In a message dated 04/26/2000 7:52:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Betty

 On the radio, I keep hearing grumbles from guys who say that as soon as the
 going gets tough in a fire, the women firefighters leave because "I'm not
 comfortable" or they go take a water break ... any resemblance of your
 experience?

 mag
  >>

The answer to your question needs to include a little history of affirmative
action practices in the US fire service.  First, let me say all things being
equal, I doubt that females are more susceptible to bailing than males -- all
things being equal.  Probably every department has a guy or two or three who
are known "bailers."

In the seventies and eighties, a number of departments began to abandon
certain hiring criteria due to fear of potential litigation.  Some of the
changes were appropriate.  At one time there was a height requirement.
Eventually that requirement was challenged and discovered to be
inappropriately discriminatory.

Tests that had been used for years to determine an applicant's physical
abilities did not assess one's ability to perform job-related skills.  The
physical agility test was usually a sand bag-carrying evolution.  Applicants
had to carry sand bags of a certain weight from point A to point B, and back
to point A again.  This might have to be repeated several times in
succession.

It's fun to know that you can do that, but the skill won't serve you on the
fireground.  It doesn't give a good indication of whether you are going to be
able to carry a 90 lb. standpipe pack (a pack filled with fire hose) up five
flights of stairs either, or whether you are going to be able to do anything
with the hose once you're up there.  In the end, the sand bag test lost in
favor of job-related assessment tests.  The change was a good thing.
Job-related assessment tests can be a lot more stringent, depending upon how
they designed.

The written tests were changed from a score grade to pass/fail.  That's the
change that wasn't a good idea.  The reason for that change was not
complimentary.  There was the assumption that minorities (i.e., blacks,
Hispanics, and females) would perform less well.  If the hiring decision was
made based on the highest scores, then minorities would never have a chance
of being hired.  In fact, if minorities had been denied adequate education in
the past, as they have been in the history of this nation, the answer was not
to acquiesce, but to ensure that the level of education was equal.

The second change was made in the interest of quickly meeting a quota.  The
quota system was never the intent of affirmative action, but in order to make
things look good fast, that's how affirmative action was perverted.  The true
intent of affirmative action was to make opportunities available where they
had never been available before.  In an Arizona fire department, for example,
firefighters volunteered their weekends to run a program for female
applicant's to work out and build their upper body strength so that they
would have an equal chance of passing the physical agility test.  There was
no cost to the taxpayers -- this was strictly a volunteer mission.

That is how affirmative action is supposed to work.

Back to the problem:
The physical agility tests are pass/fail as well.  In other words, if a woman
struggled to hang a smoke ejector on top of a doorway as part of the test,
but eventually did it, there would be no mention of her struggle to perform
in the test results.  She might not have the physical ability to perform as
well as her male counterpart, but she "passed" the test.  Unfortunately, some
women were hired that way.  Some blacks, and other minorities were hired that
way as well.  If a fire department wanted to meet a quota for
African-Americans, it might hire the AA who got a 70% on his written agility
test over a cauc who scored 90%.  On paper though, they both passed.  Again,
no score would be mentioned.

This is by no means a slur to the African-American community, it's a matter
of fact statement of the way the system had been changed to make it look like
they were hiring on an equal basis.  It was, if you'll pardon the expression,
so much whitewash (no pun intended, but if you're giving credit I'll take
it).

So, as much as it grieves me to say, there have been cases where unqualified
women were hired.  Physical inability is likely to lead to "premature bail."
I am also grieved that male firefighters who make these complaints don't
choose to look at the root cause and decide instead to slam the women.  I
have experienced vilification first hand over this very issue, so it's
something I've considered a lot over the years.

The other thing to consider with these complaints is the source.  They may be
bald-faced lies by guys with too much testosterone.  They might just be
ticked off because they can't walk around the firehouse in their underwear
anymore.  I heard some corkers of lies about a woman in Maryland who
sustained severe injuries on her way to a call.  She is permanently disabled
from having been dragged 28 feet by her fire truck because she fell off
trying to don her boots while the truck was leaving the station (which she
shouldn't have been doing -- but the price she paid was sure as hell high
enough).  She didn't get run over completely by the back tires because she
hung onto the rear axle the entire time she was being dragged.

The lies some Prince Georges Co. fire department bastards told about the way
she was injured were incredible.  I knew they were lies because I was best
friends with one of PG. Co's battalion chiefs.  He trained her in the fire
academy, and he was best friends with the guy who drove the truck on the call
during which she was injured.  I had the scoop on what happened from a
credible source.  Then the department used her in public relations because of
her disability just to make the command look good.  They really used the hell
out of her.  It's a sore subject.

For whatever it's worth, I never bailed out of a fire.  On the other hand, if
the need had existed, I would have bailed and gossip be damned.  In a
structure with a truss roof, ten minutes of burning time means it's time for
the incident commander to call his or her people out and move to an exterior
attack.

In a fire department that is run properly from the chief's office, women
bailers aren't going to be a problem.  If anyone gets the reputation for
being a bailer, either his or her fellow firefighters will take care of it
informally, or the problem will be handled formally by the chain of command.


Short question -- long answer.

Betty Spaghetti