HISTORY
OF THE
SANTA
BARBARA COUNTY
FIRE
DEPARTMENT
by Robert J. Moseley
Prehistory
Santa Barbara County’s first known inhabitants, the Chumash
people, dealt with fire in a practical, natural manner. They used limbs and
branches from trees, chaparral, and grasses from their surrounding enviroment
to build their homes and other necessities including weapons, plank canoes,
clothing and so on. They also used these natural materials as fuel for warming
and cooking fires. Naturally, effective village/wildland buffer zones were
created as the populations reached further into the grasslands and forests for
these useful materials. Wildland fires,
often started by the Chumash’s escaped cooking fires could burn for months,
until winter rains drenched the seemingly endless consumption of fresh, dry
fuel beds. The County’s first fires were likely doused using ollas and
tar-lined baskets filled with water pitched into the flames like a bucket
brigade, smothered with thrown dirt, or patted out with mats or animal skins.
Early
Days
The Federated Church in Goleta had just burned to the ground,
nearly taking its pastor, the Reverend E. E. Fairchild and his young daughter
with it. This tragedy, on March 23rd 1914, prompted the citizens of
Goleta to organize the town’s first volunteer fire department with $250 raised
in just a few days by Ed Blakeway, Frank Simpson, Harry Cunningham and Harry
Sexton. The funds were used to purchase a bright red fire cart outfitted with a
fifty-gallon soda-acid tank and hose.
Santa Barbara City Fire Chief John Dugan served as a
consultant providing technical advice for the fledgling department. Stored in Mr. Simpson’s blacksmith shop on
the corner of Hollister and Patterson Avenues, the cart was towed to fires
behind a buggy or spring wagon with one of the volunteers hanging on to it by
hand in lieu of a hitch.
The State of California passed a
law in 1923, which authorized any unincorporated portion of a county to form a
fire protection district with the approval of the voters living within the
proposed district’s boundaries. These proposals were then processed through the
county government and submitted to the Board of Supervisors for final approval.
These districts are governed by the Board, or its designees, i.e., the fire
commissioners.
On the 5th of October 1925, the Solvang County
Fire Protection District was formed, beginning a long line of district
formations, dissolutions, consolidations, and incorporations By the 20th of January 1958, the
population density and associated development in the Goleta Valley had
increased to a level warranting the formation of the Santa Barbara County Fire
Protection Zone #1. Zoning allowed the Board to levy additional taxes
sufficient to cover the costs of adequate fire protection for the increasingly
urban areas. By 1966, the county had five fire protection districts and four
fire protection zones.
Establishment
On 5 April 1926, on the motion
of Santa Barbara County Supervisor Thomas J. Dinsmore and carried unanimously,
a County Board of Forestry was adopted. This Board was comprised of five
citizens, one from each of the supervisorial districts. A call for a special
meeting on the tenth of April was made and it was on this day that Frank E.
Dunne was appointed to the position of County Forester. This appointment
effected the establishment of the Santa Barbara County Forestry Department,
thus creating the first paid fire protection service for the County, which in
the Board’s words “... is of vital interest to all of the people of Santa Barbara
County.” Warden Dunne also served, simultaneously, for thirteen years, as the
County’s Park Superintendent and Game Warden. Forester Dunne’s pay was $150 per
month with an expense account not to exceed $50 per month. Large scale incidents— including the 60,000
acre Kelly Canyon fire in 1922, the 70,000 acre Oso Canyon and 27,000 acre
Sweetwater Canyon fires in 1923 and the devastating effects of the Santa
Barbara earthquake in August of 1925 created a prime political climate, which, coupled with the prosperous
economic setting of the “Roaring Twenties,” contributed to the Board’s final
and unanimous decision to implement a fire protection program for Santa Barbara
County.
The Department’s first vehicle, purchased in 1926, was a
pick-up truck equipped with a fifty-gallon drum and a fan belt-driven Panama
pump. The first six full-time patrolmen used trailers loaded with various hand
tools, including soda-acid extinguishers. These units, stored in Ballard,
Cuyama, Gaviota, Lompoc, Santa Maria, and Tajiguas, were towed behind Model A’s
and T’s to fire scenes where the patrolmen were joined by civilian volunteers
in their suppression efforts.
