Los Angeles outfitted most of its 106 fire stations with costly women's lockers and women's showers, while politicians as well as fire chiefs Donald Manning and William Bamattre
engaged in years of lip service, conjuring up an image of a new, professional class of woman firefighters.
Women came to figure prominently in the praise party on the LAFD's Web site,
Welcome to Los Angeles Fire Department Los Angeles Fire Department where the Hero of the Month, for six months running — in a department of mostly men — has been Tamara Chick, a woman so key to the department's goals that she is now in charge of female recruitment.
There's just one problem, and it's
a problem no fire chief, mayor or recruiter wants to admit. In a department of 3,940 people, the second largest municipal firefighting force in the U.S., the
Weekly has learned that the women who work on the fire line could squeeze inside a Hummer limo.
Just 27 women are actually fighting Los Angeles fires.
The number is staggering in its shock value. In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the department lured just four women — three of whom didn't make it. In this fiscal year, the Fire Department has managed to recruit eight women, two of whom have already washed out. Few of the eight will end up wearing the yellow helmet and jacket of a firefighter. . . .
What these two women saw — and experienced — is not what you might think.
Nobody tried to make either of them fail. No "old boys" got in their way. Mary was admired by her male boss and encouraged at each step to be a firefighter. "I was just too slow," she says. Firefighting equipment, like the one-man ladders, started "getting heavier," and she began to realize she wasn't strong enough to repeatedly lift it — a necessary skill. Eight weeks into the training — which causes plenty of men to wash out — Mary was stunned to realize that her body had begun "breaking down."
Vesey's story is much the same. She was contacted by the department after applying online and joined the training academy in August. She was unprepared for how tough it was. "I would fail on the hose-lay and only have a couple of hours on the ladder," she recalls. "Then I would fail the ladder."
But of the captains who trained her along with 45 men, Vesey says, "I respected them. I wanted to be on their crew. The people at the tower were phenomenal. They really wanted you to learn.". . . .
Today, Los Angeles boasts a dozen newly built locker rooms for women citywide. Most days, they sit eerily empty, and men sometimes use the space to study.
The abandoned lockers are a testament to a social-engineering experiment gone bad, a failed dream unfolding from New York to San Francisco to Oakland — to Los Angeles.. . . .
No firefighting women died during the attacks on the World Trade Center, because New York City has just 31 women out of 11,600 firefighters. Women represent only 2.5 percent of the nearly 300,000 professional firefighters nationwide. At the Los Angeles County Fire Department, a sprawling agency that protects many small cities not covered by the LAFD, women make up less than 1 percent. In Long Beach, 2.8 percent. By those paltry standards, the LAFD is slightly ahead.
Yet politicians in L.A. appear clueless about what is actually unfolding at fire academies and fire stations, repeating the 1990s view that women are being kept off the fire lines by bias and prejudice.
"We need more women because they add a depth and diversity," says City Councilman Richard Alarcon. "This old-boy network needs to get onboard with today's reality and stop sticking its head in the sand. I am hopeful the [new] chief will accomplish this."
In truth, there's little evidence that Alarcon is right — and former chief William Bamattre tells the Weekly that the effort inside City Hall to continue portraying the force or its brass as impeding women "is wrong." "The reality is these are brutal jobs and most women don't want it," says a captain who refused to be named because he fears a political backlash. "It is not the romantic career portrayed 20 years ago.". . . .
Since the summer of 2006,
the LAFD has hired some 200 new members a year to replace retiring firefighters, signing up just 12 women along with 402 men. Those 12 began as a crowd of several hundred women who showed up at recruiting events, signed up online or attended pancake breakfasts hosted by firefighters.
But those hundreds vanished after the first physical hurdle — the Candidate Physical Ability Test, which involves wearing 75 pounds of protective clothing and gear while climbing and running.
