1st woman aviation firefighter touches home base

  • | Sunday | 23rd September, 2018

“We are being cautious,” an official said.A second woman, Meena, is getting trained at the Kolkata FSTC, with Sanyal training her along with men. From Rajasthan, Meena will be the first woman firefighter in AAI’s northern region.“My father is a senior fire superintendent at Kishangarh airport near Ajmer. The two can inspire a whole generation of women to become firefighters,” he said.Sanyal is confident to rub shoulders with many more women firefighters in future: “Women, after all, are natural firefighters, they constantly firefight at home. Officials want another woman from the region to qualify so that she has some same-sex company (to avoid gender issues later). A woman is more likely to keep her cool because she has so much stress to deal with in her day-to-day life.”

KOLKATA:Twenty-six-year-old Taniya Sanyal, India’s first woman aviation firefighter , has joined the force at her hometown airport in Kolkata.Sanyal last year broke a glass ceiling — stretching right up to the skies — when she became the first woman to qualify for the Airports Authority of India’s firefighting course, hitherto an only-men’s club. Successful completion of the training made her the only qualified female firefighter in the 3,110-strong force deployed across the country.Now, Sanyal has joined a team of 161men in Kolkata as a junior assistant and a demonstrator at the Fire Services Training Centre ( FSTC ) in Narayanpur, on the city’s northern fringes, where a batch of 133 young men — and one woman isundergoingtraining.Thatlone woman in the group is 25-year-old Anjali Meena from Jaipur in Rajasthan whowillbecome only the second woman after Sanyal to qualify as an aviation firefighter if shegraduates from the academy.The life of the Dum Dum girl, who wanted to do something out-of-the-box even as she pursued a postgraduate in Botany, changed when she chanced upon an AAI advertisement inviting women to become firefighters. The exam went off well and she qualified for the physical fitness and medical tests. She started training at north Kolkata’s Tala Park and, at the tough fitness test, passed with flying colours.Women are natural firefighters, they constantly do so at home’It was a gruelling schedule at the training academy in Delhi, with the day beginning at 5am with running, physicaltraining and exercise. This was followed by an hour of squad drill and another hour of appliance drill, in which the trainees learned to handle various firefighting equipment. “Holding a water hose and directing it at the fire when water is gushing out at tremendous force requires skill acquired through training,” regional executive director (east) S P Yadav explained.A 30-minute break for breakfast was followed by a threehour class. A two-hour lunch breakwasfollowedby a classfor two hours. Sanyal, one of the 55 trainees in the batch, scored 75% in the graduation exam.The 26-year-old says the biggest thrill is the lightning speed withwhichtheteam hastohead into a crisis. “Time is critical at an airport and fire on a plane must be doused within 2 minutes, 18 seconds because before the fuel tank catches fire and explodes,” Sanyal told TOI.But she will have to wait a while before she is deployed at the airport. Officials want another woman from the region to qualify so that she has some same-sex company (to avoid gender issues later). “We are being cautious,” an official said.A second woman, Meena, is getting trained at the Kolkata FSTC, with Sanyal training her along with men. From Rajasthan, Meena will be the first woman firefighter in AAI’s northern region.“My father is a senior fire superintendent at Kishangarh airport near Ajmer. He is my inspiration,” the MA in political science said. FSTC principal Ashoke Kumar Chakraborty said both women — trainer and trainee—were ascapable as any man in the force. “Sanyal is an excellent trainer. Meena, too, has been outstanding. The two can inspire a whole generation of women to become firefighters,” he said.Sanyal is confident to rub shoulders with many more women firefighters in future: “Women, after all, are natural firefighters, they constantly firefight at home. A woman is more likely to keep her cool because she has so much stress to deal with in her day-to-day life.”

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