The Thirties
During the depression years of
the thirties, Warden Dunne added more personnel, the County’s first fire station,
and new equipment, including its first fire engine. The first fire station was located several
miles north of Buellton on the old frontage road in a former Santa Barbara
County (Jonata) park (now an archery range where one can still see the cement
foundations of the old apparatus bay, station office and housing in addition
to at least some of the remaining old Conservation Corps planted pine trees).
Established in 1932, the Jonata Park Station was situated on property purchased
from rancher Glenn Buell a decade earlier for $3,750. It housed the fire trailers
until 1933, when the Forestry Department acquired two new pick-up trucks equipped
with panama pumps and small water tanks. One of these pick-ups was stationed
on the South Coast at the County Courthouse in downtown Santa Barbara with
the other one assigned to the Jonata Park Station.
Working conditions in these early days were rudimentary at
best. In the Cuyama Valley, for
example, a County Patrolman, Alynn L. Martin, was assigned each summer to live
in a tent shared with a California Division of Forestry member. Martin used his
personal vehicle, with the back seat removed, to accommodate as many hand tools
as possible. When they responded to fires in the area, local ranchers, farmers,
residents and passers-by would eventually rendezvous at the incident site to
lend a hand in the suppression efforts. This collective effort was typical
throughout the County and the tools carried in Martin’s car would be shared by all hands.
The largest fire in the County’s history, the Matilija,
started on 7 September 1933, then burned nearly 220,000 acres of Santa Barbara
and Ventura County’s rugged back country. (Three weeks earlier, on August 19th,
the Indian Canyon fire burned 30,800 acres in the wilderness north of the city
of Santa Barbara.) The following year the Department bought its first fire
truck, a brand new 1934 Ford with a 240
gallon tank and a front-mounted Barton pump.
It was stationed at the Jonata Park Station where it replaced the
pick-up truck. In 1937, a second Ford
fire truck was added to the Department’s growing fleet. It was housed at the Union Oil Company
facility in Orcutt and was operated by their personnel. After one year of service
there, it was transferred to Station 4 in Waller Park in Santa Maria where it
was henceforth operated by the County’s forestry personnel. Around this time,
seasonal crews were hired to burn off weeds alongside roads and assist
permanent crews with their suppression activities. By the closure of Warden
Dunne’s thirteen year tenure, the incipient Department had begun to grow at an
accelerated pace into a more modern, multi-faceted department.
On the first of April, 1939, at
the behest of the Board of Supervisors, Warden Dunne resigned, citing
controversy between the Board and the departments he headed. It was at this
juncture that the Forestry Department was separated from the Recreational and
Park Department. The Recreational and Park Department was placed under the
jurisdiction of the supervisor from each respective district and fire
suppression services were assigned to a singular supervisor. The position of
County Forester and the associated services of Warden Dunne were also
discontinued temporarily as a legal formality to facilitate the transition of
power. The Board then “...directed that Jack Anderson be placed in charge of
the County fire suppression work, to be responsible to Supervisor Stevens.” On
24 April 1939, Jack Anderson was appointed to the “Office of County Fire
Warden.”
The Forties
The forties were ushered in
under the onus of war. In Santa Barbara County, construction of military air
bases at Goleta and Santa Maria; and Camp Cook on the coastal plain west of
Lompoc occurred. Eventually, these
bases would be developed into two civilian airports and the sprawling
Vandenberg Air Force Base. These facilities, with their associated air
operations, required increasingly specialized firefighting equipment and
training of personnel.
In
1940, the Department acquired its first bulldozer, a cable enabled TD 14. This
procurement was followed in 1941 by a TD9 and in 1942 by a second TD14. Thus,
the construction section was begun and projects such as fire road construction,
fuel hazard reduction and suppression operations were undertaken.
The largest wildland fire
incident of the forties, the San Marcos fire, started on the 26th of
August 1944, and burned just over 12,000 acres. On the following day, a smaller
fire in the Gaviota area started, eventually burning 1,165 acres of steep,
mountainous chaparral. Tragically, this fire also mortally burned a fifteen
year-old fireman named Richard MacFarland. Hired as seasonal crewman,
MacFarland received such severe burns that he died the following day, sadly
marking the Department’s first known fatality in the line of duty.
