Firefighter test: I guess fitness isn’t so fundamental anymore
If I were a NY firefighter—woman or man—this would make me very, very angry:
The FDNY for the first time in its history will allow someone who failed its crucial physical-fitness test to join the Bravest, The Post has learned.
Rebecca Wax, 33, is set to graduate Tuesday from the Fire Academy without passing the Functional Skills Training test, a grueling obstacle course of job-related tasks performed in full gear with a limited air supply, an insider has revealed.
“They’re going to allow the first person to graduate without passing because this administration has lowered the standard,” said the insider, who is familiar with the training.
Actually, it makes me angry even though I’m not a firefighter:
We’re being asked to go into a fire with someone who isn’t 100 percent qualified,” the source said. “Our job is a team effort. If there’s a weak link in the chain, either civilians or our members can die.”
This is another example of the growing equality-of-outcome madness, which means that any test that has a disparate impact on men vs. woman, or on the races, is by definition unfair and must be scrapped.
It appears that this happened because the department is being pressured by Mayor Di Blasio, and is also afraid of lawsuits:
Under the FDNY’s new hiring policy, probies must earn at least 75 percent on the combined requirements of academics, hands-on skills and physical fitness.
Wax had a high grade-point average on her academics, which officials determined offset her FST deficiency, the insider said.
Last December, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told a City Council hearing on the FDNY’s efforts to recruit women that he had changed FST requirements to lower obstacles.
“We still grade the people. You can still fail it if you go beyond the time, but you’re not automatically failed from the program,” he said.
He also indicated he wanted to act before a possible sex-discrimination lawsuit after the city paid $98 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the FDNY of discriminating against minorities.
What about things like, you know, the ability to actually do the physical work in fighting fires? I can’t imagine that a written test could make up for deficits in that arena. But then again, I’m not a social justice warrior.
I read somewhere that only about the top 2-5% of women can compare in strength with the male *median*; anecdotally, such numbers reflect my experience as well. I always get surprised by how physically strong average men are – and even the men I would expect to parallel in strength, who are roughly my size, still end up being SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than me.
Physically, our bodies are optimized for different activities and maybe that should be valued as an asset.
If the few Amazonians who can pass the rigorous physical standards for traditionally male occupations want to enter there, in principle I have no objections, but if God forbid I ever need to be rescued from a burning building, I want the person rescuing me to have graduated from a proper training, not some sort of watered down, ideologically correct version of it.
It’s always been strange to me that such ‘disparate impact’ or broad differences in outcome are in any way a legal liability when the tests involved are neutral toward all else but job requirements, and fairly applied to all comers.
More bizarre is the notion that there should be different physical fitness standards for men and women in military combat roles, and in the situation you have here. Is it so difficult to understand how that will put people at risk?
Sex-specific fitness standards for the *same* work are irresponsible, first and foremost towards those women themselves (as they will be placed into situations they evidently cannot handle, and people entrusted with their preparation should know better than to let it happen), then towards others they will work with (and who will be jeopardized by their coworkers’ lack of job-specific skills and, of necessity, end up shouldering an extra burden to compensate), and finally towards EVERYONE they are supposed to protect.
Somehow I don’t see her having a long career with NYFD. Life in her fire house will be tough and she may/will deliberately be put in physically challenging circumstances quite often. I wouldn’t want to be in the position of costing a civilian or fellow fire fighter’s life for the sake of political correctness. Talk about lawsuits waiting to happen.
Have you ever wondered why you don’t hear about affirmative action for pilots? My guess it is because politicians fly a lot.
A local Army guy was telling me about problems with female diesel truck mechanics. Some of the truck tires are very heavy and beyond the strength of the average woman. When that happens the woman has to get a guy to help her. The same problem could apply to female fire fighters. You have to hope that all the guys are not busy.
“Fitness” has been dumbed down for several decades within the police and fire departments across this country. FACT.
In addition, “Fitness” has been diluted as a requirement in federal agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, among others.
Bill Clinton, with the agitation of then-senator, Robert Torricelli (D), N.J., eviscerated not only intelligence gathering methods, but fitness methods as well.
