Pursuit of ethnic diversity a contributing factor in Baltimore City FF recruit death

The BBQ Pit
61

Actually, most of the hockey and rugby teams I worked with were women. Yes, women tend to have higher body fat % than men, even when they’re high level athletes.

Frankly (WAG), I would think that (as long as they can pass the fitness requirements) a little extra weight might be a good thing for a female firefighter. One article earlier in the thread said this recruit had difficulty handling a hose, and that the force of the water almost (did?) knock her off her feet on at least one occasion. If you have a little more body mass then you have more inertia and it would be harder to be knocked down. They’d also be able to exert more force when doing something like knocking down a door.

By the way, searching for an example of female rugby players I looked on the Canadian National Team website - the player heights and weights listed seem similar to what I recall from university level players. Of course, players in certain positions seem to have certain body types, just like in football.

The recruit was 5’4" (160cm) and 190lbs (86kg). Her weight is comparable to several players on this rugby team (and some are heavier), although she is about 10-15cm shorter than most of the players listed below.

Examples from the womens rugby team:

180cm, 85kg
178cm, 90kg
173cm, 87kg
(no height listed), 93kg
178cm, 86kg
175cm, 95kg
168cm, 84kg
178cm, 98kg

62

Okay, so here are the BMI’s of your rugby team. . .

180cm, 85kg 26.2
178cm, 90kg 28.4
173cm, 87kg 29.1
178cm, 86kg 27.1
175cm, 95kg 31.0
168cm, 84kg 29.8
178cm, 98kg 30.9

And the BMI of our fire fighter:

160cm, 86kg 33.6

So, not only is she almost 10% higher than the HIGHEST athlete you have listed there. She’s well into the obese range. She’s about 20% higher than most of them. And, as has been widely reported, BMI is unnaturally high for the atheletic.

For instance, here.

And, we’re talking RUGBY players. A sport where having a lot of mass, and strong thick thighs is a benefit. She’s has a higher BMI than every single one of them!

And, she has failed her agility tests for fire fighting, so I think we can pretty fairly conclude that she’s not exactly athletic. Not that those are easy, I’m sure, but they’re not making the Canadian National Rugby Team either.

I don’t blame this woman. I blame people who should have known better who let her into a burning building.

I’ve been 5’5", 175 before. I’m a man and I could do about 2 pull-ups. There’s no way a 5’4" 192 pound woman could haul herself out through a window, if the need arose.

63

Conversely, if I read the material in the OP right, she apparently completed four of the five stations of the agility test, and failed the “tower walk” by 10 seconds, so it doesn’t sound exactly like she was a “tub of goo”, either.

64

I’m sorry.

Let’s go over this again.

5 foot. 4 inch.

BMI 33.6

Can’t pass the agility test.

photo

Perhaps we differ on “tub of goo”.

Use whatever word you want for it.

Go have at look at that rugby site, too. Waenara seemed to pick out the heaviest, shortest women on the team.

This woman is more obese than everyone on the Canadian Women’s Rugby Team. Not the Jamaican 4X100 relay team. The Canadian Women’s Rugby Team. Before the 2000 Olympics, they cut a moose because it was too small.

65

To be fair, I just picked them based on weight (about 85kg or over) and only skipped those who were very tall (30cm or more taller than our recruit) so that it wouldn’t be comparing apples to oranges. The only reason I picked the national team was because I couldn’t easily find height/weight stats online for lower level teams (club or university).

Also, I actually know one of those players (the one with the highest BMI on the list I gave), and she was almost exactly the same build when I knew her in high school and university. Rugby isn’t a huge sport with professional full-time atheletes. National team members are picked from lower level club teams, which they still play for, and the athletes don’t play rugby or train full-time.

Again, I’m not trying to say that this firefighter recruit was actually in elite-athlete-level shape - just that you can’t conclude she wasn’t only based on her BMI. She didn’t quite meet all the physical tests, but she came quite close and there’s a big difference between “very close to firefighter material” and “tub of goo.”

66

Just to make things clear, the NFPA did not participate in the incident investigation. BATF and USFA personnel were involved in the investigation. NFPA standards were refererenced in appendices.

It’s your judgement that a qualified firefighter had no better than a 50-50 chance. The evidence shows that everyone, excepting one, whose lack of qualifications I continue to cite was able to exit the burn evolution.

67

No, she didn’t come close to being firefighter material. While she wasn’t exactly a ‘tub of goo,’ she was out of shape, unable to pass the agility test, and was having problems in the academy. What they call the ‘tower walk’ is what I’m guessing Baltimore County calls the ‘tower climb.’ It involves carrying a fully loaded medical bag up a set of stadium steps (the test is given at the fairgrounds - you climb the grandstand stairs). It comes after doing CPR for five minutes straight, a 30-foot ladder climb and a 175-pound dummy drag. The dummy is dressed in full turn-out gear, so it actually weighs about 225.

