Get them a hose — and a cane!
They waited more than a decade to fullfil their dreams of becoming city firefighters, and yesterday, they were sworn in as the newest — and oldest — “probies” in the FDNY.
As a result of a court settlement, 123 of the 318 probationary firefighters who took the oath administered yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg are in their 30s and early 40s.
And the overwhelming majority of the 2013 class — 66 percent — is minority, the highest level ever.
A 2007 discrimination lawsuit filed against the Fire Department by the feds gave new life to minority applicants who took the fire exam in 1999, 2000 and beyond but weren’t hired for a variety of reasons.
While they normally would have been looking for jobs in other professions after hitting the age of 30, they were allowed — thanks to the settlement — to retake the city’s written and physical exams, passed and were hired.
Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano stressed that all of the new firefighters, whatever their ages, still have to meet strict physical standards during 18 weeks of training at Randalls Island before being assigned to firehouses.
“This new class of probationary firefighters is a testament to the outstanding work by the department to meet our long-standing goal of diversifying our ranks and better representing the city we serve,” Cassano said, without mentioning the federal lawsuit.
“Like every class that has come before them, these new probies will undergo extensive training, as they learn what it takes to be a New York City firefighter.”
The US Justice Department had accused the FDNY, which was 83 percent white at the time, with discriminating against black and Hispanic applicants.
The new class is 27 percent black, 37 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian.
There are eight women — the most female recruits in more than 30 years.
The previously most diverse class was last year’s, in which 42 percent of the probationary firefighters were minorities.
“This is, by any measure, an historic day for this department and for our entire city — and you are a true cross-section of New York,” Bloomberg told the recruits.
The city initially appealed the discrimination case and lost.
The federal judge hearing the case, Nicholas Garaufis, singled out Bloomberg personally for his failure to attack the issue of bias in the FDNY’s ranks head-on.