Fire Service Names Engine After Female Pioneer

To mark International Women’s Day, Northamptonshire Fire Service honoured Cynthia Phillips MBE, known as Cyd, during a ceremony at its headquarters.

The engine’s name was chosen by the Northamptonshire Emergency Services Cadets, who said they wanted to recognise Phillips’ lasting influence on the service and future firefighters.

She said: “I’m overwhelmed and absolutely honoured. It’s something very special. The fire service was a very big part of my life and I absolutely loved the job.”

Phillips was one of the first women in the country to serve as a retained firefighter when she joined the station in Irthlingborough.

Before joining, she had been working at the post office in Irthlingborough when the fire station’s sub-officer came in following an incident in Wellingborough.

After hearing him describe the call-out, she asked if she could join.

“If he’d said ‘it’s not a job for a woman’, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, because that’s what it was like in those days,” she added.

Phillips later became a whole time firefighter in Corby in 1984, when there were very few women in the profession.

In 1989 she became the first British woman whole-time firefighter to complete a course at the Fire Service College.

After more than two decades of service, she retired in 2002 and was awarded an MBE in the 2000 New Year’s Honours list for services to the British Fire Service.

Northamptonshire’s Chief Fire Officer Nikki Watson said: “To mark International Women’s Day, it’s so important we recognise the contributions of women like Cyd who opened doors for so many of us over her remarkable 20-year career.

“It was such a wonderful moment to be able to see her unveil her name on the cadet fire engine with our future generation of emergency services watching on.”