Going Under : Port’s Landmark Fireboat Station to Be Torn Down

A Los Angeles landmark--or is it a watermark?--is about to vanish.

Officially, it is Los Angeles Fire Department Station 112. But to the hundreds of firefighters who have served there at one time or another during the past 60 years, it is known simply as Boat 2, an elegantly utilitarian structure on Terminal Island where the department has kept its most revered and experienced fireboat out of the weather and in firefighting trim since 1926.

The Port of Los Angeles is paying $170,000 to an Anaheim wrecking company to demolish the big, pale-yellow boathouse to make way for the $24.6-million expansion of its overseas terminal containerization facility.

The building is believed to be one of the first, and probably the largest, structure of its kind in the country, said Firefighter Bill Dahlquist, an amateur historian in the esoteric field of fireboat houses. Not coincidentally, Dahlquist also is pilot of the fireboat Ralph Scott, which has been the sole maritime occupant of the station since it was dedicated six decades ago.

The sleek red-and-white fireboat, launched in 1925 and modernized three times since then, already has moved to its temporary station, an uncovered moorage at Berth 84 in San Pedro near the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. A new permanent facility is to be built within two or three years.

Somewhat confusingly, the Ralph Scott originally was named L.A. Fireboat No. 2 but was re-christened in 1965 in honor of Fire Chief Ralph J. Scott, who ran the department from 1919 to 1939.

But the 99-foot vessel is better known to firefighters who have served on it over the years as “Scotty” or, more commonly, as Boat 2, exactly the same as the old boathouse.

Boat 2, the structure, and Boat 2, the vessel, have played large roles in the history of the Fire Department and the harbor area, said Battalion Chief Larry Schneider, commander of the port fire division.

Schneider, who coincidentally began his firefighting career 32 years ago with an assignment aboard Boat 2, said the boathouse was exceptionally well-designed and built and was by no means outmoded when the decision was made to demolish it.

‘Place That Everybody Loved’

“I think everyone in the department has always had great respect for the station and the boat,” he said. “I know I was always proud of the fact that I’d worked there. It was just a building, not spectacular, just utilitarian. But there was something about the place that everybody loved.”

He noted that the boat was ready to go 24 hours a day and regularly churned out of the boathouse within 60 seconds of an alarm. He said the response time at the temporary facility will be about two minutes. The reason, he explained, is that the fireboat’s crew members are quartered in a temporary modular fire station and must make a 200-foot dash to the tie-up.

In the old boathouse, Scotty rested in the barn-like, three-story center section of the 22,500-square-foot building, which was connected to the crew’s one-story living quarters by a permanent gangplank. Firefighters were able to dash aboard in seconds.

Dahlquist said that in the 1960s and ‘70s, firefighters made that dash about 150 times a year. Nowadays, because of fewer emergencies, he estimated that the average is about 90 a year.

Some of the alarms of yesteryear were wild ones:

On Oct. 21, 1944, a flash fire spewed flammable liquid across the harbor, engulfing two Navy landing ships, killing nine men and burning to within about 500 feet of the boathouse itself. Other firefighting spectaculars recorded in the annals of Boat 2 include the June 29, 1947, explosion aboard the gasoline tanker Markay, in which 12 men died, and the Dec. 17, 1976, explosion of the oil tanker Sansinena, which killed eight.

Preliminary work on the demolition of the old boathouse began Monday, and the walls are scheduled to come tumbling down July 21.

“We would have liked to have a party (for the boathouse), but we just couldn’t find the time for it,” Schneider said.

Dahlquist, who has been stationed at the old place for the past 14 years, said simply: “I’ll miss it.”