Trailblazer Ready For Next Mission

Smoke was everywhere: Erika Bogan couldn’t see. But she could feel the stairs below her. And she discovered — yes, she could do this job.

Bogan made that discovery when she helped put out her first fire as a New Haven firefighter.

More than two decades later, Bogan has retired as a trailblazer in a department that has since undergone visible change.

Bogan reflected on those changes, on that first fire, and on her career, in an interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

The New Haven native recalled how as a Hillhouse student, she wanted to enter a helping profession. Maybe become a doctor, she thought at the time. The idea of becoming a firefighter never crossed her mind; she never saw any Black women doing that job.

She found her way to a job as a 911 dispatcher, helping to guide callers and firefighters through emergencies over the phone. She started work in August 1995. ​“You should take the firefighter test,” her colleagues suggested. After a couple of years she did, and became one of the department’s first Black women in uniform.

She tackled her first fire on Kenny Drive near Ross Woodward School in the Quinnipiac Meadows neighborhood.

The fire was in the basement. Bogan was ​“on the pipe,” meaning she would enter the basement first with the hose to control the flow of water.

She went inside. And couldn’t see anything.

“It’s daylight out. But the smoke is so thick. You literally cannot see your hand,” she recalled. 

“I’m on my knees. I’m dragging my hose. All of a sudden my knees dropped. Holding onto the hose was the only thing that kept me from falling into the basement.”

Then she noticed: ​“I’m OK — there are stairs!” She could feel them. So ​“I scooted down the stairs on my butt.” She and the crew extinguished the fire.

“When I got through that,” she recalled thinking, “‘I can do this. I can really, really do this.’”

As one of the first Black female firefighters, Bogan was tested at times by colleagues: The boundaries for joking, for instance.

And in her early years the department was wracked by ethnic and racial division: A group of mostly white firefighters passed over for promotions filed a lawsuit that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — and led to a 2009 decision that ended one form of affirmative action nationwide.

“It was tough,” Bogan recalled. ​“People were so divided. It was tense.

“I chose to keep my views and opinions to myself. The workplace is not the place to argue and fight. Once the bell hits and you have to go out, it doesn’t matter what your differences are. You are sent on call. You have an objective: How are we going to mitigate this as safely as possible?”

During her career, Bogan worked throughout the city. She was first assigned to Engine 17 on East Grand Avenue, then Engine 15 on Fountain Street, then Engine 11 and Truck 2 in the Hill, then Engine 5 on Woodward Avenue, and finally, until her retirement last month, Engine 16 in Morris Cove.

She loved it all, she said. ​“This job gave me so much experience. I’ve made so many great friendships. … If you have mutual respect with your coworkers, you know you’re all there for a common goal,” you learn to get along and work together.

The department changed, too, along the way. The department hired and promoted more women and Black and Latino firefighters. The culture evolved, too: Two months ago, firefighters of all backgrounds wore specially made T‑shirts on the job to mark Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the anniversary of the date when word of freedom for enslaved African Americans reached Texas. (Read about the T‑shirts here.)

The second best part of the job, Bogan said, was delivering babies. She delivered seven on duty. After one such incident on Edgar Street, she was listed as the attending physician on the baby’s birth certificate. In one sense, Bogan had become a doctor after all.

The best part of the job for Bogan: Community service events. Especially career fairs.

“I never had anybody like me back in the ​‘90s telling me I can do this job. For little kids everywhere, it doesn’t matter what color you are. If I could positively influence them so they looked at me and grasped what I wish I had grasped at 18 — ​‘if she got it, I can do this job!’ … If I can influence one child to go after what I went after years ago, then my job is done.”

“You have to give back,” Bogan said. She won’t do that anymore while wearing a firefighter’s uniform. But you can bank on her continuing the mission.

Click on the video to watch the full conversation with Erika Bogan on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

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