I’ve taken the agility test for the Baltimore County FD twice (to be an EMT) and passed it both times. The one for the city isn’t that much different.
Here’s a link to the agility test required for Baltimore County*.
It’s really not that hard, but you have to be in reasonably good shape to do it. Each section is timed, and your overall time is also calculated. You’re not allowed to run between stations. If you have to stop and catch your breath between stations, it counts against you.

It was also documented that FF Recruit Wilson also had a tendency for removing her face piece in times of stress. This is completely unacceptable. Her instructors were aware of this and allowed her to continue in the academy. In past years, recruits have been let go for such things.
She was unable to hoist herself up and out a window, and fellow firefighters were unable to pull her up, even with her assistance.
She was also unable to hold a hoseline. I’ll be the first to admit that nozzle reaction (the kickback from water pressure) is hard to handle, but you get used to it, and learn to compensate for it. The first few times I held a charged hoseline, it wasn’t too bad, but those times were just practice. The first time I sprayed water on live fire in the burn building, I nearly got knocked back on my ass. I was lucky to have a partner who knew I might have trouble and held me up.
The fact that she had so much trouble in different areas should have thrown up all kinds of red flags to the instructors and Recruit Wilson herself, but for some reason, she was allowed to continue in the class.

  • To get into the Baltimore County Fire Department, you come out of the academy as an EMT-I and then ‘bridge over’ as a firefighter after a 2-year probationary period, if you choose to do so. In Baltimore City, you come out of the academy as a Firefighter/Paramedic, ride mainly on the medic at first, and after IIRC, 2 years, you can choose either medic or suppression.
68

So, there were fifty safety violations here? Were they all motived by a “pursuit of ethnic diversity?” Because if they fucked up in forty nine non-ethnic-diversity-pursuing-ways, it seems reasonable to assume that the fiftieth fuck-up (keeping an obviously unqualified person on the force) was similarly colorblind. I mean, the whole point is that they violated their own procedures here, right? It’s not like they officially removed the rule about not removing your faceplate, right? Someone just decided to ignore it. Maybe because Wilson was black. Or maybe because they were just too lazy or stupid to do anything about it. With forty nine other safety violations, it sounds like there was stupid to spare in this department.

69

BiblioCat - please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that Wilson shouldn’t have been kicked out of the firefighting class. I’ve made that disclaimer in every post I made in this thread. Clearly, Wilson had problems in several areas of the training, some of which weren’t physical-fitness related (e.g. face mask removal).

The only issue I was addressing in my earlier posts was the assertion that she was a “tub of goo” because of her body mass index. Yes, she failed the tower walk - but she failed by ten seconds. While that’s definitely enough to decide to kick her out of training, I’m just saying that she seems to have had good fitness - just not good enough for a firefighter. I don’t think it’s a binary situation where the only possible fitness levels are “hard” vs. “goo”. But, yes, “hard” is required to be a firefighter.

70

The following letter was sent to the Baltimore Sun, which did not print it in its entirety:

71

www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-ed.fire23aug23,0,5061241.story

Fitness for duty
August 23, 2007

The above is an op-ed piece from the Baltimore Sun.

72

Still wondering why race is subject of this rant and not gender.

73

Because, as stated on the first page, Baltimore City now strives for ‘ethnically diverse’ classes for its fire academy, rather then hiring the best applicants. This happened after one class in 2004 just happened to be all-white. It’s not like BCFD had been hiring just white applicants all along, this was a one-time anomaly.
Nevermind the fact that that particular class had high test scores and excellent agility test scores, and the fact the the minorities that did apply either failed the written test or the background or drug screening, the fact remained that people were outraged.
“An all-white group of firefighters in a city that is mostly black? This won’t do! Hire more black firefighters! Hire black women! Rewrite the test so they can pass it! Adjust the agility test so the women can get in! Lower the standards on the background check! Give them a months’ notice before doing any drug testing!”

It’s fucking ridiculous.
When your house is on fire, are you going to be counting the firefighters to see if there’s a proportionate mix of white, black, Mexican, Asian and Martian?
When a loved one has a medical emergency and the ambulance pulls up, do you really care if the medics are the same race or if they’re ‘racially balanced’?

It’s mainly about race, but there is a little bit of gender thrown in, and **I’m ** female. She had no place being there. When I took Firefighter 1, we lost a lot of people in the first few weeks when they realized they couldn’t handle it.

