Test of Guts and Strength

When Margaret Mkrtichian was 15 years old and saw her neighbor’s roof in flames, she also saw her future. Watching the firefighters, she thought, “That’s pretty cool. They’re not even scared. People are running out of the house, and these people are going in.”

That was seven years ago. Mkrtichian has since earned an associate’s degree in fire science at Rio Hondo College. Last week, she finished the school’s Firefighter Entrance Exam Techniques course--a physically grueling class she has taken five times.

She has never passed.

Women have made inroads in many fields formerly closed to them, but entering the ranks of firefighters has proved especially difficult. Despite more than two decades in the field, women still account for only 2% of all firefighters nationally.

The reasons are varied. There are few vacancies and, therefore, few opportunities for hiring. Long-held attitudes have been slow to change, despite efforts both inside and outside departments. The emphasis on upper-body strength has made it difficult for even physically fit women to pass the abilities tests.

It is that strength test that bedevils Mkrtichian and countless other women.

She is one of half a dozen women in a class of 36 at Rio Hondo--a college that trains would-be firefighters from throughout Southern California. She holds her own on the “hose drag” (running with a hose over her shoulder), “ladder hoist” (extending a ladder with a pulley), “forced entry” (repeatedly hitting a sled with a sledge hammer) and “body drag” (hauling a 160-pound, man-shaped sack of sand around a traffic cone) before carrying a hose pack up and down a set of stairs 25 times.

She can do all the tasks, but not within the required 9 1/2 minutes. This time it took her 12 minutes, last time 15. At 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 110 pounds, she is smaller than most of the firefighter candidates and has had to learn techniques of leverage and lifting to compensate.

“Come on, Alphabet,” a male classmate calls out to Mkrtichian in a training session as she hauls the hose up one last hill. “You can do it.” It is a note of encouragement--and camaraderie--that has historically been absent for women trying to enter the ranks of firefighters, especially in Los Angeles.

Encouragement for a Comrade

It was 17 years ago that the Los Angeles Fire Department hired its first female firefighter. In 1994, 3.1% of the force was female; today, the number has fallen, to 2.8%.

A city audit of the LAFD in 1994 reported widespread racism and sexism, a situation underscored with firehouse screenings that same year of the “Female Follies” videotape. The video, shot by a male fire captain in a training exercise at a city fire academy, showed women struggling with some tasks--like lifting ladders--and was spliced together with footage of men easily succeeding at the same jobs. The film was nationally publicized and seen as indicative of the mind-set within the department.

Things snowballed from there. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 1994 against the LAFD and its former chief, Donald Manning, on behalf of five female firefighters and one Latino male firefighter. The suit alleged “systematic discrimination and harassment” against women and minorities, saying they were intimidated by supervisors, evaluated unfairly and denied training and opportunities for advancement.

The case, one of six suits filed on behalf of female firefighters against the department, is the only one that remains unresolved--although the parties are currently engaged in settlement discussions.

The 3,000-member department, under a different chief, is trying to counteract the legal and public relations fallout of the lawsuits and the “Follies” tape.

“That [videotape] achieved such wide distribution that it probably painted a very negative picture that is hard to overcome,” says Fire Chief William Bamattre, who was sworn into office in 1996 after Manning resigned.

California, overall, has the greatest number of female firefighters in the country, with 1,008--but just 86 are with the LAFD.

In San Diego, 8.4% of firefighters are women; in San Francisco, where a lawsuit forced the city to include more women by consent decree, 11.7% are women; Pasadena has 8.8%; Anaheim 6%. The numbers in Long Beach have increased from less than 1% five years ago to 2.2% today.

According to data from the nonprofit Women in the Fire Service Inc. and other organizations that track employment statistics, there is a wide range of percentages: Madison, Wis., the city with the highest ratio of female firefighters in the country, has 14.8%; New York City has just one-third of 1%; Garden Grove, New Orleans and Atlantic City, N.J., are among those with none.

In Los Angeles, Bamattre’s goal is a work force that reflects the community. “I see the value in having women because statistically, 50% of our incidents would involve women,” he said. “It’s no different a goal than having ethnic balance.”

Due in part to a 1974 consent decree mandating that half the department’s new hires be minorities, the LAFD is now 44% nonwhite. It has a long way to go to achieve such parity with women, he said, but it is trying.

In an effort to gain new recruits and retain the few women the department has, five years ago Bamattre expanded the department’s sexual harassment training. He’s also working on plans for a 24-hour child-care program.

At the request of former city council member Jackie Goldberg, the LAFD conducted a study earlier this year to learn why women leave the department and to devise recruitment strategies. The study made numerous specific suggestions about how the department could improve, from using female instructors for training to holding captains accountable for fairness and equity within their ranks.

Bamattre is trying to tackle the issues on many fronts.

But, say women who are on the force, his greatest, and most appreciated, improvement has been the retrofitting of all stations with gender-separate locker rooms.

A Bathroom for Women Only

“The guys don’t come in here,” 41-year-old firefighter Sandra Smith says of her “condo”--the second-floor bathroom she’s furnished with an easy chair and television at Fire Station No. 34 in the Crenshaw district.

As recently as two years ago, Smith, who has been with the LAFD 12 years, shared bathroom and shower facilities with her male colleagues, using a sliding sign on the door to indicate she was inside.

“Even if it said ‘female occupied,’ they might come in,” she explained. “I would always have to be aware if I was in there . . . I’m very happy we got the restrooms.”

