Deb Krebill puts out fires for a living, and, as she will tell you, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Krebill is currently the only female fire chief of a career fire department in the state of Iowa.
“I have the greatest job there is,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” Krebill started as a paramedic and firefighter in 1991 and worked her way up the ranks — from captain to district chief to deputy fire chief and then to fire chief in 2014.
She hadn’t planned on becoming a firefighter.
“I grew up on a farm, and I wanted to be a farmer like my dad. He didn’t have any sons so I did a lot of the work with him,” she said. “But you were kind of told back then that girls weren’t farmers.”
After switching majors in college from music to criminal justice, she still hadn’t found her passion.