Torricelli, dating Mick Jagger’s former girlfriend, Bianca, in the early 1990’s, was responsible for major (damaging) changes which negatively impacted our fed forces abilities to infiltrate the networks of “bad guys” in foreign countries. The elements of the story read like a dime store novel made into a television movie.
Hollywood could not create the kind of details that Torricelli and Bianca wreaked onto our intel-gathering and efficacies within CIA.
Yeeesh, what Hell has been unleashed by the Liberals and Progressives among us…
As for “fitness” requirements in fire departments?
The wife of a good friend of mine passed the physical test of a fire department in south Florida in the late 1990’s.
A truly wonderful woman (weighing in at just over 100lbs.), even she admitted that because the physical testing had been “adjusted for women”, she passed the test under those conditions—and would not have done so under previously longstanding standards.
Women have about half the upper body strength men have and about 2/3 of the lower body strength. They simply cannot do the physical things men do. I have read claims that if the women were properly trained they could do the same things but this is nonsense. As an example the fastest men run the Boston marathon in a little over two hours and the fastest women in about two and a half hours. The women simply can’t run as fast as the men no matter how much they train.
Just wonderful.
I guess the politicians who back this have never looked at actual firemen. Most of them are actually fairly large, burly men. Those who are smaller are demonstrably very strongly built.
(The USN required a one day fire fighting course for everyone going to sea after some of the disastrous shipboard fires in the ’60s. I thought I was fit, and could have been described as rather burly, but was shocked at how demanding it was just to fight a training fire on level ground.)
My grand son dreams of being a fire fighter. I don’t know why, but it is not a recent fantasy. He is starting college next fall–for reasons I don’t understand a college degree is almost a prerequisite to break in with a municipal fire department now. He is very fit–a cross country runner–but anything but burly. Not sure he will qualify.
On the subject of women pilots. I had occasion to fly with a number of them in the early days of their military and airline acceptance Many were very good. Most prepared diligently because they knew they had to be good. A small number were “entitled”, and they hurt their sisters. All together different situation from that of ground warriors, or fire fighters.
When the SHTF it is all about how much you can lift and how fast you can run with it.
It is all about the Bass, no Treble, bubblegum pop, blue-eyed soul, doo-wop, and pop.
That is all …
View the chub who failed the physical strength test here:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/04/00/284997AE00000578-0-Graduation_-a-7_1430694029382.jpg
View the chub who failed the physical strength test here….
Hmmm … could she play Buttball or else do the dishes?
I got into an argument online with a leftist over women in combat. I said that women aren’t as strong or as fast as men. I gave as an example my brother’s experience as a Navy Corpsman with the Marines. Their company had to go on a 20 mile hike through sand carrying heavy packs. Several of the women ended up in the hospital. One actually completed it and he was very impressed because it was such an oddity. All of the men finished. The online leftist first called my brother a misogynist. Then said when he hikes with his wife, he carries a heavier load and helps her along, and the Marines will just have to do the same thing. So this is the level of logic and reasoning we’re dealing with. No concept or concern of lives at stake. PC trumps all.
“This is another example of the growing equality-of-outcome madness, which means that any test that has a disparate impact on men vs. woman, or on the races, is by definition unfair and must be scrapped.” neo
“this is the level of logic and reasoning we’re dealing with. No concept or concern of lives at stake. PC trumps all.” LisaM
Think religious imperative. Which is exactly what is driving this…
“When people reject traditional religious beliefs, they merely go on to create some other faith-based schema to believe in; whether it be money or power or the various religions of the left; socialism, communism, feminism, environmentalism or anthropogenicism (who believe that humans are the sole root of all evil and thus are the cause of all earthly problems, from weather and climate anomalies to earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and species extinction) etc. human nature demands something larger than itself to believe in.” unknown
We need to be able to sue politicians to hold them accountable for their failures.
This is slightly off-topic, but the local volunteer fire dept in the rural town where we have a family weekend home was looking for new firefighters. I commented to my wife that I might be interested, but I’m too old (mid-50’s) to fight fires. Than I looked at a group photo of the firefighters and realized that I’d be among the YOUNGEST of the guys. The average age looks to be about 65, with some of the crew looking to be 70+. Made me hope we never have to be rescued from our burning home.