On 23 February 1942, at 7:07 PM,
the Ellwood oil facilities were targeted and pelted by an estimated twenty-five
rounds of 5.5 inch cannon fire from the Japanese submarine I-17, captained by
Kozo Nishino. Nishino reported by radio to Tokyo that he had left Santa Barbara
in flames. His boasting was apparently false however, for luckily, only a
catwalk and tin shed received some slight shrapnel damage. The County, as well
as the nation, seemingly dodged a “bullet” that evening as the light damage
incurred required no response by fire resources. Captain Nishino, it turned
out, had been a skipper on an oil tanker that frequented the Elwood facilities
prior to the war.
Resolution number 7047 of February 3rd 1947, depicted a pay
scale for all positions as pre-requisite to the establishment of a payroll
system for the County Forestry Department per section 4288 of the Political
Code. Examples of the compensations include:
Forester and Fire Warden: $390.00/month
Fire Suppression Foreman: $257.00/month
Fire Patrolman: $219.00/month
Lookout Observer: $135.00/month
Dispatcher: $155.00/month (plus housing)
Bulldozer Operator: $230.00/month
Fire Truck Operator: $175.00/month
Fire Laborer:
$.75/hour
On March 10th 1948,
Warden Anderson’s career made an abrupt change when he was arrested by Sheriff
John D. Ross on a seven count felony indictment issued by the grand jury. The
charges included grand theft of county funds and forgery. Apparently, he
purchased two trailers from the War Assets Administration in Port Hueneme for
$70 and $73, respectively, then sold them to the county for $200 each. Having
also done the same thing with a couple of anchors, he was finally terminated by
the Board on 15 March 1948. On March 16th 1948, forty year-old
Varian A.(Bud) Wadleigh, fire control officer for the Santa Maria Ranger
District of the U. S. Forest Service, became the County’s third Forester and
Fire Warden. His starting salary was
$375.00 per month.
The Fifties
The fifties were a decade of accelerated growth. Under the
direction of Chief Wadleigh, many new facilities throughout the county were
built to meet the increased needs of the communties.
On January 265th 1950, the Goleta Lemon Association
packing plant burned to the ground. At one and one-half million dollars, this
was the largest single structure loss to date in the County, surpassed only by
the Potter Hotel fire of 1921 in the City of Santa Barbara. The processing
plant, torched by an arsonist and unprotected by modern fire protection
devices, burned to the ground in just a few destructive hours.
Also in 1950, a comprehensive “Rural Fire Protection Report”
was written for the County by the Board of Fire Underwriters of the Pacific in
Los Angeles. This report reviewed the Department’s existing resources and
services, concluding with a summary and eighteen recommendations, most of which
have been fulfilled. Ironically, only recommendation number eight, which was
highlighted as being of “…greatest importance” by the Board’s engineers, has
yet to be completely implemented. It stated, “That paid manpower be increased
to five men for structural response on each piece of apparatus responding to a
fire...”. The report also stated that the Department had 19 apparatus manned by
26 paid personnel supplemented by 27 volunteers, twenty-five at Orcutt and two
seasonally assigned to Gaviota. Most of the apparatus were equipped with
“two-way” or “three-way” radios and the greatest pump capacities were 500
gallons per minute on seven of these engines. During the forties, the annual
budget for the Department was approximately $80,000, but it jumped to $140,000
by 1950. At this time, the County was divided into five districts, each with a
District Fire Warden in charge: Carpinteria, Montecito, Mission Canyon,
Solvang, and Los Alamos.
In response to the “Rural Fire
Protection Report,” resolution number 12928 a Santa Barbara County Fire
Prevention Commission was established on December 28th 1953. This
commission was charged with “...the prevention of destruction by fire of
agricultural products, natural resources and structural improvements through
cooperation with the County Forester and Fire Warden and other governmental
agencies in the dissemination of fire prevention education information.”
While responding to a fire near Refugio, District Fire
Warden William D. Marxmiller, age 31, received fatal injuries on May 4th 1953,
when the fire truck he was driving plunged down a 125 foot embankment at the
intersection of Highway 101 and Hollister Avenue then known as the Ellwood Wye.
On 10 July 1953, the Big Dalton
fire began, burning over 73,000 acres near Santa Maria. The most notorious fire
of the fifties, however, began in an outbuilding housing a generator at Rancho
la Scherpa on the south aspect of the Santa Ynez range near the summit of
Refugio Canyon Road on September 6th 1955. Burning 84,770 acres and sixteen
homes in its relentless eastward spread, it took just thirty hours for the fire
to consume 41,000 acres from Gaviota to Ellwood Canyon. It then burned for the
next nine days, wandering up and down the tinder laden south-facing slopes
towards Santa Barbara before control declaration was made near San Marcos Pass
on September 15th. It caused more than
two-million dollars damage to ranch-related improvements. Interestingly,
several mysterious explosions were reported coming from the brush as this fire
burned through Winchester Canyon. These were attributed to unexploded ‘dud’
rounds from the 1942 shelling by the Japanese submarine. The region of this
fire has remains mostly unburned to this day and its forty-five year old
chapparral now surrounds many more structures and improvements.
