SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Hannah Detmers grew up around the firefighting world.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad was actually a firefighter in Austin for 27 years, and it\u2019s sort of funny because it never occurred to me that I could do that job,\u201d Detmers said.<\/p>\n
She said part of it was because she was a girl, and the thought just never crossed her mind. As an adult, a desk job wasn\u2019t cutting it, and she finally realized what she wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard the story from other women that I work with too. It\u2019s just not so clear,\u201d Detmers said. \u201dThey\u2019ve done other things before they wound up here. Either they were discouraged or told it was a man\u2019s job or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detmers said she worked hard and became a San Antonio firefighter nine years ago, but realized there were not enough other women surrounding her.<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, female firefighters made up about 4.5% of the uniformed workforce in the San Antonio Fire Department. That number now sits at 6%, while the national average still hovers between 4% and 5%.<\/p>\n
Detmers worked hard and became a San Antonio firefighter nine years ago, but wanted to see more women surrounding her.<\/p>\n
Recruitment discussions at the department got her thinking; the career option needed to be shown to girls as young as elementary school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the best way to do that was through creativity and art and discussion and that winds up in a book,\u201d Detmers said.<\/p>\n
Over the last several years, she wrote and illustrated the fictional book called \u201cFlora\u2019s Dream, Flicker to Flame.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA little girl, she\u2019s in third grade, and she\u2019s going to career day. One of the professions is firefighting, and it\u2019s a woman firefighter,\u201d Detmers said.<\/p>\n
While she didn\u2019t want to spoil the ending, she did say the little girl ends up inspired.<\/p>\n
Detmers is starting to see that inspiration in real life.<\/p>\n
She just started presenting at camps this summer, reading her book and leading safety activities, even letting children try on firefighting gear.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a safety checklist in the back of the book. They can go through their own checklist, memorize their address, pick a meeting point, and draw their plan, talk about it with their family, put it on their fridge,\u201d Detmers said.<\/p>\n
She said the book is also meaningful because SAFD currently has its first female fire chief, Valerie Frausto.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe spoke a whole ago, and one of the things she talked about was, as you rise through the ranks, as a woman especially, it\u2019s important to turn around on that ladder and pull up who\u2019s behind you,\u201d Detmers said. \u201dSo I think that I would like to emulate that going forward in my own life.\u201d <\/p>\n
Detmers is also mentoring young women going through firefighter camps and training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a very good friend now, and she said that she remembered I had Taylor Swift playing in the truck,\u201d Detmers said, laughing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s proof that girls don\u2019t have to fit into a specific box. They can be exactly who they are, and still end up in careers such as firefighting.<\/p>\n
Read also: <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Hannah Detmers grew up around the firefighting world. \u201cMy dad was actually a firefighter in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[120,6527,633,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-388501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-firefighters","tag-ksatkids","tag-safd","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}