Women Firefighters in San Francisco (1984)

About This Item

KQED local Emmy Award winning report from April 25th 1984, on a city funded training program designed to produce San Francisco's first women firefighters. Includes interviews with firemen who object to the positive discrimination of "selective certification," one of whom claims: "These women, everything's going to take a little bit longer for them to perform and it's the difference - a couple of seconds - between saving someone's life and losing it." Several women recruits are shown training and describing their attempts to overcome what they feel is sexual discrimination: "If I can do it I will know and I'm not gonna go out there ... on the streets fighting fires if I honestly don't believe I can do it. I think a lot of the women might feel the same way." Also includes interviews with: Robert Demmons; Carlotta Del Portillo; Jim Ferguson; Taylor Evans and Emmet Condon. 

Originally aired on
KQED News
Date aired
4/25/1984
Recording medium
3/4" U-matic video tape
10:01
Rights for this video belong to
NCPB/KQED
Type of material
legacy video tape
Identifier
Emmys 230
Views
10571

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Comments

Over a year ago, Ryan wrote…

Great footage of old San Francisco Fire Station 1 in the Jessie Street Alley behind the old San Francisco Mint. It's where their nickname "Alley Cats" was born. This station has been #1 as the busiest firehouse nationwide numerous times per Firehouse Magazine. They house and Engine, Truck, and Squad. The topic of the clip shows that we've come a long way in the Fire Service.

Over a year ago, marie wrote…

Pretty awesome piece to watch. My sister--in-law is a firefighter and I sent this clip to her. Would love to know where these amazing trail blazing women are today.  Also fun to hear the old San Francisco accent from some of the older natives interviewed. Thanks for sharing this with us!

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