Rochester Fire Chief Stefano Napolitano was beaming.
He was in his office overlooking downtown Rochester staring at a photo of two Black women, identical twin sisters, clad in firefighting gear aboard a Rochester Protectives truck.
They were smiling back at him.
“Those are the people I'm looking for!” Napolitano said. “That's the million-dollar smile. That's (saying), ‘This is where I belong.’”
The twins, 22-year-old Kalia and Kania Williams, are not firefighters. Not yet anyway.
Rather, they are members of the Rochester Protectives, a volunteer force that works alongside firefighters to safeguard and salvage property, who are waiting to take their physical fitness test to determine their admission to the Fire Department.
If they make it there, they would be a rarity. In a department composed overwhelmingly of white men, women are outliers. A Black female firefighter would be even rarer. Twins?? Now that’s a unicorn.
But the twins said they feel the Fire Department is where they belong, and that they are happy to bide their time as protectives until the call comes.
“It's not really something that we grew up knowing that we wanted to do,” Kania said. “We just knew that we wanted to help people to the best capacity that we could.”
Women comprise 9% of firefighters nationwide and 11% of fire service volunteers, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Just 8% of all firefighters are Black, according to federal Labor statistics.
While the twins are defying the odds, that doesn’t affect how they approach their duties. They said being Black women, in a field dominated by white men, was never discouraging.
“Because we know our work ethic, and we know that we do our jobs, and we do it well,” Kania said.
As volunteer protectives, the twins are tasked with setting up lighting at fire scenes and changing air bottles for the fire fighters. But primarily they are in charge of covering and protecting the victim’s property.
“To be on the other hand of helping save the rest of the material that they do have in the house so that they can leave with something — it's amazing.” Kalia said. “It's great being in this environment.”
The twins are part of a three-woman Protectives crew, which also includes Tatiana Ortiz. The all-female squad is led by Deputy Chief Joey Kirchgessner, who called the team “solid.” He added that he wants to see a diverse department.
“Male, female, doesn't matter in my book as long as we're doing what we have to do,” Kirchgessner said. “Once that bell rings, we're doing our jobs for the city.”
Critics have long pressed the department to be more inclusive. That’s also been a focus of fire departments across the country, and the new Rochester chief has put diversifying his department’s force high on his agenda. Napolitano calls himself a “culture change agent,” and said his goal is to build a department that is representative of the community it serves.
“The city of Rochester is a melting pot of different nationalities, religions, ethnicities, and sexual orientations,” Napolitano said. “We just want to serve and to make sure our department reflects that to the best of our abilities.”
Kalia and Kania Williams hope to serve as full-fledged firefighters one day. They’ve already passed the civil service exam and are now awaiting the physical test. Despite some occasional sibling rivalry — like who gets dressed faster when the alarm goes off, to which Kalia humbly admitted that it was her sister — the twins depend on each other to make a difference.
“If I was doing it by myself, I would be so nervous,” Kalia said. “But having my twin sister here doing it with me, it helps a lot.”
