Fire Authority Hiring Policy Draws Calls : Employment: Friends and foes respond about recruitment drive that failed to add women to force. Accident forces cancellation of meeting on halting effort.

The Orange County Fire Authority received a flurry of calls Wednesday from people who vented frustration or offered support over the department’s plans to possibly scrap a yearlong recruitment aimed at female applicants.

Despite that recruitment effort, only two women were among the more than 900 applicants who passed the department’s recent physical endurance test. Fire officials said they believe the poor outcome has to do in part with the long delay in the process caused by the county’s bankruptcy.

The department may offer another test and make an effort to contact women who were invited to take one last summer but never showed up, a possibility that has angered some rank-and-file firefighters and men who passed the test.

A scheduled Wednesday meeting, at which top fire officials planned to discuss the recruitment process, was postponed after an accident involving a Fire Authority vehicle, Assistant Chief Chip Prather said. But the department received about 16 calls Wednesday morning on both sides of the issue.

Some calls came from residents, others from angry male applicants, and others from women who didn’t show up for the test because they believed the bankruptcy had eliminated the job opportunities, Capt. Dan Young said.

“About half feel we shouldn’t make any consideration for race or gender, and others feel that we should be doing much more,” he said of the callers, who tied up his lines for about three hours.

“Neither of those are realistic. But if you have extremes on either side, it probably tells us that we are where we need to be. . . . Somewhere in the middle lies a good compromise that will pretty much upset everybody a little bit and not upset everybody in an outrageous way.”