Just part of the team: female firefighters

Fire departments have seen a lot of changes in the last few decades. Separate sleeping areas have been created to accommodate women, whether it’s in individual suite-type settings for all the firefighters or separate quarters for the women on staff.

Fire stations are now designed and built from the start to include private areas for nursing mothers, along with separate showers and bathroom facilities for the women on staff.

For instance, the latest fire station being constructed in Overland Park, across from Blue Valley West High School, will include individual suite-style bathrooms instead of having female and male bathrooms so that they are built to accommodate anyone.

“That has been an evolution and a culture transition for some folks in the fire service,” said Overland Park Fire Chief Bryan Dehner, who added that the first Overland Park fire station built with women in mind was constructed in 1987.

There’s also been an internal shift in mindset. For many departments, women have been an accepted part of the staff for decades. Nationwide, the first woman was hired onto the fire service in the early 1970s.

“There’s been women in the fire service for going on 45 years,” said Carol Brown, vice president of iWomen, a national association representing women in fire and emergency services.

And yet the number of women who choose to make fire service a career continues to be low.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of firefighters who are women was just 5.7 percent of the total population of firefighters in 2014. Overland Park has four women among its 149 firefighters. Gladstone has three women to serve among 38 firefighters.

The percentage of women in the fire service is significantly lower than other non-traditional jobs for women or men.

“If you take Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marine and take active duty and reserve military, they have 16.53 percent women, so almost three times that of the fire service,” said Brown, who also serves as a division chief of training for Boulder Fire-Rescue in Colorado.

She attributes the low percentage to a lack of marketing and targeted recruitment, along with existing culture and perceptions in the United States.

Kansas City area fire departments are hoping to change the dialogue to let young women know it is a career that is possible.

Whether it’s holding day camps, partnering with high schools, conducting station tours or just leading by example, Kansas City area fire departments and the women who work within them are hoping more women see it as a career that’s open to all.

“You can see the looks in people’s eyes when they see opportunities that they may not have realized existed,” Liberty Fire Chief Mike Snider said of the tours they often do with local Girl Scout troops. “Everyone is capable of doing what they set their mind to; you just have to have that desire and want it, and it can happen.”

The Overland Park Fire Department hired its first woman into the fire service in 1990.

Battalion Chief Julie Harper, who is starting her 26th year with the Overland Park Fire Department, was one of the department’s first women hired as a firefighter. Although she says she’s sure not everyone was probably thrilled with her addition decades ago, she never encountered any discrimination.

“Quite the opposite; I had great men support me and teach me and kind of show me the way to do things,” she says. “I know that’s not every woman’s story or every guy’s story, period, that’s out there.”

She said the confidence she had in her own ability and skills helped pave her way.

“Anything that looks a bit different, there’s going to be a bit of a spotlight — not maliciously, not necessarily intentionally, but it’s like, ‘I’ve never seen this before,’ ” she said. “Whether or not you get hung up on that spotlight can help guide your own path.”

For Harper, she was just doing the job she loved.

She never set out to be a firefighter. Instead, it was a career that found her.

Harper wanted to be a doctor and got a job as an EMT and paramedic to save money for medical school. As part of her job as a paramedic, she’d also spend time occasionally on the fire truck. Soon, she got “bit by the bug.”

She loves the variety and challenge — both physically and mentally — of the job each day and likes helping to solve problems in the community.

“When somebody calls 911, even if it’s a low-key call for us, that’s still a crisis for them, and so it’s neat and pleasing to be able to bring that calmness to somebody’s crisis,” she said.

Harper now serves as a battalion chief overseeing three different station houses.

It is a similar story for Tracey Cheney, a fire captain with the Gladstone Fire Department. The 20-year fire service veteran began her career as a paramedic, but after the emergency services department she was working for was rumored to be merging with the fire department, she decided to go through firefighter training.

The merger never happened, but Cheney was hooked and soon joined the Gladstone Fire Department.

“I fell in love with it,” she said, adding that she’s a self-described “adrenaline junkie.”

Cheney and Harper have both found that in their departments, it isn’t a matter of whether you are male or female, it’s more of a team effort and mindset.

“It’s what is your strength that you bring to the team,” Cheney said.

While Harper and Cheney said the job was the perfect fit, being a firefighter isn’t a career for everyone — regardless of one’s gender.

It’s a job that demands a high level of physical fitness, a passion for helping others and an ability to be a team player.

While the exact reason why fewer women seem to be attracted to the career is unknown, there are several barriers that can make it a more difficult career for women to pursue.

Among the most significant obstacles are the physical requirements of the job.

“For both Fire and EMS, we look for occupational athletes that can serve a 30- to 35-year career. That is not an easy job, the work that they are doing,” Dehner, the Overland Park fire chief, said.

To become a firefighter, most fire departments in the area require that candidates pass the Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT), a sequence of eight events designed to specifically test whether a person is physically able to complete the essential elements of the job. While completing the tasks, the candidate must also wear a 50-pound vest and the protective clothing firefighters wear on the job. Another 25-pound weight is added during the stair climbing event.

Both men and women are required to complete the same standardized test, but the test is more challenging for women who lack the upper body strength of their male counterparts.

Rich Lehmann, an assistant professor and chairman of the Fire Service Administration at Johnson County Community College (which has a fire science program to train future firefighters), said that although female students in the program often do well in their academic coursework, they may struggle when they reach the CPAT.

“For example, we have one out of three or one out of four pass it the first time,” Lehmann said.

