16 Firefighters Awarded Medals of Valor : Rescue Stories Tell of Heroism, Close Calls, Luck--and Tragedy

When the ladder is just a little too short and the woman in the flaming building is long on panic, you simply keep your cool, stretch out as far as you can--and grab her.

Engineer Tom Brennan told the story briefly and quietly Thursday as he and 15 other Los Angeles City Fire Department firefighters and paramedics were awarded Medals of Valor in ceremonies at the Los Angeles Hilton.

The date was Feb. 7, 1982, and the place was Hollywood.

A woman--”I never got her name, I’m embarrassed to say”--was trapped in the bathroom on the top floor of a five-story apartment building at 1609 N. Normandie Ave.

“I rescued a woman from a 50-foot banger--our tallest wooden ladder,” Brennan said. “She was definitely panicky, felt like she was trapped--and she was.”

The ladder fell just short of the burning window sill.

“I was up to the highest rung I could reach,” Brennan said, “and I was holding onto the brick sill with my hand, and she was above my head.”

It was apparent to Brennan “that if she came out of the window head first and grabbed onto me that we were both going to topple to the ground, and so I got her to turn around.”

“She momentarily refused (to obey orders), saying, ‘I’m starting to burn up; I’m coming out,’ ” Brennan said. “And in the very sternest voice I could muster, I told her, ‘No you’re not!’ ” She came out backward and the 215-pound Brennan slung the 180-pound woman on his shoulder and took her down to safety. He remembered she was shoeless but was wearing socks “and she had all her money in her socks. I could hear it jingling as we came down.”

“She was ecstatic,” Brennan said. “She said to the paramedics, ‘He had 102 on his helmet (Brennan’s company at the time) and he’s my hero!’ ”

Other Dramatic Narratives

All the stories, introduced during the program by former Rams All-Pro footballer Merlin Olsen, were just as dramatic. About 700 people, including Southern California Business Men’s Assn. members, fellow and visiting firefighters and families of the heroes, were on hand to applaud as the medals were presented by Chief Engineer Donald O. Manning.

The emphasis was on the fact that all the rescues were the result of teamwork.

Firefighter pilot Michael A. Roy and firefighters Paul A. Shakstad and Thomas Jeffers III won their medals for teaming up to make the first-ever helicopter rescue from flash-flooded Los Angeles River, usually a virtually dry concrete ditch.

But on Aug. 16, 1983, a woman painting a mural on the wall of the river was caught by a surprise rush of water that carried her four to five miles down the debris-littered torrent.

Roy, at the controls of the helicopter with Shakstad in the rescue harness and Jeffers working the hoist, couldn’t get close enough on the first pass. So on the second, Roy flew backward to put Shakstad into position.

Training Paid Off

“It was the first rescue. Although we had trained and drilled, it was the first ever performed from a helicopter,” Shakstad said.

The artist, Bea Plessner, was hanging onto a piece of debris. As Shakstad grabbed her, he could hear nothing at all above the roar of the water and the whap of the chopper blades. “But,” Shakstad recalled, “she was very happy to see me.”

Others decorated Thursday were Capt. Stephen W. Bascom, paramedic David L. Lilly, firefighter Stephen C. Boyle, firefighter Ronald D. Gardner, apparatus operator Richard A. Harris, paramedics Rod J. Hansen and Royce E. Davis, firefighter William R. Waite, engineer Dana G. McLorn, paramedics Michael W. McElvaney and Jack D. Fry, and firefighter Johnny Garcia.

Not all stories of heroism end happily, as Garcia knows. In the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 1984, Garcia responded with the rest of Task Force 64 to the fire that destroyed the Proud Bird restaurant near Los Angeles International Airport. After about 15 minutes of battling the flames, Engine Companies 54 and 66 were forced to pull out because of the intense heat. One man didn’t make it.

Garcia, realizing that firefighter Benjamin Pinel was trapped inside, made three attempts to save him.

He failed.

“It’s been a long time since the fire, and it’s behind me in many ways,” said Garcia, “ . . . but it is still fresh in my memory.”

He could not bring himself to say the name of his dead fellow firefighter.

But he was able to talk about his thoughts at the time and his feelings now. “The first thing you think about is life, and then property, in that order. You don’t think about danger. . . . It’s our job, that’s how the majority of our firefighters feel. We do the best we can every day--whether it’s a fire, or fire prevention--to deter fires, or fight fire. . . . One way or the other, we do our best.”