07/10/2026
ATTN: VA Claims Reviewers – A Perspective from the Fireroom
To the VA reviewers reading our claims—especially the women serving in those roles—I ask you to pause for a moment and put yourself in our shoes. Look past the standard administrative codes, the checkboxes, and the forms on your desk. Imagine what it would have been like if you had done the job.
I have always believed that if a woman worked alongside me and outperformed me, she should be paid just as well—or better. True equality is earned in the grind.
But as a former Navy Boiler Tech, I never had the opportunity to share that brutal environment with women. We never shared those 120°F+ temperatures, scraping the tubes with paint scrapers, punching tubes in the steam drum and mud drum, cleaning the bilges, or hosing down the boiler stack. We didn't spend 16-hour days together in the fiery hot fireroom, setting the safeties on top of the boiler, or slugging up handhole plugs in the air casing.
Those grueling shifts didn't just test our grit; they left a permanent, tragic mark. The long-term health consequences of working in those firerooms—especially the toxic exposures to asbestos, fuel vapors, and extreme heat—have taken a massive toll on the Boiler Tech community, cutting far too many lives short.
Because women didn't serve in those afloat engineering roles back then, there is a total blank space in medical research. If you are a female reviewer, think about how those exact environmental hazards would have uniquely impacted your own physiology, your physical wear-and-tear, or your long-term health.
When you review a BT's claim, please understand that the respiratory issues, the cardiovascular damage, and the illnesses we suffer from today are not just typical signs of aging. They are the direct, delayed consequences of surviving an incredibly hazardous, high-exposure environment that many of our shipmates didn't live long enough to talk about.
We aren't just asking for a rubber stamp. We are asking you to understand the true weight of the grind we endured, and the toxic price we are still paying for our service.
