They’ve been waiting 16 years since filing a lawsuit accusing the fire department of discrimination in its testing for the Fire Department.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports on their stories about “the lost years.”

The firefighter candidates might have lost some strength and agility since they took the written test in 1995 and maybe gained some weight, but what many haven’t lost is their childhood dream.

“I just thought this was something that touched me deeply going back into my childhood; watching all these beautiful greystones in the city die and watching them die at the hands of fires. So I always wanted to be a firefighter,” said Michael Taqee, who took the city’s firefighter test in 1995.

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The department is looking to get a lot of people interested in taking the firefighter entrance exam, tentatively scheduled for January.

More than $1 million will be spent on advertising the test.

Speaking at Engine 37/Ladder 40 in Harlem, Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said being a firefighter is the greatest job in the world.

"In the first year an FDNY firefighter will earn about $40,000. That's just the start. And that salary can increase to up to $100,00 in five year. Let me repeat that, up to $100,000 in five years. You get excellent health benefits and medical benefits for you and your family, and you enjoy those medical benefits for the rest of your life," Cassano said.

The FDNY has been unable to hire any firefighters since 2007 because a federal judge ruled the last three exams discriminated against blacks and Hispanics.

A new test is being worked on.

Of the more than 10,000 current firefighters only nine percent are black or Hispanic; one percent are Asian.

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“I feel pretty frustrated,” said Sabir, one of 50 military veterans among the 312 candidates set to enter the department. “I didn’t see where the racial bias [was] coming from.

“If I never got to become a firefighter, I would have a pretty bitter taste in my mouth,” added Sabir, who was deployed to Kuwait in 2003.

Military veterans got extra points on the 2007 FDNY test that Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis threw out on Wednesday, saying it was discriminatory.

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The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that some 6,000 African-American job applicants are entitled to pursue a discrimination lawsuit claiming a Chicago Fire Department hiring test created a disparate impact against minority candidates.

The justices unanimously reversed a federal appeals court decision that had thrown out the group’s class-action lawsuit on grounds that they had filed their challenge after a 300-day deadline had passed.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said lawsuits attacking ongoing employment practices that result in disparate impacts against minority groups are not tied to the same 300-day limitations period.

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