Women In Firefighting 2
Women In Firefighting 2 : History And Current Situation In Different Countries: (6) UK: In Great Britain, Girton Ladies' College had an all-women's fire brigade from 1878 until 1932. In 1887 it was reported that women employed in a cigar factory in Liverpool had been formed into a fire brigade, and had effectively extinguished a fire at the factory. During the First World War, women's brigades carried out fire-fighting and rescues in the South of England. During the 1920s, women firefighting teams were employed by private fire brigades. At the beginning of the Second World War, 5000 women were recruited for the Auxiliary Fire Service, rising to 7000 in what was then the National Fire Service. Though trained in firefighting, they were not there for that purpose but for driving, firewatching etc. Many received awards for heroism. The first women to form an official part of a local authority Fire Service were associated with Gordonstoun School near Elgin in Scotland, where staff and pupils had supported a volunteer unit of the local Grampian Fire Brigade since the school's return from Wales in 1948. Gordonstoun became co-educational in 1972 and trained women as firefighters from 1975, but these initially operated only within the school, not being permitted by the Brigade to join the official unit. The turning point took place in 1976, when the scale of a forest fire on Ben Aigan near Craigellachie on Speyside led the Brigade too seek volunteers from the local community to help fight the fire. Alongside personnel from local Royal Air force bases, a group of trained women firefighters from Gordonstoun attended, and the performance and endurance of this group over seven days and nights of firefighting led the Grampian Fire Authority to agree to allow women to take on official front-line firefighting roles in the Brigade for the first time. The first woman to attend a fire as an official member of a local authority Fire Brigade was Gordonstoun pupil Bridget Koch, who attended a house fire on Coulardbank Road in Lossiemouth with a Grampian crew from Gordonstoun on 19 October 1978. The first woman actually appointed as a public firefighter in peacetime was in 1982 to the London Fire Brigade (LFB). As of 2012 there are 257 female firefighters in the LFB. As of March 2007 the proportion of operational firefighters in the UK who were women was 3. 1%. The highest ranking female firefighter is Dany Cotton, Assistant Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade
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