In 1954, the Range Improvement
Association was organized to facilitate a program of planning and implementing
prescribed burning. The history of
cooperation between the ranchers and the department has been beneficial to both
parties by improving grazing and reducing fuel loading in the prescribed
regions.
In 1956, the Forestry
Department’s name was officially changed to the Santa Barbara County Fire
Department. In the following year special fire zones were established with
special tax rates for structure fire protection. These zones had special fire
protection needs related to criteria such as population density or commercial
development and manufacturing facilities. Beginning in 1958, all fire apparatus
were painted white to provide a more visible, safer appearance.
A flurry of fire station construction took place throughout
the County in the fifties. February 6th 1951, marks the date that
the 2 part-time patrolmen were stationed in New Cuyama in their temporary
quarters, a small Quonset hut. Just over a year later, on April 16th
1952, Fire Station 6 (now Station 41) opened on property purchased by the
County from the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company. July 1st 1957, marked opening
day for Station 10 (now Station 23) in Sisquoc. A month later, on August 8th,
Station 9 (also known as Station 33) was opened at Cachuma Village at the base
of the Bradbury Dam. Station 8 (currently Station 24) opened on January 20th
1958, in Los Alamos.
On the
29th of September 1958, Station 1 at 4550 Hollister Avenue (now
station 13) was completed at a cost of $66,213. (Until its completion, the crew
there had shared quarters with City firemen at an old military-city station at
Hoff Heights, near what is now the Earl Warren Showgrounds.) Five years later,
in 1963, four living units, or small houses, were completed. These living units
were inhabited by married personnel, whose wives would work at the stations as
dispatchers for their respective districts. This arrangement was typical of the
period and most of the houses are still standing at Stations 11, 13, 24, 31, 51
and 41 where today they serve as offices or residences.
The winter rains of the 1957-58
season brought fruition to a project that would dramatically change Santa
Barbara County: Bradbury Dam’s Lake Cachuma spilled on 12 April 1958. It’s
210,000 acre-foot capacity opened the gates to unprecedented growth on the
South Coast and provided the extinguishing agent necessary for the Department
to effectively keep pace with its burgeoning responsibility to provide public
fire protection. The forty-three million dollar project had first provided
contract water two years earlier when the dam opened on March 1st
1956.
The Sixties
Warden Varian A. Wadleigh
retired from office on August 1st 1963. On July 16th of that year the Board of Supervisors
recognized his exceptional fifteen years of service with resolution number
23315 and he was lauded “...for his many years of devoted service and for the
high standard of efficiency which he has established in the Fire Department of
this County.”
Deputy Warden Victor L. Mohr was appointed as Santa Barbara
County’s first Fire Chief on August 1st 1963. Chief Mohr is credited with the
planning and implementation of the 9-1-1 emergency program for the County. He
also favored forming a county-wide fire authority that would have blended the
County, City and District agencies, but the idea never progressed beyond the
discussion phase. In this same year, the watershed protection jurisdiction was
established covering most of the County’s 2,200 square miles. This jurisdiction
charged the Department with preserving the vegetation on the slopes and
drainages of the mostly mountainous terrain, thus minimizing the impact of
erosion and generating new revenue with which to fund the now rapidly growing
Department. This growth was manifested in the opening of Station 15 on June
11th 1962, Station 5 (now 51), on January 5th 1964, and Station 13 (now 22), on
June 6th 1966. Station 22’s crews were eventually relocated to their
current facility at Tiffany Place in Orcutt on April 15th 1981.
The population of the Goleta Valley
tripled in the sixties, from 20,000 to over 60,000. The growth of the
University of California, the City of Santa Barbara, the town of Goleta and the
influx of research and development industries in the latter set the stage for
an unprecedented housing boom, all of which required increased fire protection.
