Meet the St. Paul Women Empowering Women to Fight Fires

Sarah Reasoner, Martha Fecht and Megan Roesler Turner have very different backgrounds and have come to view their careers as St. Paul firefighters in very different ways.

Reasoner was a former American track and field bodybuilder and powerlifter who wanted a career with a deeper purpose. Fecht, a St. Paul fire captain, vacationed in Montana and became a paramedic there. Originally from Maplewood, she jumped at the chance to return. And Roessler Turner was inspired to become a paramedic by firefighters who revived a heart attack victim in the cafe where she worked. She is now a trainer at the academy.

All three survived the training: men and women must meet the same physical demands. But they know that many women are discouraged from trying.

They launched Twin Cities Female Firefighter Fitness (TCF3) to not only encourage women to consider becoming firefighters, but also to instill in them the confidence, strength and endurance needed to win the job. Eye On St. Paul caught up with them last week to talk about their work empowering women to explore male-dominated careers.

This interview has been edited for length.

Question : Tell me a little about how you’re trying to make firefighting a career option for more women.

Reasoner: It’s twofold. First of all, I don’t think many girls grow up thinking, “I want to be a firefighter.” This is not something that concerns many women. The second part of what we do is fitness and confidence, because there is a significant gap in the testing process and the percentage of women who are able to pass the test. I think biology plays a role in this and it is.

We ran a testing process last fall and saw the numbers — from women who said they were interested to the number who took the test — drop. We went from 64 women who filled out interest cards to 30 who took the practice tests.

Question : Of the 30 people who took the test, how many passed it?

Reasoner: Twelve. The reason TCR3’s mission statement is something like “for women by women” is because we felt that being able to have a female-heavy platform creates a bit of a safer space. Although you need to learn how to be physical and manage many men at work, this first step is about building confidence. We thought if we were surrounded by a community of like-minded, supportive women, we think there’s a lot of power in that.

Fecht: We now have many women in the field who are trainers. We have single women; we have women with families. We have all walks of life. We have women who started working in their 30s, who had careers before that, who went through the process, who wrestled in academies that were where they belonged. We hope to be able to connect with these women and help them develop so that when they come to take the tests, they feel strong.

Question : How many women are firefighters in Saint-Paul?

Fecht: 27.

Question : On how much?

Fecht: 434.

Question : Why is it important to have more women in the department?

Roesler Turner: Well, I think it’s important for what women can bring to the workplace. In addition to everything we can do on an equal footing with men, women have other skills that we can use in their work. I also think it’s important that we are tailored to the community we serve. We get a lot of calls, especially medical EMS calls, where it’s incredibly beneficial to have a female on the device to be able to help that patient.

For example, if we get a sexual assault call and there’s a young woman and, you know, she doesn’t feel very comfortable. She was just raped and it is beneficial to have a woman she feels more comfortable with to let us do the vitals and exam on her or even just be with her at the time.

Question : Why is it beneficial to have a woman at the top of the ladder of a burning building?

Roesler Turner: Because we are just as capable as men of doing these things. And we are strong and powerful, and we can do this work as well as men. And the goal of this group is we just want to show other women that they are capable too.

Question : Do you have a group of people to work with?

Reasoner: We are building this. We got help from HR with the list of women who applied last fall, and we sent an email to that group.

Fecht: Our goal is to offer monthly training to all those interested women. Practicing once a month will not be enough to prepare them to take the test and succeed. But this is an opportunity for them to have a landing spot.

Question : Who had the idea ?

Fecht: Sarah (Reasoner)

Reasoner: It started with the testing process last fall that I had contributed to. They had these three dates where you could go out and do the physical part of the test and practice. And that led to some frustration for me because about six or seven women said to me, “Hey, can I have your number?” Can I follow you on social media or something? And I have questions. And I had no answers.

I came to our head of training, Chief Jeremy Baker, and told him that’s what I was seeing. I told him they had six weeks to prepare for this test – and three times to collect the stuff. Women can’t pick up a 175 pound model like that on the first try. We need time. We need practice. We need coaching. We had a three-hour conversation in his office and suddenly there was TCF3.

Question : What do you think will result from this?

Reasoner: Last night (June 11) we got a nice little glimpse of it. We had nine women who didn’t know each other and at the end of the 30 minutes of training we had a competition. We had women competing against each other. And we high-fived and danced and shouted and clapped and cheered. And then after practice, we asked each other questions: “Hey, what are you doing? Where are you from?”

It was community building, networking and fitness. All this stuff rolled into one. Why wouldn’t I want to do that? It’s good.