Before he enrolled in the Harpers Ferry Job Corps Center in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., 22-year-old Tim Sever says that he lacked purpose.
Not anymore. Now, Tim works as an expanded dispatch recorder and initial attack dispatcher trainee in the Monongahela National Forest Fire Dispatch Center, earning $26.40 an hour.
Tim’s mother encouraged him to make the best for himself, which led him to enroll in Job Corps. At the Harpers Ferry center, he quickly earned Brick Masonry certification and then accepted a dispatch assignment in the Monongahela National Dispatch Center in March 2018.
Tim showed himself to be independent, disciplined, and a team player. He soon was deployed as a wildland fire dispatcher multiple times over the course of 2018, including assignments at the Monongahela Center and the Virginia Interagency Communication Center.
In August 2018, Tim accepted a 21-day assignment in Idaho to work on the Rabbit Foot and Kiwah fires, where he provided daily briefings to his incident commander. By the end of the fire season, Tim had worked over 75 days of assignments.
Tim loves working in dispatch centers and, in his position with Monongahela, is laying the foundation for a successful, rewarding career in wildland fire.
Graduated from Job Corps in: 2018 Employer: Monongahela National Forest Fire Dispatch Center