Chief Mohr met the challenge of the sixties’ growth with increased staffing and
the construction of many new fire stations. In a contract with the Mission
Canyon Fire Protection District, the Department agreed to provide fire service
to their community on June 11th 1962. Initially operating out of a rented house
on Dorking Place, 15’s crews eventually moved into their current building in
June of 1970. Station 51 was opened on February 3rd 1964 at a cost
of $106,000. Station 31, which replaced
old Station 3, was built on the site of the old Buellton Elementary School at a
cost of $149,000. Its construction was completed on 20 July 1965, whereupon a
five-man engine company and four-man construction section took to quarters. A
short time later, while responding to a brush fire, an unchained bulldozer slid
off of a transport while turning right onto Highway 101 southbound. Fortunately, the dozer landed upright, was reloaded
and continued (now securely chained!) to the incident. On the 4th of
January 1968, personnel moved into the $38,000, 1,600 square-foot Victor Mohr
Administrative Center at 4410 Cathedral Oaks Road. The following day the
$191,000 Station 11 and its two duplexes were moved into by it’s personnel and
their families.
By 1960, the total number of safety personnel in the
Department was fifty-two. By the end of this decade the number of personnel had
nearly tripled to one-hundred forty-four. The workweek in the late fifties and
early sixties was a grueling 144 hours per week with six days on and two days
off. This led to an incredibly high
turnover rate that peaked in 1962 at 96 percent! Of the thirty-three allotted firemen’s positions, thirty-two
resigned. The six years previous to 1963 had an average of 64 percent turnover.
This turnover rate created a void of experienced personnel, prompting Chief
Mohr to formally request the Board of Supervisors’ approval for a shortened
workweek for his men. He requested that four extra firemen be hired to effect a
workweek reduction to 120 hours, thus facilitating a three days on and two days
off schedule. In 1969, County resolution further reduced the workweek from 101
to 84 hours.
The Coyote Fire began on 22
August 1964 and burned 67,000 acres before it was controlled by a force of
one-thousand firemen and two B-17 ‘borate bombers.’ The Coyote Fire’s toll
included the life of a Forest Service fireman, 45 year-old John L. Patterson,
who attempted to escape entrapment on Romero Saddle. His three companions
remained in place and received minor injuries. There were at least thirty more
injuries to firemen on this aggressively attacked fire. More than twenty homes
were destroyed including the twenty room mansion of Avery Brundage, the
president of the International Olympic Committee. A brief, front page article
in an ‘extra’ edition of the Santa Barbara News-Press reflects the working
conditions of this era. It read:
“WIVES MAN THE STATION WHILE MEN ARE AT FIRE,”
Who mans the county headquarters fire station on Hollister Avenue when the men go to fight the Coyote Fire?
Why,
the wives, of course.
“We have
a full complement of wives here tonight,”
This wind driven fire—clocked at sixty knots in Santa
Barbara, was slowed dramatically when a reversal of winds finally kicked in at
about 2:30 am. The down canyon drafts subsided, as did the temperature, and a
cooling, moisture-laden marine breeze wafted up from the Santa Barbara Channel.
The Coyote Fire tallied a nearly $5,000,000 structure/contents loss and
$13,000,000 watershed loss. Born of this loss was a committee chaired by
Supervisor Curtis Tunnell to study the feasibility of controlling brush
overgrowth in watershed and urban/wildland interface areas using a variety of
methods including controlled and prescribed burns.
Two years later, the Wellman
fire near Santa Maria scorched over 93,000 acres. A smaller, 600 acre fire west of Los Alamos in August 1968 burned
three firefighters. John Irwin Worley, age 32, a county fire dozer operator, died ten days after
receiving third degree burns and a broken leg on that fire. On the 9th
of May 1969, Battalion Chief Vernon E.
Wise suffered a massive, fatal heart attack while attending a convention in
Idyllwild, California. Closing out the sixties was the environmental
catastrophe that would long alter county, state, and national perceptions of
petroleum operations and environmental issues the Santa Barbara Channel oil
spill.
The Seventies
The seventies were ushered in with the Isla Vista riots that
resulted in the burning of the Bank of America building by anti-Viet Nam war
activists comprised largely of University of California students. Although
flames were visible from Station 11 on Storke Road, the bank on Embarcadero del
Mar burned without prompt suppression activities because initial approaches to
the scene were repelled by rock-throwing protesters. Numerous other fires in
dumpsters, vehicles, and burning barricades of trash and debris—plagued County
firemen throughout the nights of February 25th and 26th 1970, (nuisances that
continue to be seen on a smaller basis in Isla Vista to this day). Six weeks
later, on April 17th, a 22-year old student, Kevin Moran, was shot
to death as he attempted to douse the flames of a Molotov cocktail thrown into
the partially rebuilt bank building.
