Norwalk swears in first female firefighter

NORWALK — On her first official day as a member of the Norwalk Fire Department, Cat Macari quietly left a cake in the break room.

Inscribed in icing, the phrase “It’s a girl!” left many wondering where it came from.

“I thought it would be funny since I’m the first woman in the department,” Macari said. “They couldn’t figure out who did it, which made it better.”

Macari, a soft-spoken California transplant with a background in physical therapy, was sworn in Wednesday as the first female firefighter ever to join the Norwalk Fire Department. Other than the cake, she’s largely avoided the topic and the spotlight as the department’s first woman.

“As far as being the first female, it’s an honor, but I’m just like everybody else,” Macari said. “It’s nothing special on my end. We all took the same test, we all went to the same academy.”

Norwalk Fire Chief Laurence Reilly said it’s been a long time coming for the department, which has tried to hire women in the past only to have them turn down the job or join a different department.

“We don’t get a lot of women applying to begin with,” Reilly said. “We’ve had, in the past, several women on the list who’ve turned us down or been hired by another department before we had an opening. It’s exciting now that it’s happened to have her here.”

As for the cake, Reilly said he missed the day she Macari brought it in, but applauded her humor.

“That was a good thing she did,” Reilly said. “It was a great way to break the ice and it really shows her sense of humor. We’re glad to have her.”

Macari said she wasn’t surprised the department has never had a female firefighter in the past given how few women are in the field across the country.

About 7 percent of U.S. firefighters are women, according to a January 2016 report by the National Fire Protection Association. While that may not seem like a lot, that number has grown substantially since the 1980s when less than 1 percent of firefighters were women, and since 2010 when women made up just 4 percent of firefighters.

“I think some people perceive the physical part of this job to be too hard,” Reilly said. “But the reality is that anyone can do it ... I think we need to reflect the community we live in.”

Macari was sworn in along with eight other recruits at a ceremony at the Charles Volk Central Fire Station on Connecticut Avenue Wednesday afternoon. All of the recruits graduated from the Connecticut Fire Academy in December, and represented the top 1 percent of a class of 1,000 people who took a written test in August 2016 to qualify for the academy. The ceremony also included promotions for seven veteran department members.

The other new firefighters are Mathew Bannon, Jordon Bell, Alexander Horelick, Irving Hutchinson, Mathew Lauria, David Rodriguez, Thomas Sportini and Robert Valenti.

Veteran firefighters who received a promotion were Mark Conte, Pat. St. Onge, Broderick Sawyer, Kirk McDonald, Kosmos Kalmanidis, Phil D’Acunto and Patrick Keough.

“It’s always gratifying when we have a ceremony of this nature because not only do we see young people beginning a new and hopefully personally rewarding career, starting their lives in the service of others, but we also find veteran firefighters who are taking on greater challenges in the Fire Department,” said Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling.

Macari, a California native, relocated to Connecticut to be near her girlfriend’s family in Hamden. She said she’s been attempting to join a department for six years, applying to departments on both the West and East Coasts. Her decision to become a firefighter stemmed from her background in physical therapy where she often worked with patients after a traumatic emergency.

“I was working in physical therapy and we would get a lot of patients who had been in car accidents, had strokes, things like that, and I wanted to be there before that to be able to help people and serve the community in a different way,” Macari said.