By Andrew Barksdale
The Fayetteville Observer
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The Fayetteville Fire Department is ramping up efforts to recruit minorities as it struggles, like many other fire agencies, to diversify its workforce.
Only 3.2 percent of Fayetteville firefighters are black -- a figure that trails state and national averages.
Put another way, nine in every 10 Fayetteville firefighters is white in a city where about 42 percent of the residents are black.
Fire Chief Ben Major acknowledged his department needs to do a better job of recruiting minorities. A diverse workforce, he said, can lead to more innovation.
“And aside from that, we owe it to the community to show that we are an inclusive organization,” said Major, who became the city’s first black fire chief in 2011. “That builds trust and respect.”
At a budget meeting in May, one black city councilman called the racial disparity “embarrassing.”
But the department has made several changes aimed at boosting its minority participation, including:
- Lowering three years ago the minimum age to 18 from 19 to attract more applicants graduating from high school and a fire academy run at E.E. Smith High School.
- Holding workshops in November and in February that targeted black residents to drum up interest among applicants.
- Starting this year, shifting the annual testing and hiring process from spring to later this summer, after people have graduated.
- And last year, producing a five-minute diversity recruitment video. In it, fire Capt. Lorenzo Hartwell, who is black, says a diverse fire service is a good reflection of the city and its residents.
“When we arrive on the scene,” Hartwell says in the video, “and they see a diverse company, a lot of times it will make the individuals feel a lot more comfortable.”
Major said a mostly white fire service is common, in part because it’s a generational occupation -- fathers, brothers and uncles in the same family often are firefighters.
“It’s a nationwide challenge,” said Major, who joined the Fayetteville Fire Department at entry-level in 1984 after he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Major has a theory on why so many of his firefighters are white: Inner-city teenagers have less exposure to volunteering at rural fire departments outside of town.
“So, they may not be as exposed to the fire service as those who come from rural areas,” Major said.
Major said he is one of the few black fire chiefs in the state.
“It’s a personal challenge, and an organizational challenge,” Major said.
When it comes to diversity, the Fayetteville Fire Department lags behind the state in some categories but is doing better in others.
The comparison comes from a recent survey of 20 other cities ranging in size from Charlotte to “little” Washington in eastern North Carolina.
The survey was compiled by the Rocky Mount Fire Department and included all of the state’s larger cities by population, except Asheville.
In the survey, Winston-Salem’s black rate was tops at 26 percent, followed by Rocky Mount at 23 percent and then the city of Durham, where 1 in 5 firefighters are black.
In Fayetteville, Rommie Melvin is one of 10 black city firefighters, excluding Major, and a 12-year veteran of the department.
The 35-year-old said he had been torn between being a firefighter and a cop until a white friend suggested he join the Garland Volunteer Fire Department in his home of Sampson County.
He loved it so much, Melvin said, that after four years, he wanted to be paid professionally and joined the Fayetteville fire service.
“It’s something different every day,” Melvin said. “That’s what I like. You never know what you are going to get into.”
But some days can be slow, leaving time for chores at the station and relaxation.
Station 11, which is on the two-lane portion of Raeford Road north of Walmart, had three calls by lunchtime one weekday in early June: Two were canceled, and one was for a 69-year-old woman who had fallen on the floor.
That day, Melvin and four others on the same 24-hour shift, stretched out the hoses on the fire trucks to test them for pinhole leaks. They also went over a checklist of maintenance for the components on the fire trucks.
After lunch, Melvin and his crewmates relaxed in the station’s dayroom, which had four ceiling fans whirling, a TV and a worn dart board. Occasionally, a loudspeaker crackled with an emergency call for another fire station.
Johnny Ammons, who was on Melvin’s shift, is a 32-year-old American Indian from Sampson County, where he became a volunteer firefighter at 16.
Rural areas are more white, Ammons said, and they’re small enough that people will see the same firefighters and their trucks often -- at the scene of an accident or at the store.
“Out yonder, you get bit by the bug,” Ammons said.
Working alongside a nearly white fire service doesn’t matter to Melvin.
“I come here to do a job, and I love my job,” Melvin said. “It doesn’t matter who I work with.”
But the racial disparity does bother one member of the City Council.
“It’s just pitiful,” Councilman Chalmers McDougald told Major at a budget workshop in May. “It’s embarrassing.”
McDougald said more should be done to reverse the trend, especially because blacks tend to have higher unemployment rates than whites.
A proposal to hire an additional fire captain to serve as a recruiter was not funded in the recommended fiscal 2017 budget scheduled to be adopted June 27.
At the same meeting, Police Chief Harold Medlock, who is white, said his department has made improvements at hiring Hispanics, Asians and eastern Europeans.
The racial makeup of the Fayetteville Police Department is more diverse.
The department, including sworn officers and nonsworn employees, is 71 percent white. The highest minority is black at 24 percent.
The Fayetteville Fire Department has done a better job at hiring other minorities: Almost 3 percent of the 331 Fayetteville firefighters are Hispanic, compared with the statewide average of 1.8 percent, according to the Rocky Mount survey; and 3.2 percent are “other” minorities, such as American Indians. The statewide average is less than 1 percent in that category.
The entry-level pay for a Fayetteville firefighter is $33,280, and for a police officer, it’s $34,489.
Frank Kocsis, president of the Fayetteville Professional Fire Fighters Association, said diversity not only improves how the department functions but is accepted in a military community as diverse as Fayetteville.
What else can the department do to recruit? “Constantly promoting ourselves, in everything we do, because this job is so broad on a daily basis,” Kocsis said.
The department already sets up at job fairs and community events. Another recruitment strategy is the Cumberland County schools’ fire academy -- open to all high school students but operated out of E.E. Smith High School.
The academy began in 2004 with more of a college-prep outlook, but interest in it lagged, so the program was revamped in 2011. Now, high school students can progress in the academy through three fire levels that each take a semester.
“The intent is to take it all the way through,” said Patty Strahan, who directs the academy and is a former Westarea fire chief in Cumberland County.
After students finish the academy, they can take courses at Fayetteville Technical Community College toward a degree in fire service or they can apply for Fayetteville’s fire academy or go into a similar profession after graduating high school.
The students in the academy realize they have many options, she said.
“You don’t have to ride a (fire) truck for your whole career,” Strahan said. “There’s different avenues you can take.”
Nearly 90 students have gone through the academy at Smith since the program was revamped five years ago.
According to Strahan, three fire academy students who graduated Friday plan to apply for Fayetteville’s academy this summer. And three more who missed last year’s deadline also plan to apply. Of the six, three are black males, one is a black female and two are white males.
The two Fayetteville workshops held last fall and this past winter were a Fire Department first, at least in more than 15 years, Major said.
The department advertised the workshops on urban radio stations and in fliers distributed in recreation centers, black churches, barbershops and elsewhere.
Major said the workshops attracted 120 people. Most were minorities.
The success of them won’t be clear until the 30-day application period begins sometime this summer. But Major thinks they’ll make a difference.
“The most effective recruitment tool is word of mouth,” Major said.
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(c)2016 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)