FIRST RESPONDER FOCUS: Married firefighters save lives together
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 8 months AGO
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | February 6, 2025 3:00 AM
SOAP LAKE — Lots of couples have a special activity that they share. Some garden together, some do home improvement projects, some do charity or church work. And some, like CW and Emily Forrest, save lives together.
“There'll be times at night where she'll have to take off and go to the call and I'll stay with the kids,” said CW Forrest, a firefighter with Grant County Fire District 7. “Or Grandma. My … mom lives with us, so sometimes we'll both be able to go on calls.”
The Forrests came to first response by separate routes. CW, who grew up in Soap Lake and Ephrata, volunteered with the Soap Lake Fire Department as he was finishing high school, back before it was disbanded and GCFD 7 took over Soap Lake’s fire protection, he said.
“I wanted to be a career fireman when I was a kid,” he said. “It’s just, danger doesn't scare me. I'm one of those people that run to it, and I love helping people more than anything, and I'm really calm under pressure, so I'm good in chaos.”
After taking a welding degree at Big Bend Community College and working for a few years as a welding inspector at Genie Industries, CW decided he’d try his hand in the military. There he found himself stationed in Okinawa and met a Marine MP named Emily.
Emily, for her part, never had any hesitation about what she wanted to do. She grew up in Utah, she said, and from an early age she wanted to go into law enforcement. But ordinary policing wasn’t tough enough for her, so she enlisted in the Marine Corps as a military police officer. She chose the Marine Corps because it was the most difficult branch to get into, she said.
“I even told my recruiter that was the only way I would join is if he got me military police,” she said. “That's what I really wanted to do.”
The two married about eight years ago, they said. Once they got out of the service, they decided to come back to CW’s hometown to raise their family.
“This just made the most sense,” Emily said. “It worked best for everyone. But we make sure to go down to Utah a couple of times a year to see my side of the family as well, and sometimes they come up here.”
They have a lot going on, with three children 12, 4 and 2 years old. CW owns a business, does jujitsu training, volunteers for the Civil Air Patrol with their daughter and serves as a youth group leader. Emily teaches art for the Soap Lake School District and supervises online students. And yet somehow, they both felt they needed to do more.
“I really missed (the military), that kind of quick fast-paced going to emergency call-type situations, but I didn't necessarily want to be a police officer anymore,” Emily said. “I found out our local firefighting district allowed volunteers, so I thought I would give it a try, and I fell in love with the medical side of it.”
“I always enjoyed the medical side, but I didn't know a whole lot about it,” CW said. “And then with my wife doing the EMT and all the training she has now, I really like it, so I'm going to get EMT certified as well.”
Their first fire together was an RV fire, they said. Because both of them are first responders, they understand the psychological pitfalls better than many other emergency spouses. That can be critical when the truly gut-wrenching calls come in.
“If there's a spouse who's a firefighter or an EMT, the other spouse may not quite fully understand,” Emily said. “Whereas with us, we know exactly what's going on and how it feels.”
“We both went through some stuff in the military and being firemen, together, we have a much broader understanding of all the pains and everything that comes with it,” CW said. “So we’re able to talk to each other and be more honest and open and not have to sugarcoat anything. And that helps a lot.”
CW, right, and Emily Forrest pause for a photo after the first fire they fought together, an RV blaze.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
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