‘Burnt’ gives inside view from a top female firefighter

Clare Frank wanted to fight fires more than anything. But first she had to prove herself to her male colleagues. Oh, and do her job wearing equipment sized for big guys. 

"Identify it. Own it. Fix it."

Clare Frank received this advice when she was a rookie firefighter in the 1980s. Offered to her by a captain who became an important mentor, she took the words to heart as she climbed the career ladder to become one of the highest-ranking female officers in California’s history. “Burnt, A Memoir of Fighting Fire” is her story.

Frank tells how she was inspired by her older brother, and how fighting fires was really the only thing she ever wanted to do. But as one of the few women in a field dominated by men, she knew from the start that she would have to convince the skeptics. She would have to demonstrate each day that she could fulfill every aspect of the job. 

And so, with a mixture of stubbornness and determination, she did just that. She faced down the skeptics and devoted herself to improving and – when necessary – proving her skills. 

As a pioneer, she persevered through situations that compromised her safety in ways her male colleagues did not experience. Standing at 5 foot 2 inches tall, Frank describes how routine tasks became more onerous when she had to contend with standard-issue safety gear sized to fit large men. With each trial that she faced, she was acutely aware that her results would not only affect her own career, but also that of every other woman who tried to follow the same path. This realization helped fuel her determination.

Yet, as she writes about how she jerry-rigged solutions, she wonders if her commitment, or maybe her sheer obstinacy, might have slowed the progress of women in the field. Frank tolerated the ill-fitting equipment. In the years that followed, when essential apparatus became available in a range of sizes, she thinks perhaps she could have facilitated the change sooner by speaking up.

Such honesty and sense of personal responsibility resonate through each stage of Frank’s 33-year career.

From the beginning, Frank was not a typical firefighter. She tells how she rode a skateboard to her first day of training, prompting the captain to ask why he should trust her to drive a firetruck when she didn’t even drive a car. She admits she wasn’t old enough at the time to be a firefighter. Only 17 when she completed her application, Frank left blank the space for her birthdate hoping no one would notice, and it seems no one did. She went on to earn the highest score that year in the state’s comprehensive exam.

As she recounts the grueling training and the precise coordination that enable the teams to respond as effectively as they do, she also writes of the esprit de corps that develops, comparing it to her experiences with high school sports: “the soaring feeling of team, of pushing your limits alongside others who are doing the same to find victory in a place we couldn’t get to by ourselves.”  

In addition to the grueling training that every firefighter endured, Frank also had to withstand her co-workers’ scrutiny as they looked for any sign of weakness. 

She tells how she once practiced moving ladders, an essential skill when battling a fire. As she was struggled with the weight of the equipment, she was fully aware that her colleagues were observing her efforts. It was only after she had completed the task that one of them asked her if she realized she had been transporting a two-person ladder. No, she had not. But she did it.

Her devotion, the honesty with which she approached each obstacle, the manner in which she took responsibility for what she could improve, and worked until she attained each goal, is inspiring. It's easy to imagine that she would have succeeded in whatever field she chose.

Frank did try another career, briefly. Sidelined by a work-related injury that disqualified her from participating in the work that she loved, Frank enrolled in law school. Yet her legal career lasted only long enough for her to fully recover and return to fighting fires. Throughout her three-decade career, she approached firefighting less like a job and more like a calling.

Communities across California, not to mention the women who followed her, are the beneficiaries of her commitment.