Of the 45 recruits who will graduate from the Connecticut Fire Academy in May, five are women.
As part of our Women's History Month coverage, we're sharing the stories of the women firefighters currently training at the Connecticut Fire Academy in Windsor Locks.
This May, 45 members will graduate, and among them are five women.
“We are a small group, but this group is actually one of the largest, and we all support each other super well," said recruit Leah O'Brien.
The recruits spend 15 weeks at the academy and live in the dorms from Sunday through Friday. They're trained on everything from extinguishing fires to extricating people from vehicles.
Get top local stories in Connecticut delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Connecticut's News Headlines newsletter.
“For me, I feel like it’s not whether you’re a man or a woman, it’s just being a firefighter," said Jenna Franke. “I like that no day is the same day. So, every day it’s something new.”
Franke, who's a firefighter for the West Shore Fire Department in West Haven, said it wasn't an easy road to get here. She couldn't pass one of the exams to become a firefighter, and almost gave up.
She took a job as a prison paramedic but said she was miserable not being a firefighter.
Local
"My husband was like, you need to go back. You’ve never stopped wanting to do it, as long as I’ve known you, just keep pushing yourself to get there," she recalled. “It took me 10 years to get here, but I finally made it here, and now I’m determined to get through it.”
Others had a shorter road, like 19-year-old Leah O'Brien who will serve Willimantic Fire.
“I, like, grew up around the fire house, it was like my second home. My dad’s been a volunteer for like 40 years," O'Brien said. “Once I got to the age of 14, I decided I wanted to join as a cadet member, because my department offered that, and then I just didn’t stop from there.”
Jillian Hodgkinson, a Torrington firefighter, also got the spark to fight fires at a young age. She joined her department as a volunteer at the age of 14.
“I started as a volunteer when I was 14 years old with my volunteer department. I’ve been there ever since, and they gave me the push I needed to become a career firefighter," she said. “I live right next to my volunteer fire department, so I would see the trucks go out on calls, and I was like, 'that might be something fun that I can do.' I joined, and I fell in love with it instantly.”
The recruits said, while being a woman in this field is tough - less than 10% of firefighters are female - their male counterparts at the academy help them through.
“We’re like battle buddies," Franke said. "Nothing better than people who are going through what you’re going through. There’s days where some people may have strengths and you may be weak, and vice versa, so being able to lean on each other to get through those days is really nice.”
"Let’s face it, our bodies aren’t built like a man’s body is, so we have to overcome with techniques and different challenges. But all the guys in this class are so supportive of the five of us," Hodgkinson said. “We don’t look at each other as men and women, we look at each other as a family, and that’s how it is when we get into the fire service.”
