Forced Out of Fire Academy, Women Say : Hiring: Ex-recruits contend that an audit accurately describes harassment intended to make them quit the city department. An assistant chief disputes the inquiry’s findings.

Even after she reported that she had pulled a muscle in her back, then-fire recruit Diane Cameron said the drill instructor ordered her to repeatedly lift a heavy ladder as he ridiculed her and the other women trainees.

They were too weak and didn’t have what it took to be firefighters in the Los Angeles City Fire Department, he allegedly said.

“They made my life and other females’ lives miserable,” said Cameron, 27, a 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound athlete who filed a state discrimination complaint against the department last month. “They basically ran us off the department.”

In the past seven years, about 40% of women recruits washed out of the Fire Department’s training academy, where they were reportedly “weeded out” by instructors who treated them more harshly than male recruits and relied on “subjective” evaluations, a city audit found.

The findings of the 225-page Personnel Department audit--one of the most critical evaluations ever made of the Fire Department--were disclosed Saturday by The Times. The audit said widespread cronyism, nepotism and racial discrimination were believed responsible for the department’s inability to integrate its top-level administration, which is 95% white male.

The audit found that the training academy--where recruits are drilled in the physical and technical aspects of firefighting during an intensive, 15-week course--was the focal point of problems in a department that has had difficulty retaining women and minorities. Women make up only 3% of the 3,100-member department.

The percentage of women who quit the academy or were fired was about twice the rate of male recruits, according to the audit, which will be released Wednesday at a hearing of the City Council’s Personnel Committee.

In 1984, the academy was restructured to allow recruits who were having trouble to repeat training instead of being fired. But that helped fuel resentment among many white firefighters, who felt that training standards were lowered, and who tried to run rookie women and minorities out of the department, the report said.

Since 1986, attrition rates for minorities--especially African Americans--have been higher than those for white males. About 33% of all black firefighters hired in that period have left the department--twice the percentage of white firefighters, according to Fire Department data.

“Attrition rates at the academy and during the remainder of probation need to be analyzed on an ongoing basis to ensure that the department is not only applying job-related performance standards, but is doing all it can to ‘encourage’ rather than ‘weed out’ recruits,” said the draft audit.

Assistant Chief Dean E. Cathey, a department spokesman, disputed the audit’s findings Monday, saying he has spoken with many women firefighters and never received complaints about abusive treatment in the academy or firehouses.

“To a person, I’ve never had one tell me that they have a lousy work environment,” he said.

However, the three council members who serve on the Personnel Committee said Monday that they have received numerous complaints from current women firefighters who are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation.

“The level of fear of coming forward by women on the Fire Department is much higher than women on the Police Department,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the committee chairwoman, who has studied sexual harassment in the city’s work force.

Goldberg, who said the failure rate for women is “a cause of grave concern,” noted that her office has received about two dozen complaints since the audit’s findings were reported in The Times.

“I think that the department leadership has to understand that there is an atmosphere of intimidation in the Fire Department,” Councilman Mike Hernandez said.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said he was approached in person Sunday by a number of firefighters commenting on the audit. “They were just relieved that the issue has finally seen the light of day,” he said, “and in more than one instance, indicated that the situation is worse that the report said.”

Assistant Chief Cathey faulted women who complain anonymously for not coming forward. “People who complain about discrimination privately and not publicly probably get what they deserve . . . because nothing will change,” he said.

The main reason women fail in the academy, Cathey said, is that they lack the physical strength to do tasks such as lifting ladders and pulling heavy hoses. Women selected for the academy must pass the same physical skills test as men, but Cathey said that exam is not rigid enough to accurately assess whether a candidate has the strength needed for the job. The Personnel Department is currently reviewing all hiring procedures for firefighter candidates.

Women in the academy, according to interviews with former recruits and findings in the audit, were treated more harshly and drilled harder than their male counterparts.

In Diane Cameron’s 1993 class, in which 28 of the 64 recruits were women, she said minority women were treated the worst, followed by white women, then minority men. Of the women, 11 quit or were fired before graduation.

“There was such an atmosphere of intimidation there,” said Cameron, who added that the “macho” mentality among some of the instructors was “like a high school football team gone crazy.”

She and other female recruits said they were constantly told that they did not belong in the fire service, ordered to repeat tasks such as raising ladders more than men, and subjected to insensitive remarks such as: “You have hearts of an eagle, but bodies of a pigeon,” and, “You’re like European sports cars. You run on high r.p.m.’s but need continuous maintenance.”

In her complaint filed Oct. 13 with the state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Cameron alleges that she was told she would be terminated within two days if her back did not heal from the pulled-muscle injury caused by raising ladders.

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Hurt physically and emotionally, Cameron said, she quit rather than face termination.

“I was totally depressed and ended up getting an ulcer,” said Cameron, an avid surfer and weightlifter who is still trying to become a firefighter with other departments. “But in a way, I was kind of glad to leave. Who wants to spend 20 years in that kind of environment?”

Kay Harter, 22, who was in Cameron’s class, walked out two weeks before graduation because of what she says was the constant abuse. She, too, filed a discrimination complaint with the state last month.

“It was a living hell. It was the worst experience I have ever been through in my entire life,” said Harter, who last week set a women’s record for the physical agility test administered by the Ventura County Fire Department.

“They kept saying I was going to be fired. I finally had it and walked off,” said Harter, who claims she was treated even worse after she complained that a male recruit was making constant sexual remarks.

Harter recalled one particularly disturbing incident allegedly involving a black female recruit.

As the woman put on a protective face mask, a white fire instructor took a puff from his cigar, blew the smoke into a hose leading to the recruit’s mask and plugged the end with his hand. He then laughed while the woman gagged and said, “That’s so you know what it (smoke) feels like,” Harter said.

A male recruit in the same class who was quoted in the Personnel Department’s audit also reported that women were treated differently than the men. He said all the recruits were reminded daily by the instructors that it was the worst class instructors had ever taught because half the students were women.

The class became polarized, the male recruit said. “It became male vs. female. If one of the females needed extra help or something, it was the females that helped.”

Cathey said the department offers personal strength training for women during recruitment to prepare them for the department’s physical agility test.

And to improve attrition rates, the Fire Department completely revamped the training academy curriculum in 1993 with the help of outside advisers. The new techniques have reduced male attrition rates this year from about 20% to 12%. But the failure rate for women increased to 56%.

Cathey said he was not sure why the percentage increased.

Fire Chief Donald O. Manning last week proposed a $2-million department reorganization that would create a 17-person human resources bureau to study ways of improving retention rates for women and minorities and improve tracking of discrimination and harassment complaints.