Just 12 hardy women attempted to make it through the months of training, but few survived. Five are struggling to endure rigorous, 17-week academies now in progress. Two are on city-paid injury leave. Five resigned or were terminated. None has become a full-fledged department employee — and if history is any guide, few of them will ever fight fires.. . .
Recruiting has become a pricey endeavor, with
taxpayers ponying up $82,692 to send a single recruit through the drill-tower academy — and spending another $82,692 each time a failed recruit is encouraged to try again.
"We have spent a lot of money on them," says Bruce Whidden, a public-information officer with the city's personnel department. "We don't want to throw them away. Our process for hiring is very expensive to the taxpayer. [The trainee has] been poked and prodded. We have spent a lot of hours on [them] — and money."
Pile onto those costs the pay for injured trainees who reap firefighter injury pay even if they have not made it to a real job. In a vast department with just 99 women — and that's counting a lot of desk jobs — there are many injuries. Currently, 16 women are on disability with work-related injuries.
Female firefighters are also lining up in record numbers to file lawsuits and claims, and getting big settlements and jury awards.
Less than 3 percent of city firefighters, fire paramedics, fire administrators and fire investigators are women. Yet according to an audit by the city's personnel department in 2006, that tiny group accounted for
56 percent of the often multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the LAFD between 1996 and 2005.. . .
Then came a notorious video dubbed the "Female Follies" by the media. In it, a handful of women, including a perfume saleswoman from Macy's and an 18-year-old babysitter, were seen awkwardly struggling to climb over a 5-foot wall. The video was reportedly leaked to the media by a furious female captain and resulted in intense criticism of the male instructors who made it.
But almost nobody — including the media — asked whether the women could actually perform the drills. The
Weekly has learned that
the 25 women who were in training at the time of the "Female Follies" were given special pay for months by the city — unlike the men in that same class — to undergo extra preparation before facing the academy.
The extra training failed miserably — and the video, it turns out, did not exaggerate the women's problems. "The women were brought onboard and paid 65 percent of a firefighter's salary and paid to work out," says Captain Kevin Kearns, who taught at the academy. Yet in the end, "it was a complete failure."
The political flap over the imagery of flailing women — although it was an accurate representation — led to the forced retirement in 1995 of Fire Chief Manning. City Councilwoman Goldberg rode the controversy to full effect, claiming that the department was a "paramilitary" organization full of sexist white men. But there was virtually no discussion of whether women could handle, or even wanted, the work. In 1996, Bamattre was hired as chief by Mayor Richard Riordan, to try again. Bamattre hired far more minorities, but built the count of women to only about 83 — a number that included many paramedics who did not fight fires.. . .
In fact, some firefighters say
Bamattre quietly rolled back strict physical requirements, just like Manning, implementing a secret "no fail" policy to pass women who plainly could not heft chain saws up ladders or run with heavy hoses, or who had other physical deficiencies. In the almost entirely male yet multiracial force, firefighters were furious that academy rejects were getting through, and many questioned whether Bamattre was jeopardizing firefighters and the public.
Bamattre says that charge is just plain untrue, telling the
Weekly: "The physical standards have never been lowered to bring in women." He says the standards in fact were and are being raised, and that creating a double standard "is not something I ever would have stood for." (LAFD Battalion Chief Richard Rideout refused to discuss whether there was a no-fail policy for women, adding cryptically, "It doesn't happen anymore. Everything was revamped" when Chief Barry took over.). . .
Then, in 2005,
City Controller Laura Chick alleged in an audit that Bamattre was engaged in a rollback of physical requirements. In the audit, motivated in part by the Pierce dog-food debacle and a hazing incident in 2003 known as Ratgate,
Chick found that Bamattre had overruled the drillmaster's recommendations in nine of 30 cases of female recruits who failed one or more tests. Only two of the nine women in Chick's audit, despite tremendous investment by the LAFD and by the women themselves, got through their probationary year. . . .
