Older would-be firefighters ruled OK

The state Human Relations Commission has ordered Philadelphia to reinstate to the Fire Department’s list of applicants the names of seven men who were removed from consideration because they were age 40 or older.

The seven, who ranged in age from 40 to 44 when they took the civil-service exam in late 2005, passed the exam and fitness tests and were placed on a list for training, said Shannon Powers, spokeswoman for the commission.

The applicants then received letters saying they had been put on the list in error, as their age made them ineligible, Powers said.

“I think it should be based on ability,” said Brian McBride, president of Local 22 of the firefighters union. “There are 40-year-olds who can run rings around 20-year-olds.”

Two of the applicants, David Lewis and Edward Gardner, served in the military; three, Gerard Kershaw, Samuel Gollapalli and Mark St. Marie, are paramedics; one, Daniel Butler, is a Philadelphia police officer. The seventh applicant, David Thummel, owns a landscaping company.

To prove they were capable of becoming firefighters, the seven applicants, who filed a complaint with the commission in 2006, opted to take the skills test at the Burlington County Emergency Services Training Center even after they had been removed from the list. They passed even without the three months of training that applicants normally receive.

Dozens of firefighters age 40 and older, including one who was 59, were hired by the city between 1988 and July 2005, according to the commission’s report.

Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers reinstituted an age restriction in 2006, but said that raising the cutoff age from 31 to 40 had been done “as a compromise.”

Ayers said the age restriction has a historic precedent.

“When I started 35 years ago, you could not have reached your 31st birthday if you wanted to join the Fire Department,” he said.

“We felt we should draw from a younger pool of the population, because this is a very arduous job. [Applicants] need to be able to weather this tough, dangerous job.”

Furthermore, the younger the applicants, the longer they could potentially work for the department, Ayers said. The department normally hires 80 to 100 firefighters a year to replace those lost to retirement or other ventures, he added.

Ayers said he and other city officials are reviewing the commission’s ruling and haven’t decided whether to challenge it. “At this point, everyone’s just taking it in,” he said. *

Staff writer Dana DiFillipo contributed to this report.

This article can be found on philly.com.