Yet another on-duty fireman
fatality occurred at Station 24 in Los Alamos when 26 year-old Mark F. Common,
suffered a heart attack on 17 February 1970. His fellow firefighters attempted
resuscitative efforts, but were frustrated by the severity of the attack.
The largest wildland incident of
this decade, the Romero fire, had a far greater toll than its 14,538 charred
acres and structural losses. Four firefighters, three from Inyo National Forest
and a contract dozer operator from Arroyo Grande, were overrun on the volatile
eastern flank of the fire. An unanticipated wind change was the precipitating
factor in this tragedy. The three forest service crewmen, Richard Cumor age 26,
Delbert Deloachage age 26 and Thomas Klepperich age 21 and the ‘dozer operator,
43 year-old Leonard Mineau died. Two other operators were seriously burned in
the same burnover. Thirteen aircraft
tended the fire, including four B-17s and a prototype C-130 from the Air
National Guard. The fire was started by an arsonist on October 6th
1971, and burned for eleven days. On the 13th of April 1973, a
mental patient from Santa Ana residing at Atascadero State Hospital, was
arrested and indicted on charges of arson and first degree murder.
Station 4 (now station 21) was
relocated in 1949 from Waller Park to a World War II era building on Sabre Drive
at the airport, finally ended up at its current location next to the main
terminal on June 1st 1970.
Station 14 opened its Los Carneros site on
July 13th 1970, just six weeks after Station 21’s opening.
Located in a grove of trees in Los Carneros Park, this station retains a rural
feel to this day. Several years later,
on the 28th of August 1975, Station 33 on Highway 154 was closed
after years of sevice.
Subsequent to voter approval in
November 1970, a new, county-wide Civil Service System was presented to and
approved by the Board of Supervisors for implementation on July 1st
1971. Prior to this date only the Sheriff’s Department was covered by Civil
Service rules and regulations.
On June 1st of 1971, Firefighter’s Local 2046 was
chartered to organize and represent the interests of the Department’s safety
personnel. County employees, including firefighters, initiated a strike on June 2nd 1975 that lasted eight
days. During this period of time all County fire stations were closed and
emergencies were responded to by sherriff’s deputies and some of the striking
firemen. The strike resulted in a five percent wage increase, a dental plan,
and a two-phase workweek reduction. Until this date, firemen had been working a
66.5-hour week. In September of 1975, it was reduced to 60 hours and in January
of 1976 it was further reduced to the current 56 hour week. Interestingly, only four percent of
California’s firefighters worked a schedule as long as Santa Barbara County’s
before the strike. The 140 striking firefighters were placed on a six-month
probation and had their pay raises delayed for twelve weeks by Chief John
Risdon.
Chief William J. Patterson, a
26-year veteran of the Long Beach Fire Department, assumed command of the
Department in December 1976. Popular
with the rank and file of the floor personnel, Chief Patterson is credited with
improving morale. He also is responsible for the creation of a master plan
which identified various elements and needs for the Department, including the
organization of a reserve firefighter program for four North County stations:
24, 31, 51, and 41.
Fifteen men comprised the first Firefighter Recruit Academy
which began on October 9th 1972. All of the recruits graduated from
the class (with five still on active duty today!). Thus commenced the formal
process whereby all subsequent recruits to the Department were trained before
beginning their respective station assignments. The Department’s paramedic
program was initiated in 1975 with the first graduating class of the Goleta
Valley Hospital Paramedic School. This school, which taught prospective paramedics for the following four years, was
founded by Dr. John D. Dorman and run by a registered nurse, Kathy Morgan, who
was invaluable in maintaining the integrity of the program. The school’s first
class had fifteen graduates, eight of whom came from the Department. These
eight medics were assigned to Station 11’s rescue unit and Station 51’s
ambulance. The complement of graduates went to work for the two local private ambulance
companies.
On the 19th of March 1973, the Board of Supervisors
approved a proposal to consolidate the University of California at Santa
Barbara’s fire department with ours, resulting, on April 9th, in the creation
of Station 17.