Then last May, a former drillmaster at the Frank Hotchkins Memorial Training Center testified in Superior Court that
he had been ordered by two high-ranking chiefs to pass women, and had stood up to their double standard. "I recommended termination on 95 percent of the women that could not throw that ladder," testified Captain Scott Campos, now at Fire Station 5.
"And in all cases, it was overlooked — and they were sent to the field."
Bamattre's alleged lowering of standards "put people out in the field that weren't qualified," says Lima, who won a $3.75 million judgment after he claimed his superiors retaliated against him — for making life as tough for women firefighters as he did for the men.
Lima requested a Board of Rights hearing to clear his name after being charged with jeopardizing the safety of Melissa Kelley, who claimed she was refused help
when she dropped a ladder on herself. After the Kelley dustup, then
Deputy Chief Andrew Fox ordered an increase from two to three in the number of firefighters who carry the 35-foot wooden ladder at fires. When Lima struck back in a lawsuit of his own, the bitterness roiling the department turned against Kelley — herself a former instructor — who was now accused of being the bully.. . .
Lima and other firefighters are still livid,
saying requiring three people to lift a ladder wastes manpower during fires — in order to help very few women. "It basically took
a third member, handcuffed them, and delayed other vital operations on the ground, like forcible entry, shutting off utilities and shutting off gas," says Lima. "They are kind of little things, but they are big things. Why go out and drill with this 35 [-foot ladder]? It is a valuable tool,
but no one wants the [internal] repercussions if someone can't do it."
One captain who didn't want to be identified tells the
Weekly that most of the men ignore the order from Fox, who was later demoted in the brouhaha over Pierce and the dog-food prank.
Two men, not three, are raising the ladders — but that modest act of defiance eats away at the once-famed authority of department brass, left to muddle through a political mess they can't seem to quell.
The human costs are embodied in Mary, who applied online after she heard from a family member, who is a firefighter, that the department was hiring women.
She thought she'd be a perfect candidate. The 34-year-old mother of three was physically fit, didn't want a 9-to-5 job — and considered herself a tomboy who always got along with men. After easily passing the Candidate Physical Ability Test, she trained full time, pumping weights and jogging, bulking up to 145 pounds on her 5-foot-5-inch frame.
She was hired within the year, and a month or so later she started the 17-week drill-tower academy along with two other, equally rare women who passed the Candidate Physical Ability Test.
That's when Mary hit the wall.
Four times, she failed a life-preserving test that required her to put on her breathing gear in less than 60 seconds — crucial to both her safety and that of others during a smoke-filled fire. "I was surprised I wasn't doing well," she recalls. "This isn't rocket science."
Like so many women — as well as men — she eventually got hurt and took
paid injury leave (officially, trainees are part of the department and are paid to complete the training). "The drillmaster said, 'I admire you, but I see your body breaking down,'" she recalls.
Vesey, whose experiences mirror Mary's, had chosen a career in the Fire Department because she wanted to help people "at their worst." Taking the written test, she was one of just two women among about 100 men — and was certain she would do fine.
"I was running in the morning and lifting weights at night," she says. Although she saw big, brawny men failing because they lacked endurance, "I thought with my brute strength I could get through it." Instead, Vesey quickly fell behind.
Persistent allegations from politicians like Alarcon and Goldberg that women recruits are being repressed, kept out and treated unfairly by a bunch of knuckle-draggers leave her cold. Vesey says, "I felt it was totally fair. The last thing I wanted was for someone to give me a freebie because I am a woman."
Similarly, Mary says,
"Everyone was treated the same" at the training academy. "I thought they were extraordinarily fair. If I was watching me, I would have rolled my eyes. It was Private Benjamin-like antics. They never lost their professionalism... I was disappointed I couldn't do it.". . .
Fire Department brass are so desperate to keep City Hall off their backs that they tend to place the few women they do have squarely in the public eye — for example, as a semipermanent Hero of the Month, a recruiter of other women or a key spokeswoman to the media. This has led the department again and again to publicly peddle individual women who are, at the same time, going after the department or its management in claims and lawsuits.
