By Fran Spielman
The Chicago Sun Times

CHICAGO — The Chicago Fire Department stands to lose 1,000 graybeards in 2009 — veteran firefighters and paramedics who will "max out" in their pensions — paving the way for a wave of retirements and more diverse replacements, a top mayoral aide said Wednesday.

Testifying at City Council budget hearings, Fire Commissioner Ray Orozco said the youth movement will begin during the first quarter of next year when roughly 70 recruits enter the fire academy.

They were chosen randomly from nearly 17,000 applicants who passed Chicago's first firefighter entrance exam in more than a decade.

To avoid a repeat of past legal controversies, City Hall made the May 2006 exam pass-fail. More than 83 percent of the 20,400 people who took the test passed, and 44 percent of them were minorities.

That means that a Chicago Fire Department now 68 percent white, 20 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic overall — and even whiter in its higher ranks — will become more diverse.

The slow but steady march toward diversity that aldermen have been clamoring for will be helped along by an avalanche of retirements.

Orozco said more than 1,000 veteran firefighters and paramedics — nearly a fourth of the department's uniformed work force — will be "maxed out from a pension standpoint" in 2009. The average Chicago firefighter is 44 years old with 15 years on the job. The new test had an age limit of 38.

"There's something to be said for youth and there's something to be said for experience. In the Fire Department, we'd like to find that fine line" between the two, the commissioner said.

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