When Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff hanged herself in April, a fellow firefighter likened the suicide to a “fire bell in the night” demanding an urgent response.
It is not known why the 31-year-old took her life, but Mittendorff’s death stirred anger about lewd and harassing comments that had been made about her in a popular online forum. The messages, which appeared to have been posted by colleagues, reverberated painfully with women in firefighting locally and across the nation. Female firefighters from the highly regarded Fairfax department and others nationwide have come forward in the wake of Mittendorff’s death, filing lawsuits and sharing stories that some say reveal festering problems with the treatment of women in a male-dominated field. Now some are heeding that “bell.”
A top-ranking woman in Fairfax filed a lawsuit last month accusing the department officials of failing to stop sexual harassment. A female colleague also recently sued, saying that she was ostracized for reporting male firefighters partying on a firetruck with Hooters waitresses.