By Kimberly Vetter
The Advocate
Copyright 2006 Capital City Press
All Rights Reserved
Firefighter Pam Ransom remembers the most difficult fire she has fought during her 24 years with the Baton Rouge Fire Department.
A 17-year-old girl and her 17-month-old child were trapped inside a burning house, Ransom said.
The girls were rescued, but the smoke they inhaled killed them three days later, Ransom recalled, shaking her head.
“I love my job but I don’t like it,” she said. “My job usually means someone has lost their life or their property.”
Ransom is one of four women firefighters among the 500 working for the Baton Rouge Fire Department, which employs another 26 women in other positions.
Ransom will retire within the next five years. The other three women firefighters will retire in the next few years as well. If other women don’t take their places, the Fire Department will be devoid of women firefighters for the first time since 1977.
“We are moving backward across the country because fire departments haven’t reached a critical mass,” said Maureen McFadden, a member of the board of trustees for Women In The Fire Service Inc., which provides services, support and advocacy for women firefighters. “We need a systematic change; someone has to take steps to reach out to the disaffected population.”
Robert Combs, a spokesman with the Baton Rouge Fire Department, said the department’s recruiting efforts are not focused on a specific sex. Instead, the department provides employment information to any able-bodied person interested in becoming a firefighter, he said.
The information is distributed annually at about a dozen job fairs and career days throughout the community, he said.
About 45 percent of the department’s recruits learn about the firefighting business that way. The remaining 55 percent hear about it through friends, relatives and current or former firefighters.
The last time a woman was hired as a firefighter for the Baton Rouge Fire Department was in 1997, Fire Department spokesman Howard Ward said.
The Fire Department has about 20 to 30 openings a year for firefighters, Ward said. Women apply each year but many don’t make it through the department’s 18-week course.
A physical ability test that comprises 11 timed events, such as a hose drag and dummy carry, usually is what hangs them up, Ward said.
This year, for example, the Fire Department had 65 recruits; one was a woman, and she did not pass the upper-body strength portion of the ability test, Ward said. It was her second time to go through the program, he added.
The fairness of physical ability tests has been challenged ever since women started becoming firefighters in the early 1970s.
One of the most famous cases involving women firefighters and ability tests is the 1982 class-action lawsuit spawned by Brenda Berkman.
Berkman was among the 90 women who failed the New York Fire Department’s physical test in 1977, the first year women were given the opportunity to try apply as firefighters in New York.
Berkman, now a captain with Engine 139 in Brooklyn, sued the city and the New York City Fire Department in 1982 for sex discrimination on behalf of women applicants and won. The city was ordered to give the women a revised test, that women have passed.
The Baton Rouge Fire Department never has been sued over its physical ability test, which was designed in-house until 1999, Ward said.
Firefighters Selection Inc. developed the department’s current physical ability test, Combs said. The company talked to more than 300 firefighters from 31 departments to develop the test, according to Firefighters Selection Inc.'s Web site.
Capt. Renee Sparrow left firefighting with the Baton Rouge Fire Department six months ago to become an assistant to the fire chief’s assistant.
When Sparrow joined the department 25 years ago - the fifth woman firefighter the department hired - she didn’t have to take an ability test, she said.
Five years later, Sparrow said, she set the time standard for the department-developed test.
The test recruits do now is harder, she said.
“I don’t think a woman can pass it unless she is really strong,” Sparrow said. “You also have to be determined; you’ve got to want to do the job to pass the test.”
Some fire departments have developed programs to help women and men prepare for the physical ability test.
Austin Fire Department Academy in Austin, Texas, for example, works with the University of Texas Department of Kinesiology and Health Education to provide a 14-week program called Firepower.
Kinesiology professors Roger Ferrar and Jan Todd initiated the program in 2001, when there were only 25 women among Austin’s 1,050 firefighters, Ferrar said.
Ferrar said the goal was to increase the number of people who could pass the physical ability test, particularly women and small men. He said the program has achieved a 65-percent passing rate for candidates who adhere to the program.
Twelve women went through the program this year, Ferrar said, and 11 passed the Austin department’s physical ability test.
“You can achieve these goals with proper training,” Ferrar said.
McFadden, with Women In The Fire Service Inc., agreed.
“Women have got to start training for the test as early as possible,” she said. “If they really work at it (the physical ability test), it’s doable.”
Ward said the Baton Rouge Fire Department does not have a training program for recruits. And to prevent unfair competition, recruits are not told what is on the physical ability test until they take it.
But, Ward said, the department does encourage recruits to get in shape.
“When we look for candidates, we emphasize it’s a very physical job,” he said.
Ransom and Sparrow said it is important for women to be able to perform at a certain physical level to be a firefighter.
But they also said that, once a woman has passed those physical tests, she should be accepted just like her male counterparts.
After 24 years on the job, Ransom said, she is still proving herself to some of her male coworkers.
“Some attitudes have changed, but others haven’t,” Ransom said. “For some, I don’t think they will ever change.”