On the 30th July 1973, the fifteen person Hot
Shot hand crew was organized and was assigned to Santa Ynez where they shared
the aging, corrugated steel facility with Station 32’s engine company and the
construction section. This seasonal crew was rapidly deployed to wildland
incidents during fire season and provided useful ground support for operations
including prescribed burns, range improvement fires as well as off-season
maintenance projects for flood control and urban/wildland interface fuel
buffering. The ‘Shots were disbanded in the winter of 1991 as a result of
budgetary constraints, much to the chagrin of operations personnel.
In late 1976, the Board of
Supervisors voted unilaterally to impose a 63-hour work week which remained in
effect until the 27th of
August 1980. It was an eventual change in the composition of the Board’s
membership that ultimately resulted in a successful ending to the three and a
half year plight to reinstate the 56-hour week. Coincidentally, this was also Chief William Patterson’s last day
in office.
1977 was a year of great human tragedy. A devastating
wildland conflagration in the foothills above Santa Barbara, the Sycamore Fire,
began on 27 July 1977. This fast-burning fire consumed only 805 acres, but it
took a toll of more than 200 homes. Initially thought to be an arson set fire,
it was later determined to be an accidental start from a kite entangled in high
voltage power lines. Largely as a result of this tragedy, Chief Patterson was
able to secure funding for the purchase of eight new CF model Mack fire engines
for the Department’s fleet.
In a bizarre and tragic twist of
fate, two flight crew members a veteran pilot and his cameraman were killed
when their KNBC news helicopter crashed en route back to their Los Angeles base
from their coverage of the 1,825 acre Cachuma fire on the 2nd
of August 1977. Francis Gary Powers, the famed U-2 pilot
shot down over the U.S.S.R. in 1960, died heroically while guiding the disabled
helicopter away from children playing in a field in Sherman Oaks.
On 20 December 1977, 10,000 acre
Honda fire on Vandenberg Air Force Base took the lives of four men: The base
commander, Colonel Turner; the base Fire Chief, Billy Bell; and the base
Assistant Fire Chief, Eugene Cooper; all died when flames fanned by hurricane
force winds overtook them on a remote site near Space Launch
Complex(SLC)-4. A fourth burn victim,
Heavy Equipment Operator Clarence McCauley, received second and third degree
burns when he too, was overtaken by the rapidly moving flame-front near SLC-5.
He fought valiantly to survive his injuries, but died three weeks later at the
burn clinic at Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
The Eighties
The 1980s were a
decade of continued growth and expansion for the County and the Department.
Chief Richard R. Peterson guided the process for acquisition of funding for
state-of-the-art facilities at Gaviota(Station 18), Santa Ynez(Station 32) and
Headquarters(Station 19). Station 18, largely funded by mitigation fees from
the construction of Chevron Point Arguello/Gaviota Oil and Gas Project, evolved
through a three-phase development from a small trailer, to a modular home, and
finally to today’s modern, permanent facility. Crews were finally allowed to
move into the Station 18 on February 15th 1989. The final cost for Station 18, including the
fuel depot and driveways was $2,062,000 (the most expensive to date). The
mid-phase modular structure was eventually relocated to Sisquoc to provide an
upgraded facility for the personnel at Station 23 who had been operating out of
an ancient, rented farmhouse and rickety equipment barn. Station 32’s original
corrugated steel facility was built in 1948 for a cost of $12,695. In 1973, the
construction section was transferred there from Station 31. Earlier that same
year, the Hot Shot crew also moved into the aged facility. In 1990, the engine
company moved into its new, $1.5 million quarters, at the Santa Ynez airport.
The construction section moved into quarters behind Station 24 in Los Alamos and
the Hot Shots were relocated to Station 24 in November 1990, just before being
disbanded in 1991. Station 19, at a contract cost of $1,979,347, was opened on
the 18th of January 1991.
Ironically, this station was closed on November 20th 1995 as a result
of the revenue losses incurred from litigation between the County and Chevron
and its partners vis-a-vis the funding of Station 18.
The Hazardous Materials Response
Team was created in 1984 resultant of State Senate Bill 618. The first members
of our team were trained at the Casmalia Hazardous Waste Landfill and assigned
to Station 31 in Buellton. The team was initially funded by mitigation fees
from the Casmalia project. Subesequent to the closure of the Casmalia facility,
funding has come directly from the Department’s budget. Today’s team is
comprised of core personnel and equipment at Stations 31 in Buellton and 18 in
Gaviota with trained support personnel located throughout the county. A large,
fifth-wheel trailer located at Station 31 is thoroughly equipped and responds
with Station 18’s air and lighting unit to hazardous materials incidents. Additionally, all firefighters are trained
to First Responder Operational(FRO)level so they can provide valuable support
at incidents.
