When she was young, Elan Grissom always stopped and watched when fire trucks thundered by with their sirens blaring. She loved when firefighters visited her school and she got to climb on those trucks and see the equipment and gear up close. It was exciting.

She imagined herself as a firefighter, but she assumed it would never go further than that. No one had told her that she couldn’t, but based on what she saw, she assumed that only boys were allowed.

As a young adult, she was considering a career in nursing when a friend who knew her heart arranged for her to meet a female lieutenant from the Akron Fire Department. She was the first female firefighter Grissom had ever seen.

“Just seeing her, listening to her experiences, it kind of felt like a doable thing for me,” Grissom said in a recent interview. The lieutenant encouraged Grissom to take the civil service test. Later, she applied for Cleveland’s Fire Training Academy and never looked back.

Grissom, who joined in 2021, is one of 14 women currently serving in the Cleveland Division of Fire. That’s a small percentage — there are 700 total — but a substantial gain in a few years. In 2017, there were four women in the department. By 2020, all of them had retired. In that time, just one woman was hired — the first new female firefighter in Cleveland since 1989.

The lack of female firefighters is not unique to Cleveland

Nationally, 5% of career, full-time firefighters are women, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. (Volunteer forces are about 11% women.) Roughly half of all fire departments have no women, and 90% of all other occupations have more, according to Women in Fire, an advocacy organization.

In Cleveland, the turnaround from one woman to 14 was aided by a change in the Fire Training Academy physical test, in 2020, from timed to “pass-fail.” The change followed an accusation of discrimination from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The city is facing a lawsuit over the old testing.

But Chief Anthony Luke said revising the test has only benefited the department. 

“In my personal experience, all female firefighters that have been hired in recent years have distinguished themselves through their performance,” Luke said in response to a question from Signal Cleveland. “During their training, the academy reported that their performance equaled and sometimes surpassed those of their fellow trainees. Bringing additional female firefighters onto the division would be of great benefit, and I welcome it wholly.”

“There is a very family-like aspect”

Grissom knew she was entering a male-dominated profession, but said it’s never been an issue for her or, apparently, her colleagues.

“I don’t want to say I had my guard up,” she said about her first assignment, in Slavic Village, “but the guys that I’ve worked with have been amazing. It feels like I’ve gained about 700 brothers, honestly, because there is a very family-like aspect when it comes to this station. I love it.”

But she truly felt like she belonged after a day on which her station responded to two serious fires 30 minutes apart.

“It was a good experience for me, because it really allowed me to push past the exhaustion and everything and really just focus on the job,” she recalled. “For both fires, I had the tip, the front line of the hose, I was able to put out the fires. It was very tiring, but I was proud of myself for being able to really push through for both fires.

“And the crew was amazing. Pretty much every fire I go to, I feel tested in some type of way, but that was probably the most I’ve been tested as far as endurance.”

“I don’t ever feel like it’s awkward”

Megan Goehring joined the Cleveland Division of Fire in 2021, after three years with the department in Liberty Township, near Youngstown.

“I think one of my proudest moments was being able to graduate the Cleveland fire academy. That meant a lot to me,” Goehring said. “It was probably one of the best moments of my life. I made it, now I gotta keep working and keep pushing to become better, to keep proving myself.”

Goehring’s path to firefighting was more straightforward than Grissom’s. Her father was a volunteer firefighter, and her high school offered a program called Explorers, which introduced students to careers as first responders. And in Liberty Township, she worked with a female captain and lieutenant and two other female firefighters.

She too has found her male colleagues accepting.

“I don’t ever feel like it’s awkward,” she said. “I mean, we’re all a family. They’re kind of like my brothers. Sometimes we can all annoy each other, but we know each others’ strengths and weaknesses and work at our best with whatever the city brings us.”

“Be that person”

Goehring and Grissom both said they keep in touch with the other women in the Cleveland Division of Fire, sharing experiences and tips for working in a profession that is still learning to accept and accommodate women. (For example, ill-fitting gear is a common problem across the industry.)

Both women also jump at chances to talk to young people about firefighting.

“We’re normal people like you,” Goehring said she tells them, “and we’d love to have you if you’re interested.”

Grissom said that she tells girls, when they don’t see someone like them in a job, “Be that person.”

For more information about careers in firefighting, visit the Cleveland Division of Fire web page.