Geoffrey, you are so right about this. I am one who easily rejected religious belief before I was 20. For three decades I hung with moderate liberals, but never bought wholeheartedly into those secular religions. After 9/11 I came to see progressives and liberals as clinging to their secular, pacifistic beliefs with blindness I couldn’t understand, just like someone who grows up with a religion and sticks with it.
Anti-atheist Atheist
1974 FDNY fitness standards, per the NFPA 1001:
1. Run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes or less.
2. Standing broad jump of six feet, three inches.
3. 7 chin-ups, starting with arms fully extended.
4. 5 pushups (from the toes, not the knees).
5. Walk a 4-inch-wide beam for 20 feet carrying 20 lbs. dead weight.
6. Lift, from the floor, a 150-lb. dummy and carry (not drag) it 100 feet.
These standards were the old ones across most of the country; they’ve been “wimped” and “re-wimped” several times. Actually, they don’t look that tough to me — for a fit male.
I do remember hearing that the FDNY (and other departments, I’m sure) misled the public by saying women were doing “the same fitness test” as the men — what they didn’t tell us was that the NEW TEST was the Wimpy Test for Wimmen.
People are going to die; they don’t give a damn. The women on the force who can’t cut it should be shunned and shamed. And they’re not doing a damn thing for “women’s rights” with this crap.
http://www.nfpa.org/Assets/files/AboutTheCodes/1001/TCRF-1974-1001.pdf
On the positive side, the fact that only 44 of the 10,000 or so firemen are women indicates that MOST of us have better sense than to insert ourselves in a life and death occupation when we couldn’t handle it.
Funny that the NYC “men” who are lefties resist admitting that men are generally stronger and faster than women. Tres taboo. They squirm and writhe with evasions; it’s remarkable to see, even though I’m a woman saying it!
Neither evolutionary nor mental nor physical fitness. Liberal societies are in a progressive state of decay. Perhaps that’s why they have resurrected the primitive pagan practice of human sacrificial rites.
Supposedly, they would not lower standards. Supposedly. That was the claim right, the confidence artist claim that is. And people bought it, as usual.
The only thing Leftists progress towards is the Islamic Ummah, Entropy, and Death. Death, at least, is equal, so there is that.
Hopefully these Harrison Bergeron fire women will be sent only to the liberal pols homes.
Beverly – those standards really don’t look that tough. Really they don’t. But, that was back in 1974 when we weren’t a nation of couch potatoes.
Instead of “wimping” them down they should change that 150 lb. dummy into 200 or more to make up for a “fatter” America.
On another note: I can’t seem to recall the story that we read in high school class many decades ago; but, it told of a future where the beautiful had to wear masks to hide their beauty so the less beautiful wouldn’t feel so ugly, Intelligent people were forced to have earplugs so they couldn’t hear as much and show off their superior intelligence, etc.
The one scene I remember was of the couple (the main characters of the story) watching ballet on TV and were talking about how clumsy the dancers were – But, they noted how less clumsy the one dancer was despite the huge weights placed on her ankles (the better dancers were forced to be handicapped with huge ankle weights so the less talented wouldn’t feel any less talented)
At the time we all thought the story was absolutely ridiculous; but, now, I am not so sure that it isn’t that far away. We’ve lowered so many standards it seems like the next step would be to handicap those who are better than others to “level the playing field” even more.
We’ve lowered so many standards it seems like the next step would be to handicap those who are better than others to “level the playing field” even more.
Big business funded regulations already exist for that purpose. The Leftists call it wealth redistribution.
charles,
the story is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.
I happened to refer to it in my post above yours.
Thanks to women, society has a lot lower standards than before… ie. they lied when they said they can do the same things men can… and we been suffering for 50 years of constant declines to allow people who cant do the work, to be able to be hired, and not do the work for a salary
then there is the fact that they are now teaching that blacks naturally do not think working hard, studying, etc are valid, and so they need affirmative action to put them into jobs they can do cause culturally they are devoid of such practices and its not fair that such people are kept out of high paying jobs like brain surgeon just cause they wont work hard, study, and pass tests made by white men to block them from cutting peoples heads opan and poking around for six figures or more…