WAG: The sad part is, and I’m just guessing here, Racheal Wilson may have just wanted to be a paramedic and not a firefighter. As I stated in an earlier post, in Baltimore City you come out of the academy as a firefighter/paramedic. Everyone has to take some time riding the medic. After what I believe is a 2-year probationary period, you choose where you want to stay, medic or suppression, but you’re required to keep the skills up in both areas.

74

And as was stated in the article just posted by the OP:

(bolding mine)

Gender has been given short shrift in this discussion. That’s rather interesting (and baffling and troubling) to me since ranting about women failing to meet physical standards has been a time-honored tradition when it come to these kinds of discussion. Make me wonder why that changes when the woman in question is black? Suddenly, like magic, gender become a perfect non-issue. Race is seized upon because of course her failure to meet the standards has everything to do with meeting some damn racial quota. Couldn’t be anything else, right? Like a woman being pressured to meet the same physical standards as a man and having a harder time of it.

75

It does seem like a strange disconnect. A woman dies during training, probably because she was overweight. And that’s cited as evidence they shouldn’t hire as many black people.

I can’t help but suspect there’s an “us and them” bias. There’s people like us and people like them (which is everyone else). Ms Wilson was one of them. The fire department should avoid them and stick with us.

76

By whom?

77

First of all, may I say, it is just so cool that applicants for public safety jobs, which are poorly-compensated and carry incredibly high risk, are so diverse that they can be criticized at the same time for being in both racial and gender minorities, even if it takes just one exceptional and exceptionally unlucky person to do so. The only explanation is the imminent onset of Utopia. Ms Wilson was an individual who was the victim of not only her racial and sexual shortcomings (whatever they may have been), but the brunt of the combined stupidity of white administrators who designed a test that had fifty-that’s-right-count-them-fifty-I-really-can’t-believe-this-did-you-see-the-number-fifty serious mistakes built into it, whether DancesWithAScatCoveredBible counts it or not.

The tests were not adjusted to admit overweight women. Black men were not involved in the problems created by the test’s adjustments. People trying to blame any tragedy involving women, overweight persons, black persons, males, black overweight males, black overweight females, black overweight male or transgendered persons, or persons of indeterminate race and sex whom we suspect of being of a race or sex we might not like, can just wait a damn minute.

Because the claim that the pursuit of ethnic diversity contributed to even one death seems to be a bigoted lie.

78

Well it’s the title of the thread for example.

79

For the hundredth fucking time, can you folks read?

I am NOT against black firefighters.
I am NOT against female firefighters.
I am NOT against black female, or female black firefighters.
I am NOT against any other fill in the blank firefighters.

I AM against lowering standards, so that people OF ANY COLOR OR GENDER get in to the fire department. Improve the candidate, don’t reduce the standard.

I DO NOT want white males who cannot pass a physical agility test, a written test, or a criminal background check to join the fire department.

I guess I’m just a stupid white guy, but if I was running the Baltimore NAACP, or the Black Firefighter’s Union, I’d champion keeping the standards high. I’d also start a grass roots program for teens and anyone who expressed an interest in Civil Service. I’d sit them down, work with the ones who had High School diplomas and prepare them for the written exam, get GED studies going for the people who had dropped out, and partner with some sports trainer (the Ravens or Orioles would surely help) to handle the agility aspect. Then, I’d proudly present a group of candidates who were ready to ace the written test and pass the physical, without any lowering of the standards.

Yessir, that makes me a racist.

80

Yes. That’s your problem: people read what you write, then read the relevant facts, then come to a conclusion about you. I’m sure you don’t always come off quite so badly as you do here, but, unfortunately, here you are.

Ah, but what about firefighting black-male fems, huh?

Yup, sure, yessir, youbetcha, except that:

–there’s no evidence that any standards were lowered in order to pursue ethnic diversity;

– there’s no evidence that Ms. Wilson benefitted from the lowered standards;

–changes in the written and background tests had nothing whatever to do with Ms. Wilson’s hiring and retention;

–the reason the physical tests didn’t disqualify Ms Wilson has nothing to do with ethnic diversity and everything to do with the fact that the tests (several years old and not a factor in Baltimore’s racial politics) weren’t valid to begin with;

–easier physical requirements, as a means to accommodate minorities within the Baltimore City Fire Department, would certainly be news to the University of Maryland athletic department; and of course

–there’s no link between Ms Wilson and lowered standards, between lowered standards and ethnicity, between ethnicity and city policy, between danceswithcats and sanity.

Basically, here’s a thread that purports with no evidence to show that the pursuit of ethnic diversity led to a fire recruit’s death. In fact, the quote in the OP does not exist on pages 90-94 of the final report, though that may be an honest error. But even if vindicated, there’s a wide gap between the OP and the facts s/he presents.

Oh, be fair. Noone’s yet ventured an opinion as to what made you what you are – whatever it may be.