Michelle M. Eldridge, left, stands next to fellow recruit Jacob J. Morgan during yesterday’s swearing-in ceremony in the Pawtucket City Council chamber.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PAWTUCKET — Pawtucket hired its first female firefighter yesterday, and the question wasn’t whether she was qualified.

Michelle M. Eldridge graduated first in her class at the Pawtucket fire academy.

The question was, what took the city so long to give a woman the job.

Mayor James E. Doyle offered an answer of sorts when he administered the oath of office to Eldridge and two male recruits, 27-year-old Jacob J. Morgan, of Warwick, and 32-year-old Matthew B.T.A. Ream, of West Warwick.

“I cannot recall a female in this department getting to the level that Michelle did,” the mayor said.

A veteran city firefighter, 41-year-old John Trenteseaux, of Seekonk, was promoted to lieutenant during the swearing-in ceremony, which took place in a City Council chamber crowded with fire officials and family members.

Eldridge was sworn in 15 years after the Providence, Warwick and Newport fire departments hired the first women for the job.

Historically, few women have sought jobs in the Pawtucket Fire Department, city officials said.

“We reach out and we advertise. We put out fliers,” Personnel Director Angel S. Garcia said. “They just don’t apply.”

The women who have applied had had difficulty clearing the initial hurdles, Fire Chief Timothy P. McLaughlin said.

When Eldridge, 40, of East Sandwich, Mass., entered the fire academy in the winter of 2006, McLaughlin said, she was the first woman to have passed the physical ability test and to have scored well on the written exam.

“It was tough for her coming in as the first woman ever in Pawtucket. And, you know what? She stepped up to the plate, she proved herself, she earned the respect, [according to] the reports I got, of her instructors and her fellow classmates,” McLaughlin said in an interview.

“She excelled to the point where they named her one of the team leaders in the school.”

The proprietor of a dog-training business — Camp Bark — Eldridge has spent years working as a volunteer firefighter and rescue worker.

As a member of Massachusetts Task Force One, one of 28 Federal Emergency Management Agency urban search and rescue teams, she went to Atlanta, where a bomb went off during the 1996 Summer Olympics, killing one person and injuring 111 others, and to the World Trade Center in Manhattan, after nearly 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Eldridge said she loves the camaraderie of working with other fire and rescue workers and the excitement of responding to emergencies.

She applied to the Pawtucket Fire Department, she said, after working with several Pawtucket firefighters on the Rhode Island Urban Search and Rescue team, and after a friend, Lt. Donald Gunning, of the Newport Fire Department, encouraged her to seek the job.

Gunning was on hand yesterday to congratulate Eldridge, along with her fiancÉ, Maj. James Murphy of the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department, and her son, Zachary Eldridge, a 19-year-old firefighter and emergency medical technician at St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Vt.

Gunning said that, after seeing Eldridge in action as a volunteer, he said, “Why don’t you get a real job and join the fire department?’”

The advice came almost 15 years after M. Leslie Palmer, the first female firefighter in the history of the Newport Fire Department, was encouraged by her brother, Fire Capt. Michael R. Palmer, to apply.

Gunning said Leslie Palmer now lives in Texas, having retired.

jcastell@projo.com