The Nineties
The 1990s blew in hot and dry.
Five years of drought and searing summer sundowner winds set the stage for the
devastating Paint fire that began on the 27th of June 1990. In just
three hours almost 5,000 acres were burned killing a 37-year old woman and
destroying more than one-quarter billion dollars of property. 427 homes and 11
public buildings were lost in this violent firestorm. A known arson set fire,
no criminal charges have been filed by the County due to insufficient evidence. Ironically, it was a suit filed against
Santa Barbara County by a suspect in that case, that lead to his culpability
for the fire and eventual civil judgment against him in November 2000. This judgment, for the amount of $2.8
million, was for suppression costs and damages to County properties resultant
of this incident. Overshadowed by the
media coverage of the Paint Incident was the fact that three post positions
were lost in July 1990 when the contract for funding of crash/fire personnel
from Santa Barbara was eliminated.
Two Santa Barbara County
type-two strike teams were sent, in April of 1992, to the chaotic ‘Rodney King’
riots in Los Angeles. Responding fire
apparatus were escorted to their assignments with police and/or National Guard protection.
Hooked up with Los Angeles task forces, the teams were dispatched to fires
where SWAT team escorts would secure scenes with weapons drawn before
suppression efforts were undertaken.
Sheriff Jim Thomas assumed the title of Fire Chief on July 1st
1993, following the resignation of Chief Fraijo. This created a public safety
dynasty affectionately referred to as the era of ‘Guns‘n Hoses.’ Chief Thomas’ reign included a hands-on
visit to the 40,500 acre Marre fire as well as a ride-along stint as a
firefighter to the Calabasas fire two weeks later which stubbornly burned for
ten days in September/October of 1993. The Marre fire was fought in very steep
terrain around Zaca Lake, largely by aircraft and hand crews. By it’s ninth
day, October 4th, suppression costs had reached more than two
million dollars per day. Shortly after this incident, Station 19, located on
Cathedral Oaks Road below headquarters was closed resulting in the loss of
three post positions, or nine personnel.
The administrative functions of
the Department rapidly expanded in the nineties with the additions of the
Hazardous Materials Unit and Environmental Health sections to the Training,
Fire Prevention, and Office of Emergency Services.
In 1996, Chief Keith Simmons
became the first person in the Department’s history to ascend through all of
its ranks from fireman to fire chief. A 29-year veteran of the Department at
the time of his appointment, Chief Simmons managed the a Department which had
now grown to nearly 280 personnel with a budget of $24 million.
Station
12’s crews relocated to new quarters nestled in an avocado orchard on Calle
Real on the 25th of April 1997.
Prior to this time they had been located at the old Santa Barbara
Airport station where for years they operated combined as an engine company and
two crash/rescue units. (On March 1st 1983, Station 12’s crew stood
by for the arrival of Air Force One which landed with President Ronald Reagan
and another aircraft carrying Queen Elizabeth.) The crash/rescue apparatus were
transferred across the street to the newly opened Santa Barbara City Station 8
in 1996.
The Department
went airborne in 1998 with the acquisition of a Bell UH1H helicopter, designated
308, which provides suppression support and air reconnaissance for numerous
projects including prescribed burn support, mapping, and training assignments.
The New Millennium
The Department’s current Chief,
John M. Scherrei, took the reins from Chief Simmons on October 4th
1999. He inherited a 260 person department with a $24 million budget that is
stretched effectively meet the ever-increasing safety needs of Santa Barbara
County’s residents. The Department is
now composed of three divisions: Administrative, Operations, and Fire
Protection. These three divisions have numerous sections and units, each
assigned to specific elements of an overall safety service objective for Santa
Barbara County.
The Future
From a smattering of resources responding to a handful of
calls in the early days, to the more than eight-thousand calls in a year the
Santa Barbara County Fire Department has grown and continues to grow with the
community it serves. The future of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department is
vested in the collective contributions of its ever more sophisticated,
well-educated and well-trained personnel and resources. The unseen challenges
ahead will be effectively met as we continue to “answer the call” today,
tomorrow and in the future.
