Paper asks, "Where are the female firefighters?"

This article is from the Prescott, Arizona Daily Courier. Four years ago, there was a tragic fire where 19 firemen (all men) died. Yet this isn't even mentioned in the article as all it asks is why there are so few female firefighters. Excerpt:

'Women have been among the ranks of firefighters since the late 1800s, but now, over 130 years later, they still make up a tiny minority of the fire service, with just three in the Quad Cities.
...
With both the Phoenix and Mesa fire departments headed up by female chiefs, it might seem that woman have made significant inroads in the firefighting business — and they have, as far as treatment by their colleagues is concerned.

“When I got on (with Phoenix Fire), it was 2001 and it was much different than it is now,” Captain Reda Bigler said. “And I think now those ladies that are trying to be hired into the fire service have it better.”

But of the 1,900 or so Phoenix firefighters, just 4 percent are women.

Prescott Fire Chief Dennis Light said that with two female firefighters, Jamie Wallace and Samantha Vargas, his department is at 3.34 percent.
...
Tharp pointed out that a woman formerly in the department had formed a group called Women in Fire Service, to try to recruit more women. But although they had three women as reserve firefighters at the time, “they could never get the interest.

“I don’t think it’s for lack of trying,” Tharp said.'

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... and be viewed by a bunch of big manly fellows as "one of the boys", knowing that not one of them dare so much as mention how nice your hair looks w/out risking getting fired, sued, etc., so indeed, they treat you just like a fellow. What woman WOULDN'T want to be a firefighter? I mean, working rotating B and C shifts for decades before ranking enough to work days, giving up holidays, kids' birthdays, to deal with the sight and smell of dead people, children included, to watch people collapse in grief after you tell them their cat/dog/child just died in a fire, to spend hours waiting for something to happen and in the mean time polish the endless metal fixtures with nasty-smelling chemicals, to wear bulky highly-unflattering utilitarian clothing, to be mistaken for a man when out doing your job because, well, in that get-up with your face covered by the shadows from your helmet, you do in fact look like a smaller man, and best of all, to not get paid as much as some lady dressing well, showing up to "work", spending her day talking and writing emails, and getting paid 2-3 times (or more) what you do. And she can f*ck anyone she works with and get away with it because it's on the DL and empty conference rooms offer plenty of privacy to talk, snog, and with the door locked, f*ck right there in the office if that's your thing. And let's face it, who HASN'T f*cked in an empty conference room at work? I mean, it's practically a requirement of h@ving an office job these days! :)

Alas, in a firehouse, privacy is non-existent. Intimate conversation is all but impossible, much less doing the horizontal mamba w/out anyone knowing. (Well, maybe you don't care one way or another. Firefighters and cops can be a pretty blase bunch about certain things.)

I mean... what gal wouldn't just lap that opportunity up?

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fire fighter qualifications will need to be ...er, adjusted slightly to make sure females are treated 'fairly and w/ true equality' as follows:

1. the number of firefighter officers will need to immediately reflect the female makeup of the community, no matter their experience or qualifications.

2. affirmative action quotas will have to be applied to all future hires. bonuses and extra pay may need to be used to gain the numbers required.

3. free school will be offered to all potential female firefighter candidates, w/ pay of course while they attend school.

4. female ff candidates and ff's will only need to attain some percentage of the physical requirements of their male counterparts.

5. continual adherence to strict sexual harassment guidelines will be required. male ff's will be immediately dismissed once accused of a violation.

6. female ff's will only be required to assist in the rescue of small children, other women, pets, and other persons falling w/in their physical linitations as defined above.

7. female ff's will immediately accrue xyz months of maternal leave, etc.

there is much more of course, just like in colleges and the military and so forth. you know, like the rest of the free world has been forced to do.

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The Wikipedia article on the Yarnell Hill fire indicates that the state forest service prioritized protecting property over the firemen's safety and should have pulled them out earlier.

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What else is new? Teams of sappers during the London Blitz of WWII were sent around the city to take apart unexploded bombs. Despite clearing everyone from the area, TPTB thought it more important for morale to show they cared about people's property over the lives of the men they sent to try to disarm the bombs. In truth, most bombs that fell in London as individual bombs didn't pack much of a wallop. The purpose of the bombing was principally to start fires that were much harder to deal with than simple destroyed buildings. But instead of detonating the UXBs (as they were called) after clearing people out, they had these guys go in and try to disarm them. Casualties rates were predictably quite high.

Instead of condemning the senseless loss of life decades later, the UK gov't gladly cooperated with the BBC in making a dramatic TV series about it in the form of historical fiction entitled "Danger: UXB". It was quite popular. You can even see scenes of it today on YouTube. What went completely undiscussed during the series was the total avoidability of all the risk and loss of life.

Fastest way to get people to come up with non-lethal alternatives to problem-solving is to limit the choice of sacrificial victims to women and girls. THEN they get real creative and find ways to avoid risking blood.

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