By Stephen B. Thornton
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
Copyright 2006 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
Little Rock firefighter Melissa McInturff missed her first middle-of-the-night fire alarm. She waved goodbye to the truck as it pulled out of the station, and watched the door close behind it.
She was 12 years old and was spending the night at Central Fire Station with her father, firefighter Jack McInturff.
“I couldn’t get there quick enough,” Melissa McInturff says. “They wouldn’t let me slide down the pole.” Now she spends the night at the station on her own and hasn’t missed a fire yet.
At the end of May, McInturff, 27, graduated from the Little Rock Fire Department’s four-month-long training academy. She joins 11 other women among the ranks of 388 uniformed Little Rock firefighters.
“I didn’t want her to do it,” Jack McInturff said after her graduation.
“I know he was hesitant, but I’m his little girl, so of course he’s going to back me,” Melissa McInturff says. Ultimately, he did exactly that.
“I’m very proud of both of them,” says Melissa’s mother, Sharon. She keeps up with her daughter’s work by listening to a scanner at home tuned to fire department frequencies. She can hear her daughter’s truck being dispatched and can listen in as the fire is fought or the rescue call completed.
“We always know where she is and what’s going on,” Sharon McInturff says. She also used the scanner on her husband’s calls.
Jack McInturff hoped that he and his daughter could work on the same day before he retired. Rules prohibit family members from working side by side. For the first class, Melissa was 30th in line in a potential recruit class in which the city hired just 25. Before the next class rolled around, Jack ended his 30-year career. He decided to retire to open up one more spot.
Melissa bristles slightly at the notion of following in her father’s footsteps.
“I’m not doing it for him, I’m doing it for myself.” She had to complete written exams, interviews and agilityand endurance tests before being accepted by the city to enroll in its fire training academy.
“Training was extremely hard, it pushes you. It was a military structure and they didn’t take any crap,” McInturff says. “They were tough. They were real tough.” As a woman, she has to make accommodations for her size and strength, McInturff says. “I had to learn to do stuff a lot differently, I’m obviously not as strong as the men.” Her captain has taught her more day-to-day, hands-on tricks that help her overcome the strength gap.
“I’ve learned stuff I didn’t necessarily learn in training,” McInturff says. For example, she has learned to use a door frame or other sturdy object to brace herself while holding a high-pressure hose steady when fighting a blaze.
"[In the academy] they were there to teach firefighters, not woman firefighters.” McInturff says the hardest part of training was the physical challenges.
“I was the smallest one out there and I had to overcompensate for that.” She hasn’t missed a call yet on Engine 8 out of the same Central Fire Station she visited as a 12-year-old.
McInturff says if she had made that alarm years ago it would have speeded her career choice.
“If I would have made that call I would have gotten the bug right then because it is such a great job. It’s something different every day ... I love spur of the moment and this job’s perfect.”