FDNY Battalion Chief Michele Fitzsimmons shall be promoted to deputy chief on Friday, changing into the primary girl within the division to attain the rank. Ladies within the metropolis’s Emergency Medical Service have already reached this milestone.
Fitzsimmons joined the FDNY in 2001 at 31 years outdated after working for an organization that handled HIV and AIDS sufferers.
She had at all times wished to grow to be a firefighter however hesitated when she was youthful after a dialog together with her grandfather Michael Fitzsimmons — an FDNY battalion chief who retired in 1968. Her great-grandfather, Charles Roth, was additionally an FDNY firefighter.
“When I was 13, the first women were going into the FDNY. I found that so exciting,” she recalled. “I remember telling my grandfather that I wanted to be a firefighter and he told me, ‘Women shouldn’t be firefighters.’”
FDNY Battalion Chief Michele Fitzsimmons shall be promoted to deputy chief on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, changing into the primary girl within the division to attain the rank. (FDNY)
That old-school considering could have delayed her, however didn’t deter her.
When she advised her grandfather she had not solely taken the take a look at however was going into the academy, her grandfather joked “I guess it’s not just the brotherhood anymore.”
However he shortly championed her choice and cheered her on by means of her early years within the division.
“He had a super change of heart,” she recalled.
Fitzsimmons joined the division and was assigned to Engine 289 in Corona, Queens simply 4 months earlier than 9/11. Six members of her probationary class died within the terror assaults.
When she wasn’t preventing fires, she was finding out for the following rank. She shortly moved up the ranks to lieutenant in 2007, captain in 2014, and battalion chief in 2020.
As head of Battalion 46 in Elmhurst,Queens she is at the moment the highest-ranking girl within the division, which at the moment has 177 ladies firefighters out of a complete of about 11,000 firefighters and hearth officers. She’s the second girl within the division’s historical past to attain that rank. Her promotion comes months after Laura Kavanagh, the FDNY’s first ladies commissioner, stepped down.
The primary girl battalion chief, Rochelle “Rocky” Jones, now retired, was one of many first ladies to affix the FDNY in 1982. When Fitzsimmons heard she was being promoted to deputy chief, she reached out to Jones, one in every of her mentors as she moved up the division ladder.
“She was thrilled for me,” Fitzsimmons mentioned.
Alongside the way in which, her sister, Maura Fitzsimmons-Gibbons joined the FDNY in 2006 and is at the moment assigned to Engine 274. Her husband is an FDNY lieutenant in a HazMat battalion.
“I see her sometimes when I respond to jobs,” Fitzsimmons mentioned about her sister. “One time she was detailed to Manhattan and she was my driver.”
Firefighter Maura Fitzsimmons, proper, poses together with her sister, then-Lt. Michele Fitzsimmons, after Maura’s FDNY commencement ceremony at Brooklyn Faculty’s Whitman Corridor on Feb. 22, 2007. (Julia Xanthos for New York Day by day Information)
The FDNY’s gender barrier was smashed in 1982 when 41 ladies grew to become firefighters after a historic federal gender-discrimination lawsuit.
The FDNY has struggled so as to add ladies to its ranks since 1982. Fifteen ladies graduated from the Academy in 2018, the biggest variety of new feminine firefighters since that preliminary 1982 class. There are at the moment 177 ladies firefighters out of a complete of about 11,000.
In 2022, Mayor Adams named Laura Kavanagh the division’s first girl hearth commissioner. Kavanagh left the division in August.
When Fitzsimmons joined the FDNY, there have been 33 ladies firefighters on the job, she remembered.
Her spouse, grown kids, and prolonged household shall be within the stands cheering her on as she receives her promotion on Friday.
“My wife has made all of this possible,” Fitzsimmons mentioned. “She’s been there for me and carried the weight so I could study. I don’t think a person who’s got a family on this job can thank their family enough for all the support they get.”
Additionally cheering her on shall be Fireplace Commissioner Robert Tucker, who met Fitzsimmons on his first day.
“In the months since I have come to know her as a modest, professional, hardworking member of the FDNY,” Tucker mentioned. “Her promotion to Deputy Chief in Fire Operations is a glass-ceiling shattering event: she is showing women all over our city that the leadership possibilities at the FDNY know no end. I congratulate her on this milestone accomplishment, and I know she will stand shoulder to shoulder with the best chiefs in our department.”
As deputy chief, Fitzsimmons will oversee a full division of firefighters and personnel. It’s a rank she hopes will encourage ladies already with the FDNY to take promotion assessments.
“I want women on the job to know it’s possible,” she mentioned. “I think there are still women who don’t see themselves in that role, but it’s becoming more common.”
She hopes to encourage extra ladies to maneuver up the ranks as the ladies at the moment on the rigs encourage younger ladies to grow to be firefighters, she mentioned.
“I think there are still women out there who don’t see themselves [as firefighters] but it’s becoming more common,” Fitzsimmons mentioned. “The ability to see women on the rigs doing the job. It makes it seem obtainable.”
