HOUSTON (CN) – Hell-bent on keeping women out of their station, Houston firefighters urinated all over their female colleagues' dorm and wrote death threats on the walls, the Justice Department claims in a lawsuit seeking to strengthen the city's anti-harassment policies.
The Houston Fire Department's Station 54 – one of more than 100 fire stations in the sprawling city – is located at Bush Intercontinental Airport and staffed with firefighters who have been trained how to respond to airplane crashes.
Though the station has separate quarters for male and female firefighters, the federal government says that going back to the early 2000s, men regularly watched television in the women's dorm and used their bathroom, getting urine all over the toilet seats and leaving tobacco spit cups and trash everywhere, to signal that women were not welcome at the station.
The Justice Department said the federal lawsuit it filed Wednesday against the city of Houston is the first in its new "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Initiative," focused on fighting sexual harassment and gender discrimination in government agencies.
According to the complaint, firefighter Nefertari Alexander periodically worked at Station 54 in 2006 while the harassment campaign was going unchecked by male captains, who simply told male firefighters to clean up after themselves when Alexander complained about them trashing the dorm.
"Each time she worked at Station 54, Alexander observed urine in the sink, on the mirror, and around the toilet seat," the complaint states. "She also found fireworks taped to the inside of the toilet seats and, on another occasion, someone had defecated in one of the toilets and had purposely blocked the automatic flush sensor so that the toilet would not flush."
The feds says the next time Alexander was assigned to the station she found nail clippings in the women's dorm and the carpet smelled of urine. She also caught a male firefighter sleeping in a bed in the dorm.
The situation had not improved when Jane Draycott and Paula Keyes transferred to the station in 2008 and 2009, respectively. They were the only female firefighters permanently stationed there.
The Justice Department claims their male colleagues ostracized them, often not interacting with them for their entire 24-hour shifts, and amped up their juvenile pranks.
"In early 2009, Draycott reported to her captain that a firecracker exploded when she opened the door to the stall in the women's bathroom. He laughed at her complaint," the lawsuit states.
The government says Draycott complained to her male chief on June 19, 2009, about scalding hot water in the dorm's shower, and an investigation revealed the cold water valve had been turned off.
In response to Draycott's repeated complaints about urine on the toilet seats, according to the complaint, a male captain announced in June 2009 that the women's dorm and bathroom were off limits.
Following this announcement, speakers that transmit emergency calls were turned off in the women's dorm, so Draycott almost missed a service run, and TV cables in the dorm went missing, the lawsuit states.