Overall, the percentage of students who pass the CPAT on the first try is about 50 percent.

While it does require some strength and skill, women in the field say it is possible to meet the physical demands of the job.

“A woman is going to have to be more aware of body mechanics,” Harper said. “We really do have to, I think, work smarter, not harder, when it comes to physical, because we don’t always necessarily have just the mass to do the job.”

As an instructor at Metropolitan Community College’s Fire Academy program in Independence, Megan Penrod said she works with both women and men who struggle with the physical test to teach them strategies and tips to best use their body weight and mechanics to meet the demands of the job.

“Obviously, physically, women are different, so you are on that stair stepper with 75 pounds on your back, (and) for some of the females that go through that’s half your body weight,” she said.

At just 5 foot 1 inch herself, Penrod is anything but meek. The former semi-professional football player is also a firefighter with the city of Overland Park. Despite being in the best shape of her life, she said the physical test was still a challenge for her as well.

“The physical part I think scares people away,” she said. “It’s very intimidating and you have to work incredibly hard.”

The hours of the job may also be an obstacle for some women. Most firefighters typically work a 24-hour shift, eating and sleeping at work.

In Overland Park, firefighters work 24 hours on, then have 24 hours off. They repeat this schedule three times, before getting four days off in a row.

The schedule may not be ideal for everyone, particularly those who have children and may have difficulty finding 24-hour care.

But Cheney, a mom to a son and two stepchildren, says she always felt the schedule gave her more time with her son while he was growing up. Although there were times when she had to work weekends and holidays, overall she had more days off than most working mothers.

“When he had school activities, if they have it during the week, I could go volunteer for stuff, I could help out in the classroom. I actually was able to spend more time with him with his activities than not,” she said. “For me, I loved it. It was a plus for me.”

Olathe Fire Chief Jeff DeGraffenreid said families are also able to come and visit during the evenings.

“We are building an environment where it’s family-friendly,” he said.

Fighting fires in an important part of the job, but it isn’t how firefighters spend the majority of their time.

According to the Overland Park Fire Department, 80 percent of the calls fire departments receive are medical.

“We don’t go on fires every day. We don’t go on car wrecks every day,” Penrod said.

When they aren’t out on a call, firefighters spend their day checking their equipment, training or working out. In the evenings, they are able to relax or spend free time on their own.

Penrod, who has been an athlete most her life, says she was attracted to the fire service because of the camaraderie and team environment the job provides.

“I spend a third of my life with these guys,” she said.

As one of the newer firefighters, with four years of experience, she said she hasn’t faced any challenges in the department because of her gender.

“I get more grief over my size,” she said. “I’ve got to ask for help to get stuff out of the cabinets in the kitchen — they’ll give me grief about that.”

While she may get teased on occasion for her small stature, Penrod says most firefighters aren’t immune to the jovial atmosphere in the fire house, regardless of their gender.

She’s seen as a valuable member of the team because of her skills in the field. Gender, she said, doesn’t enter the equation.

“That stigma has gone away with time,” she said.

While the recent decades have ushered in a wave of change for fire departments across the country, the percentage of women who embrace the career is still in the single digits.

Firefighters said that’s in part due to the nation’s culture.

“Culturally it is not something that a young girl when they are playing on the playground says “Ooh, maybe I’ll be this,” Harper said. “It’s not usually one of the things that pops up on the radar and that’s just part of our culture.”

It’s not a job for everyone, but Harper believes the fire service in general needs to do a better job of recruiting women who enjoy the central aspects of the job, like physical activity and being part of a team.

“I think as a profession we need to get better at finding where are girls that might have that tendency,” she said. “So it is going to be someone who doesn’t mind going out and working hard, getting sweaty, and so a lot of times it is going to be your athletics teams, so it’s going to be the girls on the soccer team or the lacrosse team or the volleyball team or the track team.”

She was one of the driving forces behind Camp Inferno, a week-long residential camp put on by the Overland Park Fire Department for high school girls to experience what it’s like to be a firefighter.

During the week, girls carried fire hoses, completed the maze in the Overland Park Fire Department’s training center while wearing firefighting gear and rappeled off the side of the building to get a taste of what life might be like on the job.

“The reason we started it was to let girls know, ‘Hey this is an option for a career path for you’ and being able to show them that there are things you’ll have to figure out that will be hard, but you can overcome the obstacles that are there,” Harper said.

The camp ran until 2008, when it shut down due to the recession, but its legacy and mission was part of the inspiration for a new day camp being offered this spring by the Olathe Fire Department.

The one-day event will take place March 18 and will include a motivational speaker, firefighting activities and information about what kind of education is necessary to become a firefighter.

The day camp is open to ages 14 to 19 and will be led by the women who are firefighters with the Olathe Fire Department.

“We’re just trying to reach out and get them earlier than we have before,” DeGraffenreid said.

While the camp will be open to anyone, DeGraffenreid said it’s being marketed to girls.

The Olathe Fire Department also plans to partner with the Olathe School District in its 21st Century public safety program. The public safety program, which will have two strands including law enforcement and fire science, will be housed inside Olathe West High School when it opens in August 2017 and will give high school students an early start at experiencing aspects of the career before they graduate high school.

Any student within the Olathe school district would be able to transfer to Olathe West High School to attend the program.

“We need to reach down farther for all students, but especially female students to know that this is a career choice and they can be great at it,” DeGraffenreid said.

This story was originally published January 26, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Just part of the team: female firefighters."