Readers React: Upper body strength, not poor recruitment, keeps more women from becoming L.A. firefighters

To the editor: The March 12 article “Garcetti still struggling to expand the number of female firefighters” would have us believe that the reason that we have so few women as firefighters in the Los Angeles Fire Department is a need for more aggressive recruitment programs. That is not the reason at all.

The basic problem is that firefighters are required to have more upper body strength than most women have — or, for that matter, than most men have.

Firefighters going into a burning building have to wear heavy insulated clothing, carry a radio and carry a heavy air tank on their backs. On top of this, they are expected to have enough reserve strength to drag an unconscious person to safety.

Over the years, promising female candidates have been given extensive strength training programs to get them through the physical agility tests they must pass, and some of them successfully get through. But later on, many of them go out on disability because of back and other injuries.

Larry Pearson, Burbank

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To the editor: I have an answer for Fire Commission President Delia Ibarra, who said, “We need to figure out if there is anything we can do with policies and practices that can improve our retention rate without sacrificing any of the quality.”

What she did not say is that firefighters need brute strength to lift and carry equipment and victims in fires, and women are not as strong as men. It is that obvious and simple.

Elizabeth Norling, Long Beach

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