'This is a privilege': How a female career firefighter is blazing her way up the ranks

Wednesday, 6 January 2021

It is more common than ever to see a woman picking up a belt sander, a fire hose or handpiece. Stuff reporter Georgia Forrester chats to wāhine who are smashing stereotypes in traditionally male-dominated industries.

Katie Pocock​ is used to being a trailblazer. Because throughout her almost two-decade-long career as a firefighter, she has had to be.

When Pocock first finished high school, she studied communications at AUT (Auckland University of Technology) with the aim of heading into the media industry. At the time she was a surf lifesaver and kayaker, and had been racing for New Zealand. Her sport meant she was away a lot. Her last year of university ended up stretching over two years and she started to lose interest in the degree.

It was a simple recruitment poster she saw in a gym that sparked her interest in joining the fire service (now called Fire and Emergency New Zealand).

She joined Fenz at the age of 22. At that time, less than 1 per cent of the career firefighting workforce were women.

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“It was not just that there were not many women, there were none,” she says. But as someone who was used to being the only woman heading away in a sports team, she welcomed the challenge and walked right through the doors of an industry that was dominated by men.

At first, there were a few people surprised to see her there, simply because it was new, unfamiliar territory, she says. She also came across people who had never worked alongside a woman their whole career.

Firefighting is among the occupations in New Zealand where there are perceptions of masculinity and physicality, Dr Irene Ryan​ says. Ryan is the co-leader of the Gender and Diversity Research Group at AUT​.

It is these kinds of perceptions that female firefighters have had to stamp out over time.

“I think people did think I would not be physically strong,” Pocock says thinking back. “… Fortunately that was not a problem for me because at the time I was an athlete, and I was very strong and physically fit.”

Pocock says that in an industry with so few women, she has often been the first woman to take on certain roles. She was the first woman to be part of a high angle rescue team in Auckland and the first woman to be stationed permanently at Auckland City Fire Station.

While Pocock reflects on how she has “paved new ground”, she says she has not done it alone. There were a few women who walked through the doors before her and who have greater service than her. Those women are the ones who have set the culture and set a really high standard, she says.

Pocock's 19-year career as a firefighter has seen her work at several Auckland stations and in a range of different roles, as well as be involved in some significant response work.

She was involved in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake response, which saw her drive a command unit vehicle in convoy from Auckland to Christchurch.

“I will never forget driving into that city and seeing the devastation. In my mind it was like books that I had read about a war. It just looked so devastated and was in such a state and so abandoned in lots of places.”

She spent about a week in the city manning a command point near Latimer Square and working alongside the New South Wales and Queensland police. Pocock, who was born in Christchurch, says it was challenging time and it was an experience that has stayed with her. But it was also a privilege to be able to help the people of Christchurch and contribute to the response, she says.

She also worked on the team battling the SkyCity Convention Centre fire in 2019. “That is another incident that is kind of etched into my memory. My legs took about a week to recover from that job, going up and down the stairs so many times,” she says.

At the end of the first day working at that fire in an assistant safety officer role, Pocock remembers going back to the station and eating pizza, before going home to bed. “… That night, I kept on waking up and listening to the wind, and I was thinking: oh god those firefighters are going to be up against it.

“The next day you go to work and you go to the fire and you just focus on what you can do,” she says.

Focusing on what you can do is a key part of being an emergency responder, she says. As a firefighter, Pocock also attends car accidents and medical calls, which she says are challenging situations. “I have been to some pretty nasty scenes over the years but again, I focus on what I can do. I focus on my job and the skills that I have and the tools that I have and how I can contribute to the scene.”

Medical events can also be challenging and Pocock acknowledges that for volunteer firefighters those events can sometimes be even tougher for them because they occur in the community where they live.

Medical scenes in particular can be hard because sometimes you are with people as they lose someone, she says. “We go to those kinds of scenes all the time where there is not a positive outcome but what I say to my firefighters is that, again, this is a privilege.

“The thing about moments where someone dies is that they stay with people … They will remember who came to try and resuscitate their loved one. They will remember the ambulance staff, they will remember the firefighters. And if we can treat them with respect, and if we can treat them with kindness, those are the things they will remember from that day.”

Engaging with the community and helping them in their time of need is their core work, she says. When responding to emergencies “you are often facing situations which are unprecedented – things that you have not done before, have not seen before. So that is always stretching and growing you”.

Pocock is currently a senior station officer at Takapuna Fire Station in Auckland and the only female firefighter in a permanent position there. She says it is an incredibly rewarding job where she gets to see new people join, grow and develop in the role, and become good emergency workers.

Throughout her career, Pocock has seen more women walk through the doors, just like she did 19 years ago. Women now make up 6 per cent of the career firefighting workforce and while that number has risen over the years, Pocock would still like to see it higher.

“I think, traditionally, firefighting has always been seen as a really physically demanding job and there without question are physical demands in this job but that is not the only part of being a firefighter,” she says.

“We need people who are calm under pressure, we need people who can engage and be empathetic with the public, we need … a variety of skills to navigate any kind of emergency situation, whether it be problem-solving, mechanically minded, people skills, communication – all of those things.”

For Pocock, her job has been one that has endured through changes in her life, from being an athlete, to becoming a mother. As a mum of two young children, going back to work was definitely a challenge and shift work also adds another dynamic to that. Pocock may be away some nights and some weekends, tackling things like scrub fires but on the flip side of shift work, it means she is home in the mornings to walk her children to school. She gets to visit their classrooms, go away on school trips and says she has been fortunate to have her parents help out too.

In these types of industries often women are going to stand out, and it takes courage to step up and be those people in the spotlight, she says. “I am proud to show our women and our men that this is a role that women can do,” she says.

“If people don’t see women in firefighting roles or women in non-traditional roles, they don’t see it as an option.”

Minister for Women Jan Tinetti​ says there are huge opportunities for women in traditionally male-dominated professions.

She says the focus needs to be on how to support women into these particular professions with training opportunities, and also support organisations which are looking to attract more women, while doing the work to address what makes women reluctant to develop a career in their industry.

Tinetti also says that Fenz is committed to increasing diversity at all levels of its organisation. Its Women in Fire and Emergency New Zealand (WFenz) network was set up in 2016 to identify, support and grow the talent of women in its workforce.