Still, out of habit, the usually reserved and soft-spoken woman calls out “all clear” before walking through the door and down the hallway to the room where all the firefighters, who work 24-hour shifts, sleep while they’re on duty.

Smith’s bed is in a corner just inside the door, one of roughly a dozen twin-size beds set up camp-style. All the firefighters are repeatedly awaken by alarms to respond to calls. Smith keeps a fan by her bed to circulate the air--and help drown out the sounds of snoring.

Like most female firefighters in the LAFD, she is the only one at her station. She was attracted to firefighting by the excitement of the work and because it pays well: Starting base salary for the LAFD is about $40,000, but with overtime, the pay is often much more.

Before she joined the department, she was a physical education teacher for the Compton Unified School District. She saw an article about a female firefighter and a job fair announcement in Muscle and Fitness magazine, and decided to give it a try. After four months of training, she was hired in 1989.

Smith, like all firefighters in the LAFD, is trained as an emergency medical technician as well as in fighting fires. And the bulk of the work they do--80%--is in response to medical situations rather than fires. Both male and female firefighters are required, when they aren’t responding to calls, to clean, shop for groceries and cook meals.

Smith’s goals include moving up the ranks. She has taken--and passed--the exams to become an inspector and expects that she’ll be considered for a promotion in the coming year. After 12 years of fighting fires, she’d like to spend her time teaching people how to prevent them, which an inspector’s job would let her do.

Sue Slates is the only woman in her firehouse--Station No. 88 in Sherman Oaks. She is 36 and has two young boys, an 8-month-old and a 2-year-old. She’s been with the department 11 years and has lived through its ups and downs. “You can probably find that in every occupation--that there’s some history that doesn’t flatter the people in the occupation that you’re in,” said Slates.

“I’ve made very close relationships with the people that I work with,” she said. “I enjoy working with these people . . . I love my job.”

Keeping her job, she said, is worth juggling child-care responsibilities and going days without seeing her husband, who works as a firefighter in Beverly Hills.

LAFD firefighters work one day on, one day off, one day on, four days off. Slates and her husband work opposite schedules so they can share child-care duties, but that doesn’t always work. If she or her husband has to work late on a fire call or is called to work overtime, as they frequently are, it can be tough to find child care. Slates is looking forward to the planned 24-hour child-care facility, which is proposed as part of the department’s training facility in central Los Angeles, and would be open to the children of all firefighters, male and female.

A target date for opening the center has not been set, and numerous issues remain to be resolved, but Bamattre says he is committed to the project.

Like establishing separate locker room facilities for men and women, Bamattre sees the child-care facility as an important step in creating a more comfortable work environment for men and women.

“I think where we’ve made our mistakes is we’re always in a reactionary mode,” said Bamattre, who is focusing his recruitment efforts on younger women in the hopes that they may join the department some day.

Responding to Recruitment

It will take time before recruitment efforts and improvements within the department are relected in the number of women on the force. But the stage for change has been set.

The LAFD regularly sends representatives to job fairs, college athletic events and high school career days to gather interest cards from young men and women who are considering a job in the fire service.

During the last two recruitment periods, in 1998 and 2000, they received significantly more interest cards from women than they had before. This year, there were 2,117 interest cards from women, but few will make it into the department. Two years ago, only three women were hired by the LAFD from among the thousands of interest cards received.

The LAFD’s hiring process takes between six months and two years, and begins with a written test that is administered only once every two years. The last written test was given in early December. Those who pass the exam--about half of the 6,500 who took it will--move on to phase two, the interview. How candidates score on their interviews determines their rank on the Fire Department’s list of potential hires.

As the department anticipates vacancies, those who ranked highest on the list are given a medical exam and subjected to a background investigation. If they clear those hurdles, they take the physical abilities test--an obstacle course meant to simulate in-the-field experiences.

That test was among the issues targeted in the ACLU discrimination lawsuit.

According to the complaint, women were required to perform with a heavier ladder--known as Big Bertha--than men. The ladder women used weighed 105 pounds; the men used one that weighed 85 pounds. And, the suit charged, the female trainees were assigned additional and repeated physical tasks beyond what was required of the men and to wear full uniforms on hot days--days on which male recruits were permitted to wear lightweight clothing.

Bamattre says that one key strategy in addressing unequal treatment--real or perceived--in the department has been to increase counseling of supervisors in gender issues and in ways to prevent sexual harassment.

“Our training has always been notorious for its regimentation,” Bamattre said. “We’ve had firefighters from other agencies that don’t succeed in our training, but the perception that women were treated poorly and had a tougher time, without a doubt, hurt us.”

Bamattre says he is committed to changing the department into a more female-friendly place, but the effects of his policy changes will take time to seed. He accepts that they may not bear fruit until after he leaves office.

“I think some of the things we’re doing now won’t come to fruition ‘til five or six years down the road, but you have to do that. You have to make that commitment to eventually get that steady stream,” he said.

“I haven’t been as successful [hiring] women as I wanted to, but on the flip side, I take heart in the progress we’ve made on the ethnic balance because it was a similar process,” he said.

Three years ago, Bamattre instituted a program that introduces high school students to the profession. A quarter of those enrolled are female. At a recent toy drive, female firefighters handed out gifts to the children.

Bamattre is sending a message: Women can be firefighters, too.

That sentiment is mirrored in a recent recruitment campaign. Hanging on a wall outside Bamattre’s office is a poster picturing a young girl in an oversized firefighter’s uniform, with the slogan “A little girl’s dream becomes a woman’s reality.”