Wendy and the Guys
By Linda Ha
Wendy Norwood’s tangerine-colored wavy hair falls onto her shoulders; thick smokey black eyeliner traces her lower lash line, and the scent of ash radiates from her skin. A glossy gold Orange County Fire Authority badge is pinned above her left chest pocket marking the department’s first female captain-paramedic — a reminder of breaking stereotypes, shattering the concept of gender roles, and overcoming department harassment.
“Captain Norwood, Captain Norwood, telephone,” a firefighter announces into the overhead speaker at station 27.
57-year-old Norwood rests her elbows on the cold counters. She removes a firefighter cartoon pen from her pocket and raises the phone to her right ear.
A firefighter recruiter called to tell Wendy about a young woman who wants to pursue firefighting.
Currently, the OCFA’s 79 stations have 14 women fire firefighters out of 1,050. The national number does not look any brighter. Women are more than half of the U.S. population, but less than four-percent are in the firefighting profession, according to a National Fire Protection Association report.
“Does she think there’s a backdoor or something? You follow the paperwork. You go and take classes. You work out, and take a Biddle,” said Norwood. A Biddle is a Physical Agility Test designed to examine an individual’s ability to perform the functions or tasks of a firefighter.
In 2002, 3.3 percent of firefighters were women; by 2012, it remained essentially unchanged, at 3.4 percent.
Wendy does not believe firefighting is a job where you can hire women to meet a quota.
“If you’re not physically fit and you can’t keep up with what’s necessary, you’re gonna get someone killed. And the worst thing you can do is kill one of your teammates.”
She says lowering the standards means they are lumped into the same category of a woman getting special treatment. It devalues what the women in the field have accomplished.
“When a man drops a ladder or a man does something wrong, it is a mistake. When we do it, it is because we are too weak.”
But how much strength is necessary to do the job and whether mandatory physical entrance exams are designed fairly are central questions in the debate over how to bring more women into the fire service. In 2015, the New York City Fire Department allowed a female Fire Academy student to graduate without passing the Biddle test. That year, only 44 of the FDNY 10,500 firefighters were female, and the department was under pressure from Mayor Bill de Blasio to hire more women. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told a City Council hearing on the FDNY’s efforts to recruit women that the department changed the Biddle test requirements to lower obstacles.
It’s been over two centuries since the first woman career firefighter in 1815. But still, there are only at most, two women firefighters at a station in the OCFA. Arguments for why there are so few women on the job are common: They don’t want to work in a dangerous, dirty industry, and they just aren’t strong enough to deal with the physical demands.
Gary Dominguez, Director of fire instruction at the Santa Ana Fire Academy based in Huntington Beach says it’s just as difficult for men to get into firefighting as it is for women because they’re not athletic enough or they just don’t apply themselves.
“There aren’t that many females interested in the industry. They’re not in our classes. They’re not trying to get in. I don’t think the interest is there. There are certain industries that the female gender doesn’t find that interesting. I think they are directly represented to how many want to get in.”
Currently there is one woman out of 44 students enrolled in the SAFA.
Norwood offers a solution: “I think that if they are trying to get more women in the service, then they have to provide more programs that are open to everyone — not discriminatory — but actually teach them what the job is, and get them ready for the job, but in no way lowering the standards of what we have to do. It’s very hard, but I think that most of the girls who have earned their right to be in the fire service, we’re the worst ones. We don’t want the standards lowered because we worked too hard to get here. I wouldn’t want someone on my crew if they can’t do the job, and I don’t expect someone to want me on the crew if I can’t do the job.”
The reality is Fire Departments across the nation are still a men’s club. But it pays to be a member of that club. The average Orange County firefighter’s total compensation is $234,000 a year for working 10 round-the-clock shifts per month, an annual salary that increases with seniority, promotions, and overtime.
However, it is evident that the salary is not strong enough to attract more women into a field known for having multiple incidents of unreasonably high physical standards unrelated to the job duties, a lack of recruitment and hostile behavior by male colleagues.
Norwood graduated her fire academy class with the highest exam scores and and became an Emergency Medical Technician and nurse. At her first station, the men refused to believe she deserved to work alongside them and the harassment continued beyond the fire station. But, like many of her female colleagues, Wendy didn’t want to ignite fire within the department so she brushed it off and kept going to work, for fear that reporting would hurt her career.
“I even had somebody shit in my turnout gear [firefighter protective uniform] pockets. The reason they’re doing it is for me to squeak,” said Norwood.”
As the only woman in her entire firefighting class and at the Academy, future women firefighters counted on her success, which would ultimately determine their opportunities in the profession. She not only had to pass, she was under pressure to win — and that she did.
Fearless and determined, Wendy stared straight into the face of opposition and climbed her way to the top.
Alpha Wendy
Inside the apparatus bay of the fire station, firefighter Michael Long circles around the station’s fire engine checking the supplies.
Michael recalls when Wendy worked overtime as a visiting firefighter at his former station in nearby Westminster.
They were responding to a medical call together where a man fell along the sidewalk in Westminster’s Little Saigon district after he suffered a seizure. With his back against a solid block wall, the patient refused to get on the gurney, and refused to get treatment.
“He was very combative. Sometimes you fight people like this; you mob them and restrain them, then tie their hands down. Wendy stayed with him, and was comforting in her touch — one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other holding his hand.”
In Michael eyes, Wendy’s steady perseverance and empathy for the patient reminded him of the Buddha.
Prior to Station 27, Wendy worked at Station 28 in Irvine, known for receiving at least 15 calls a shift.
“She went right into the busiest and most complicated station in the department to get good at firefighting. If you’re gonna take on the most difficult spots, that says something about you, and that’s how I built my trust with her. She’s really gregarious and friendly, and will talk to anyone.”
“She’s the alpha dog of a bunch of other alpha dogs in a male-dominated field.”
The Trifecta
Wendy has twin daughters who both work in governmental jobs. Kendra initially followed in her mother’s footsteps and joined the Fire Academy. After graduating form the Academy, Kendra decided to pursue another route and became a Sheriff Deputy Paramedic in Orange County.
Her other daughter, Lindsey, takes photographs at crime scenes, draws sketches, and documents footsteps. She knows how blood was dripped and if a body has been moved. The three have a running joke that the Kendra chases the bad guy and shoots him, then Wendy comes to patch him up, and Lindsey figures out who did it and what size the bullet is.
Firefighting may not be as glamorous as Irvin Allen’s 1974 “The Towering Inferno” film, but that never stopped the self-proclaimed tomboy from becoming a firefighter.
“You’re dirty and filthy and don’t get to sleep a lot. You see blood and guts, and babies and adults dying in front of you. There’s a lot of stuff you have to handle. You have to have the nurse’s mentality with a weightlifter’s body. This job is physical. It’s really physical. It scares me as I get older to tell you the truth. It gets harder and I can definitely feel it. Stuff is heavy; it’s hot, smoky. And after fighting you have black boogers for a week.”
Wendy wears many hats while on the job but she loves the challenges that come along with it. “You’ll never get stagnant because you constantly learn and you’ll never know enough. That’s why you use your crew; they all have good ideas and we put all our knowledge and ideas into the pot. And we like it, we like working together as a team. It feels good to be needed