May 16, 2012 -

To the Editor:

Re “Fire Dept. Doubles Minority and Female Applicants” (nytimes.com, May 9):

The headline does not tell the full story. The firefighter exam is given only every few years. Women were less than 5 percent of the more than 42,000 who took the most recent test. This is not acceptable.

Substantially less than 1 percent of the firefighters in the New York Fire Department are women. New York City’s numbers are shockingly low. Where programs are in place to encourage and recruit female applicants, the numbers of female firefighters are far higher: 17 percent in Minneapolis, 15 percent in San Francisco, 14 percent in Boulder, Colo., and 24 percent in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

While it is commendable that almost half of those who took the most recent New York City test were nonwhite, much more needs to be done to recruit women to the N.Y.F.D.

ELIZABETH GRAYER
New York, May 9, 2012