alaska's all-girl rescue crew.

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Just Another Night's Work

It was dark. Not even a moon to light the way. Patricia Yaska and April Kameroff perched nerviously in a boat slowly snaking down Alaska's chilly Kuskokwim River. Fog shrouded the mountains that ordinarily served as landmarks. The beams from their handheld searchlights were useless. They were going to help two boys who lay seriously injured after a head-on collision by all-terrain vehicles on a gravel trail about 30 miles away from the village of Aniak. The river was the only way to reach them. Roads were nonexistent and the skies too murky to fly.

The fire pagers had buzzed just before midnight, signaling all hands on call to hurry to the firehouse. Patricia, 15, and April, 19 -- both members of the "Dragon Slayers" rescue squad -- were part of a medical team that headed out onto the river and into the pitch-darkness.

What if they have to send out a search party for us? Patricia wondered soon after they'd gotten lost among the sand bars and twisty bends. But they pressed ahead, using their flashlights to signal fire chief Pete Brown, in a separate boat. After three tense hours of blind navigation, they reached the boys.

Patricia and April went to work, following the drill they'd practiced hundreds of times. Together, in silence, they gave one of the boys oxygen, checked his vital signs -- blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, respiration -- and then cleaned and dressed his wounds.

Seventeen hours later, with both victims evacuated, the girls felt weary but satisfied. "We helped somebody survive," April says.

For the Dragon Slayers, the wilderness rescue was just another night's work. The 24/7, all-girl crew answers hundreds of calls a year, covering an area of wild country roughly the size of New Jersey. Wearing heavy fire-resistant jackets and pants, boots and helmets, their pockets crammed with tools, they do almost everything the adult volunteers do. They drag and couple 70-pound, 50-foot sections of hose, operate pumper trucks, nozzles and tankers, interpret cardiac monitors, fly with medevac pilots and calm the terrified.

The girls are all between ages 13 and 19, and most stand just a nudge over five feet tall. When they're not on duty, they can be seen around town sporting jackets with "Aniak Fire Rescue" emblazoned on the front and "Aniak Teens Kicking Ash" on the back.

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