Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Lauderdale’s first female fire chief is sworn in
FORT LAUDERDALE – Rhoda Mae Kerr made history again on Monday, when she was sworn in as Fort Lauderdale’s first female fire chief.
It’s a mantle she’s carried twice before. In 2004, she became the first female chief in Little Rock, Ark. In 2009, she broke that barrier in Austin, Texas.
Kerr said she was humbled to be so warmly received in Fort Lauderdale, the city where she started her fire career in 1983. She rose to deputy chief before leaving.
“It’s good to be home,” she said, after being sworn in at the Parker Playhouse in Holiday Park.
She is the second female fire chief in Broward County, coming two years after Davie swore in a female chief.
The previous Fort Lauderdale chief, Robert Hoecherl, retired at the end of March. The city has had a female interim chief, Chantal Bot-
ting, who will return to her job as a deputy fire chief.
Fort Lauderdale hired its first African-American fire chief, Otis Latin, in 1997.
Kerr said she’s glad to be first but hopes she isn’t “the last or only.”
Her father, grandfather and great grandfather before her were firefighters. But when she was growing up, she said, girls became teachers, nurses, secretaries or housewives.
She taught physical education at Boyd Anderson High School before changing careers.
She said a tragic house fire that she responded to in Fort Lauderdale years ago inspired her to establish her ongoing “Zero Fire Deaths” campaign, focused on installation of smoke alarms.
A mother had left her children alone, and when a fire broke out, a neighbor was able to rescue the baby from the couch. But two sisters who had set the fire while playing with a lighter were found dead inside.
“We found the two children one wrapped around the other, between the wall and the bed,” she remembered after the swearing-in Monday. “We weren’t able to save them. I want to get to the point we have zero fire deaths.”
City Manager Lee Feldman said she has a reputation for being “innovative and caring,” and for “living on the edge of her seat.”
Kerr smiled and nodded when she heard the description.
Her reformer style led to some clashes in Austin, where she pushed for some changes, including requiring responders to heed stop signs on their way to emergencies, and disciplining them for collisions.
“You would think I asked for their first-born child,” she said after the ceremony.
She said she believes in having courage, and not just the kind that’s necessary to run into buildings when everyone else is running out.
“When you’re the first one and you have to kick down those doors,” she said of her career, “you tend to be a bit of a maverick.”
Kerr will earn $173,680, plus a 9 percent contribution by the city into a retirement plan. She will be eligible for a $500 wellness incentive award each year, will be assigned a takehome vehicle, and will receive a $110 monthly cell phone allowance.