Amy Ramon has been fire chief for the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department since 2014. After becoming interested in firefighting in college, Ramon said she has been involved with the department for decades. In addition to volunteering as a firefighter, she has also served as general manager for Harris County Emergency Services District No. 9—the taxing district that manages the department—and also has emergency medical training.

Ramon earned a law degree from South Texas College of Law and a bachelor’s in business from LeTourneau University, where she finished her education after initially attending the University of Houston. She was with the department for both the Tax Day Flood of 2016 and during Hurricane Harvey last year.

How did you get into firefighting?

At the time I was going to school at [the University of Houston], and I had some friends that I worked with that were members of the fire department. I went to a meeting at Station 2 and never left. I was putting myself through school and working. I started doing regular accounting work and stuff like that. Where the accounting is nice and structured and boring, the fire department offered the adrenaline rush … It also offered a family atmosphere. Station 2 was very family-oriented. You have regular Thursday night meetings, and then Sundays you bring your family up to the fire station, you clean the apparatus, you’d clean the station, you’d have a cookout, and everyone would socialize together. Truly, [CFVFD] took the place of my social life. It was where I went to have fun; it was a good time, but you were also giving back to the community. So, it was perfect.

As fire chief, is there anything you miss about fighting fires?

The adrenaline rush. Absolutely. It’s a completely different feeling riding the firetruck. It’s like your whole body has pins and needles. When you’re riding the back of the firetruck and you’re going down the road and you’re going to a fire, that’s not something a normal person is excited about … That feeling you don’t get anywhere else. I’ve never gotten it any other way. There’s nothing that compares to it.

What was it like to manage the fire department during Hurricane Harvey?

Intense. Completely intense. We had a dry run with the Tax Day floods. Our side of the county was affected, so we already had a system in place of how we knew we were going to handle things. We had no warning with Tax Day, but we had [a] warning with Harvey. When we found out it was happening, we started planning the week before, and we had a plan of action and everything set up. [Lone Star College] let us use the emergency services building next to Station 11. Everybody who was in rescue for the department—meaning the high-water vehicles, the buses [Cy-Fair ISD] let us use and then our boats—all of that was located at Station 11.

At the regular fire stations, we took care of normal operations. If we had a house fire come in, the regular fire stations are running it, as well as regular EMS. It was basically seven days of solid stress. We had really good help with people in support roles … So, it went a whole lot smoother for us than departments who didn’t have Tax Day as a dry run. It was just intense. The most intense part was the rescue that we had early in the morning with people coming out of Cypress Creek. There’s no way to replicate that feeling. You get woken up by a call saying, “We got people in the water.”

What lessons did you learn from Harvey for future storms?

We’ve ordered some additional high-water assets. The chief’s vehicles that we’re buying for our district chiefs are going to be F-150s, and they’re [four wheel drive], so they’re a little higher up off of the ground. In addition, communication is the No. 1 failure during any large emergency, it feels like. We’ve worked on different ways to communicate with our membership and the public to try [to] make sure that the same message is pushed out.

What are some things you want the community to know about your job?

Your only experience with CFVFD is when you call 911. It’s probably your worst day, and so all you’re wanting is to see that fire truck show up and you don’t care who’s on it or know anything about them. You just expect, five seconds after you hang up, that the truck is there. People need to know that, on nights and weekends here, your community members are the ones coming to help you. If you have the opportunity to tell people “thank you,” that would be awesome. That doesn’t happen a lot of times. Although I will say … after Hurricane Harvey, our community was so supportive.

Most of the volunteers in the fire department have full-time jobs and families elsewhere and still give time to the department to serve their community. They believe in our fire department, they believe in our community, and it makes it easier to give back. Anyone looking for any kind of opportunity to volunteer, we are here. We have places for you. You don’t actually have to go into a burning building to help us out, I promise.