Oakland names first black woman to lead major US fire department

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Beginning in March, a black woman will be at the helm of a major fire department for the first time in U.S. history. Theresa Deloach-Reed, 52, was named chief of the Oakland city fire department. Reed has been fighting fires for nearly 30 years, has seen many changes on the job and calls her appointment “exciting.”

Reed is leaving her position as assistant fire chief of San Jose, California. She said that her career as a firefighter began when her brother asked her to pass an application along to another brother. In 1986, Reed was working a job for a telephone company that involved her climbing poles to install new lines. Afraid of layoffs and with climbing experience, she decided to fill out the application herself.

“There are still a lot of departments that don’t have any women,” said Deloach-Reed in an interview with Reuters. “We still have a long way to go in regards to breaking down the doors.”

The city of Oakland has changes tremendously. Deloach-Reed will join diverse group of city leaders. The chief of police Howard Jordan is black and Mayor Jean Quan, who appointed Reed, was the first woman and the first Asian-American mayor of Oakland.

Reed said that “Some had their vision of what firefighters are supposed to be like” and discriminated in the early days. “It was a different generation,” she said but she and other women fought to get uniforms made for females, locks on bathroom doors and partitions in bunks.

With less that four percent of firefighters female and nearly 6 percent black, Reed says that the key to changing those figures is recruitment. She said, “Women in the fire department have to go out and tell other women it’s a great profession, because there is still this stereotype that women are not firefighters.”

Follow Donovan X. Ramsey on Twitter at @idxr