Jerry Helm admits that the first half of July has been a whirlwind.

In a one-week span, Helm turned a year older, grew a little wiser and stood a little taller at Central Whidbey Fire & Rescue.

Helm celebrated his promotion to captain during a pinning ceremony at Central Whidbey Fire’s Race Road station July 9 — exactly a week after celebrating his 36th birthday.

In the middle of all that, he was part of the Central Whidbey Fire response team that helped fight the 10-acre brushfire on a bluff at Fort Ebey State Park.

“It was a busy week-and-a-half right there,” Helm said with a laugh.

The promotion means Helm is No. 3 in command at Central Whidbey Fire behind Chief Ed Hartin and Deputy Chief Charlie Smith. The only other captain in the department is volunteer Andy Griffin.

It was another significant step up the career ladder for Helm, a 1998 graduate of Coupeville High School who’s been with the department since starting as a volunteer 16 years ago.

His father by the same name also was a captain for Central Whidbey Fire and later a fire commissioner. The younger Helm said he has been hanging around the department since he was 6 or 7.

“My weekly father-son event, if I got all my homework done, I was able to go to fire drill at the station with dad on Monday nights,” said Helm, a career firefighter since 2005.

Helm was a lieutenant serving as acting captain for two years until he was formally approved for the higher rank following an evaluation process that included interviews, an essay and other assessments.

Chiefs and deputy chiefs from three agencies visited the Central Whidbey Fire Race Road station June 24 to evaluate Helm and see if he had what it took to merit the promotion.

After a full day of evaluations and testing, Helm was called into Hartin’s office to receive the promising news.

“The biggest asset he brings is his passion for the job and passion for the community,” Hartin said.

Those are key qualities for a captain in charge of training, recruitment and retention.

“He’s done a great job,” Smith said.

Last week, Helm was honored at the fire commissioners meeting during a ceremony attended by both parents, both grandmothers, a sister and her three children, and his wife and their two daughters.

“It was really humbling,” Helm said. “It was a lot of hard work leading up to that process. The process itself was extremely difficult.”

A day earlier, Helm was one of eight Central Whidbey firefighters involved in assisting with the challenging Fort Ebey State Park brushfire.

The unit from Central Whidbey teamed up with Navy Region Northwest Fire and Emergency Services to try to contain the fire on the south side. North Whidbey Fire and Rescue and the naval unit combined efforts on the north side until wildland firefighters from the Washington Department of Natural Resources arrived to take control of the situation after it was mostly contained.

Helm said Central Whidbey Fire was able to gain a stronger position to fight the fire with help from firefighter James Meek, a state parks worker who knew of a different trail wide enough to allow the department’s John Deere Gator all-terrain vehicle to get to a better access point.

That allowed an initial hit of 75 gallons of water aboard the vehicle to be placed on the front edge of the fire on the bluff about 150 to 200 feet away, Helm said.

The next task was laying about 600 feet of supply hose to refill the unit with water, then continue to try to keep the flames from breaking containment.

Helm credited state parks personnel with keeping trails maintained, which made the firefighters’ access to the fire easier.

“State parks keeping the trails open was huge for us,” Helm said.

Helm said the terrain and difficult access made the fire unique. He said it was the first time he’d been called to a fire that required support from a helicopter.

The brushfire was one of about a half dozen the department has responded to in July.

“Usually this is the kind of response we get in August,” Helm said. “We’re about a month ahead of schedule.”