Fort Myers Fire Department working to break...

FORT MYERS, Fla. —

In an emergency, seconds matter if you can't communicate it can be the difference between life and death. At Fort Myers Fire Station 16, communication is everything.

"I’m always speaking Spanish, and I even try to just say even getting the crew on board like little words here and there just so they can understand in case I’m not here or in case they may need it in the future," said Vanessa Vieyra, a firefighter for Fort Myers Fire Department.

Vanessa Vieyra has been a firefighter for two years now, something she never could have imagined when she was younger.

"Being a Hispanic firefighter, a Hispanic woman firefighter, actually makes me hold a lot of pride and joy," Vierya said.

It's been a huge benefit to her team. She has lost count of the times there was a language barrier in an emergency.

"I’m able to translate to them and let them know that it’s just a health condition or someone’s in pain, or I’m able to translate for them and have better communication to help them out," she said.

As if an emergency is not chaotic enough, imagine not being able to communicate; many people panic.

"They’re looking at everybody around the room, and then once they see that I start speaking Spanish to them or responding to them, they kind of calm down a little bit. So it helps the situation out for everyone in the room involved," Vierya said.

Fort Myers Fire Department officials told NBC2 they have 160 staff members in total, 35 of them are Hispanic, that's just 21 percent.

"There’s always room to grow and to reflect your community, and it’s a chance to at least recognize where we’re at and improvements we’ve made and how we’ve grown and how it impacts our department," said Battalion Chief Chris Bevan.

As our community continues to grow and get more diverse, they recognize their ranks need to reflect that.

"There is an incentive to have bilingual skills and compensate people for that. It is as our community is growing, we are seeing bigger and bigger needs for that, and the importance is really growing," Bevan said.

For Vierya, she hopes to be a calming voice for her community.

"I want to be remembered as a great person and as somebody that was able to change the community [add] some more diversity and adding more culture to someone that they can look back and remember, oh, you know — she was great," Vieyra said.