Building bonds
Helping kids in need brings city’s few female firefighters together
Allison Meade stood over the bike, tightening a stubborn brake cable as her fellow female firefighters adjusted the handles and steadied the two-wheeler destined for a child in need on Christmas morning.
Finding two women in a Columbus firehouse is unusual. Getting 11 of them together in one place is almost unheard of.
The city’s 34 female firefighters are a small minority in the Columbus Division of Fire's 1,600, but they are trying to find more time to gather and get to know their colleagues who are facing the same challenges of working in a profession dominated by men.
On Thursday, that meant assembling bicycles that will be donated to Firefighters 4 Kids, an organization that distributes toys to families who can't afford them around the holidays. The women and the fire union chipped in to buy the bikes, and 11 of them gathered at the union hall to build them.
“We don’t get together very much," Meade said. "We thought it would be a good thing to do together.”
The eight bikes they assembled will be distributed to families by Christmas Eve. With some of the money that the group had left over, they will buy toys to donate to Toys for Tots.
“We got together and knew we had to do a bigticket item for these kids,” Battalion Chief Tracy Smith said.
Smith said women in
the Fire Division try to get together quarterly, but around-the-clock shifts make it difficult. Typically, they meet for lunch, but they increasingly are looking for team-building activities.
The division is trying to recruit more women and minorities, and Mayor Andrew J. Ginther has directed both the city’s fire and police divisions to double diversity within 10 years.
That can be difficult when people who call for help still are shocked to see a woman respond to the call, Lt. Dottie Dorn said. Change is slow, she said, but the city is adapting, by building firehouses with individual rooms, for example.
The city also has started groups aimed at recruiting women, said Julie Dassylva, a firefighter recruiter. Those smaller groups tend to give more opportunities for women to ask questions about the profession and help prepare them for tests, including learning techniques for the physical exam.
Showing potential female recruits that they won’t be alone goes a long way, she said.
“It’s nice for them to know they have a support group,” Smith said. “It is kind of a male-driven profession. We know women can do the job; it’s just getting them interested in it.”
Those interested in becoming a Columbus firefighter can text “JOINCFD” to 474747. The application period for the December 2019 class runs Jan. 1-31.