At a moment’s notice, Candy Reeves can jump into her aquamarine sports utility vehicle and take off for the Johnson’s Crossing Fire Station. Reeves, who started at the station in 1987, is always on call with a radio hooked to her belt and her firefighter’s gear and Emergency Medical Technician kit riding in the back of her vehicle.

At a moment’s notice, Candy Reeves can jump into her aquamarine sports utility vehicle and take off for the Johnson’s Crossing Fire Station. Reeves, who started at the station in 1987, is always on call with a radio hooked to her belt and her firefighter’s gear and Emergency Medical Technician kit riding in the back of her vehicle.

That’s all part of the job at a volunteer fire department — it doesn’t matter whether you’re man or woman, a veteran captain or a new station volunteer. The Johnson’s Crossing station has about 20 volunteers, and two women besides Reeves work there. Reeves has been a captain at the station for 17 of her 19 years as a firefighter.

Her interest in volunteering at the station developed after she saw an advertisement in the newspaper seeking firefighters. After speaking with then-chief Roger Starnes about it, she decided it was an opportunity she wanted to seize.

So is Reeves treated any differently as a woman in what is sometimes perceived as a man’s field?

“I don’t really think so,” said Reeves, who works at a nearby Jet-Pep gas station when she’s not fighting fires. “I think it’s a job for a man or a woman, either one, that has the time, the dedication and the care to help their neighbors.

“I don’t get any special treatment being a female,” Reeves continued with a grin, “and of course, I don’t want any.”

But by Reeves’ estimation, female firefighters are becoming more and more common in Cullman County.

“When I first started, there were only very few females fighting fires throughout the county,” she said. But now, she estimated that there are at least a couple of hundred women in fire departments county-wide.

“I wouldn’t say it’s 50/50,” but numbers are increasing, she said.

The community and the fire station have always been supportive of her as a firefighter, Reeves said.

“As far as challenges, I have physical limitations,” she said.

And as a captain, she also has more responsibilities than some other firefighters. Captains are assigned a truck to maintain, she said, and are also responsible for directing co-workers when they’re on the scene.

“You have to be able to make quick decisions to be in charge of a fire scene or a wreck scene, to guide and direct others,” she said.

“But it takes all of us,” Reeves pointed out with a smile. “It’s a family thing, and a team effort.”

The department has worked together on a competition team for a conference the department attends. Bonding in situations like that can work out to be an advantage at a fire scene.

“You learn each other. You learn what the other people can do and how they do it,” Reeves said. “You have to be able to trust … everybody that you go inside a house with.”

Reeves was employed in the past as a dispatcher at the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office, which is the dispatch center for area fire stations. The firefighters are alerted through the radios they carry when they are needed on the scene.

“So I’ve been on both sides of the field,” she said. “They have a big responsibility of getting a lot of information (about the scene, to) know whether law needs to be dispatched before us, know whether EMS needs to be notified. They do a great job.”