As a firefighter, Teresa Deloach-Reed is no stranger to playing the role of a hero. But now her days of breaking down doors and climbing ladders has reached new heights. With her recent appointment as the head of the 580-person Oakland Fire Department, Reuters reports that she has become the first African American woman to serve as a chief of a major metropolitan fire department in the United States.
In 1985, Deloach-Reed was installing telephones for a phone company in Sacramento, California, a job that required the ability to work atop ladders to reach the telephone poles. At the time she was worried about possible layoffs at the company, when her brother, a police officer in San Jose, informed her that the fire department in San Jose was hiring.
As she already knew how to raise ladders, Deloach-Reed decided to apply, and in 1986 she was hired. Back then it was rare to see a women firefighter; women even had to wear the pants and shirts made for men. In her first year on the job, she entered the San Jose firefighting academy along with several other new female recruits. The women relied on each other for support against discrimination and sexual harassment on the job, and slowly, things began to change. Now 53-years-old with over 20 years of service, Deloach-Reed remembers when the department decided to install locks on the bathroom doors, dividers in the dorm rooms and even issue women uniforms.
Even though times have changed, as of 2010, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics observes a little more than six percent of firefighters in the nations are black, and less than 4 percent are women.
“There are still a lot of (fire) departments that don’t have any women,” Deloach-Reed said to Reuters. ”We still have a long way to go in regards to breaking down the doors.”
