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What it
takes
Even though they show what they can do, women firefighters still are a
rare breed
BY PAT KIMBROUGH
ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
HIGH POINT – Amy Hamilton’s
feelings weren’t hurt when she realized some people might question whether a
woman has what it takes to be a firefighter.
“It was more motivation for me to
prove myself because some people might have been thinking, ‘What’s
she doing here?’ ” said Hamilton, one of the High Point Fire Department’s
four female employees.
She believes she has silenced whatever
doubters she may have had through her performance on the job, which
she began a little more than a year ago.
But women firefighters remain a
relatively rare breed.
Deputy Chief Martha Younts, a 25-year vet-
Training standards don’t automatically weed out women.
eran and the first female
employee hired by the department, says she believes High
Point and other departments in the region have done a better job
recruiting women than their counterparts in other areas of the country, such
as the Midwest. She said she doesn’t believe
the department’s training standards automatically weed out women.
She’s seen women fail the department’s
candidate physical ability test (CPAT), in which aspiring
firefighters have to perform several tasks while wearing a 50-pound vest, not
because of physical weakness.
But, in her view, because they
were out of shap e.
“As far as size goes, we had a guy who was maybe 110 pounds who
failed it the first time, but he went back and trained and eventually passed
it,” Younts said. “If you want it, you can pass
it.” The 27-year-old Hamilton,
a fitness buff since she was a child, said she never had a problem with the
test.
The hardest part, she recalled, might have been the event in which
she had to drag a 165 pound mannequin to simulate removing a victim from a
fire scene.
“For me to do the job right, I
know I have to stay fit,” she said.
pkimbrough@hpe.com |888-3531
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