Nearly 15 years ago, a 29-year-old Kathy Ius was one of three new New Westminster firefighters hired out of a pool of about 650 applicants.
The former ski and mountain-bike racer – who had worked as a fire technician at the Justice Institute and as a paid-on-call firefighter in Coquitlam – became New West’s first female firefighter.
Now in her 15th year, including two as the department’s first community outreach coordinator, Ius made history again recently by becoming the service’s first female officer.
“Gender diversity in the fire service is a good thing,” Fire Chief Tim Armstrong said of the milestone. “I think it brings a lot of positive dynamics to the workplace.”
Ius would be the last person who’d want to be singled out for her gender instead of being judged by her own merits, the chief said, but Ius admits being New West's first female officer is a big deal.
The Record sat down with her at the Glenbrook Fire Hall recently to get her take on women running into burning buildings, sexism in the workplace and the struggles every firefighter faces.
Is it a big deal to be the first female officer in New Westminster?
Wow, that’s a loaded question. It’s a big deal; there’s no doubt about it because it speaks to the changes in the fire service on a global level, but it also says something about the fact that it is achievable.
As a role model of ‘you can go from here to there as a female’ that would be the message that would make it a big deal for sure.
Is this what you wanted to be when you grew up?
This is what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My dad was (a firefighter), and I absolutely adored everything about him and his job.
I used to go hang around his fire hall at lunch because my school wasn’t too far away just to go and check out the trucks.
I know that it just made him crazy that his daughter was more interested in firetrucks than she was in going buying clothes.
Do you remember the first time you ever put on the firefighter gear?
Yeah, the first day on my job at the JI (Justice Institute) I put on some turnout gear for the first time.
I didn’t even have a cellphone that had a camera; that’s how long ago it was. It was like 28 years ago.
I had to hunt down a camera somewhere so I could take a picture. It was horrible turn-out gear, but that was the first time I wore it and I was so proud. I wasn’t even on the job yet, not even paid-on-call yet.
What’s the hardest part of a firefighter’s job?
I think the hardest part of the job is seeing some of the losses, lives lost.
We invariably get to the incident, and you’re focused on the task at hand. You do what you need to do, but I think that there isn’t a person here that would say that’s not difficult.
That is probably the most difficult part of this work, is seeing the not-so-successful outcomes.
And you’ve seen that?
Oh yeah. You see it a fair amount. When I’m talking fatalities, I’m talking everything from someone who’s had a cardiac arrest all the way to, more recently, we had a motorcyclist who was struck and killed. Not a pretty scene.
What is the best part of the job?
Well, the reward (is) when the opposite happens, when we have a good save on a building that’s having a bad day, when we can get someone out of a bad situation and put them into the best situation.
What made you want to take the next step into officer training?
In the fire department, as you gain seniority and as time goes by, officer opportunities come up, and that’s just what happened.
Traditionally, and typically, it goes in order of seniority. … My group of five people were the next in line to take the training, so I signed up just like everyone else did, and here I am today after a long year.
So, it wasn’t like you necessarily wanted to take the step; it was kind of your turn?
It was my turn, but I really wanted to take the step. It’s the next milestone in your career. … It’s almost like starting over again because you’re now junior. Because I am; I’m the most junior officer on the job now.
Are there enough female firefighters out there?
Obviously, it would be great to have more. I’m not 100 per cent sure why there’s still a lack of female applicants.
It is a demanding job; there’s no doubt about it. From a physical perspective, you have to be in the top percentile. … That’s a rarity, but there’s lots of female athletes out there that have it, that potential. And I do believe more women are capable of this job than what is representative in terms of the net number of applicants that we have coming.
Why do you think there aren’t more?
It’s not everybody’s shtick, even if you’re a guy, never mind a woman, and I’m not trying to be sexist here. It’s just in my conversations, I have more women saying, ‘I would never run into a fire.’ It’s just not something for a lot of women, but once we are represented in great numbers, I think it’s going to start growing.
It’s that initial push out of the smaller numbers that we’re at now that’s the toughest.
Once we get past that, I think there’s going to be a lot more female applicants.
Have you ever experienced sexism at work?
I’ll say this, when I got hired, it was a relatively senior staff. Like any job or workplace, there’s cycles where the staff is very junior and young and then at other cycles where it’s older and more senior.
I walked in right when it was at this peak of senior people working, and there were some interesting moments, shall we say, when I first started – short-lived, though, and many of them are now my friends, which is kind of the best outcome of that story.
But, you know, it did have the men, generally older, generally very well established in the fire department, who were absolutely not understanding the concept of having a woman on the job. It just defied the identity that they themselves had of themselves and of the service.
How did you deal with it?
I just worked my ass off. I worked hard; I kept quiet. I went a mile and above beyond.
I did have to likely work a little harder than my compatriots did for quite a bit longer to earn that value.
If you could dispel one myth about firefighters, what would it be?
I know that there’s a myth about what our work day looks like, and I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely inaccurate.
We don’t show up for coffee in the morning and stay at the coffee table until a call comes in, come back and have barbecue, play cards, go to a call.
Our days are full from the minute we walk in to the minute we leave. If it’s no calls, it’s training. We train every single day that we’re at work.
Anything else you want to add?
Yes I do. This is great, and I’m absolutely flattered, but I just need to stress that the milestone that I achieved is a milestone that every single guy in my class achieved.
To a man (and a woman) we all worked hard to get to where we are. We achieved a lot in the year that it took to get to where we are now, and I liken it to the collective that was us that made us all independently successful, but it took the lot of us together to make it there.
I have an unbounded appreciation for those guys.
