Firefighters quit in row over female member’s claims of harassment
Lax safety codes, porn screened during training
Citizens in the small Newfoundland town of Spaniard’s Bay are dividing into warring camps after the resignation of virtually its entire volunteer fire department in an ugly spat involving the community’s only female firefighter.
Brenda Seymour, also a town councillor, says she has faced a gauntlet of harassment — including the workplace screening of a pornographic film — for exposing an “Old Boys’ club” department riddled with lax safety standards, untested equipment and improper training.
“Once you know these things, you can’t unknow them, and it kind of makes you guilty if you don’t come forward with it, ” Seymour told the National Post by phone.
Among other things, she noted an incident in which a rookie damaged the firehall after being asked to drive a truck without proper training.
But the 20 firefighters who tendered their surprise resignations this week say Seymour is an upstart troublemaker who wants the fire chief ’s job.
“She thinks it’s because she’s a female that she’s not being put in the position of assistant chief or captain or lieutenant, but the reason being is that the boys know she hasn’t got the confidence,” said Cory Mahaney, one of those who quit.
Seymour is one of the most highly trained firefighters in the department, with a Level II certification, which is needed to become a professional firefighter.
But Mahaney says her detractors believe while she has the skills “on paper,” she doesn’t have the street smarts.
“I haven’t got any faith in that girl whatsoever.”
A skeleton crew of eight firefighters, including Seymour, remain on call in Spaniard’s Bay, while neighbouring communities have been scrambled to beef up the town’s fire coverage.
Meanwhile, friends and family of the breakaway firefighters have leaped to their defence.
“These firefighters weren’t looking for trouble, they were just standing for what they believed in rather then sit down and have false accusations thrown in their face,” said Kate Davis, daughter of the assistant chief, in a statement to the Post.
Davis created the Facebook page Support the Spaniard’s Bay Fire Department, which now has more than 800 members and features posts almost exclusively from local women.
“She is a grown woman and the only grown woman in a firehouse with grown men,” wrote one post by a Spaniard’s Bay woman. “She can’t expect them to sit down, eat chocolates, talk about Fifty Shades of Grey and tampons.”
Seymour said dead mice have been dangled in her face, the fire chief has responded to her requests with intimidating body language and fellow firefighters have told her they masturbated on her equipment.
A 2014 training session ended with the screening of an X-rated video, she adds.
Called “how to put out a kitchen fire,” the 20-second clip consisted of a couple having sex in a kitchen when the woman suddenly sprays the room with a prodigious amount of female ejaculate.
“I did take it personally, I’m not going to lie about that,” Seymour said.
Her problems with the department go as far back as 2009, when she said during a council meeting rookie firefighters were being thrown into emergency situations with little or no training.
“It was a duty … and the very next day I was dismissed by the department,” she said.
Eight months later, Seymour was reinstated by council after a lengthy process to prove she had been the target of an unlawful dismissal.
The conflict came to a head again in November, when Seymour presented council with a long list of systemic fire department violations, including that rookies were still being put into dangerous situations without baseline training.
The news spurred council resolutions to restructure the department and dismiss Chief Victor Hiscock, but they were narrowly defeated by a single vote from the Spaniards’ Bay mayor.
Rumours of renewed council action this week prompted the mass resignation, along with the departure of Coun. Sheri Collins, the fire department liaison.
In the tense days since November, Seymour says she’s received notes calling her a “conniving witch” and was hit by a coffee cup from a moving car that she suspects might not have been an accident.
She denies any Machiavellian plot to grab the fire chief ’s job.
“I would refuse it if offered to me,” she said.
As loyalties shift and entrench in the fight, perhaps no one is caught in the middle as much as Martin Seymour, Brenda’s husband and one of the department’s longest-serving firefighters.
“I’ve stood side by side with these fellows and wouldn’t want to see any harm come to them, but we have to be professional and get this done,” he said.
“They’re all good people.”
SHE CAN’T EXPECT THEM TO SIT DOWN ... TALK ABOUT FIFTY SHADES OF GREY AND TAMPONS.