‘I’m happy they have confidence in me.’ : New Chief, 34, a Whiz Kid at Fire Business

You’ll have to forgive Anaheim Fire Chief Jeff Bowman for doting over one of the department’s new engines like a proud, young father, but it really is his baby.

Bowman, 34, is the youngest fire chief in Orange County--one of the youngest of any major city in the country, in fact. And the revolutionary rear-engine truck, which has been in the Broadway station just a few weeks longer than Bowman has occupied the chief’s office, is partly the product of his design.

While the rest of the department is getting familiar with the five new trucks, Bowman is settling into his $67,744-a-year post. The 13-year veteran reached the top rung of the departmental hook and ladder Dec. 10.

“I’ve just been in the right place at the right time,” he said. “Some people have said, ‘You can’t have a 34-year-old fire chief.’ But what I lack in experience, I have a broad background, the desire to do a good job and the motivation to do it.”

Bowman said it was a “bold move” by City Manager William O. Talley and the City Council to have named him chief now, instead of grooming him for the position with a more seasoned firefighter at the helm for a few years. “I’m happy they have confidence in me.”

Bowman has more than shown his “maturity and credibility with the department,” Tally said. “His willingness to take intelligent risks as in the development of the new pumper is one example.”

Gary Wilder, president of Anaheim Firefighters’ Assn. Local 2899, said Bowman is well versed on the department’s labor relations with the city. “The outstanding thing about Jeff is his progressive outlook,” Wilder said. “When labor relations come to a standstill, he always seems to come up with an outlook both sides should look at.”

And, said Wilder, Bowman knows the lay of the land better than, say, someone from an East Coast city. “We deal with suburban and hillside firefighting, not high-rises,” Wilder said. “That’s a whole different way of firefighting.”

Truck Attracting Interest

Besides staying up-to-date with the 233 employees of his department and preparing a budget for next fiscal year (this year’s totals $16 million), Bowman still finds time to field questions from fire departments around the nation about the new pumpers. Bowman and representatives from other fire departments collaborated on the design for the Hush pumper, which is manufactured by Emergency One Inc. of Ocala, Fla.

“Diesel engines are real noisemakers and traditionally are right behind the driver,” he said. Add sirens and air horns to that and the captain in the front passenger seat can’t communicate effectively with the crew or hear the radio.

The $192,000 trucks cost about $18,000 more than traditional engines, Bowman said, but cities should save money in the long run. “Guys who are retiring all around the country are filing claims against cities over hearing loss,” he said.

Deputy City Atty. Anthony G. Stashik said Anaheim has had three to five such cases within the past two years. “These were firefighters who were in the department for 20 years or so, and hearing loss was one of things they listed in their multi-disability claims,” he said. Hearing loss, he said, amounts to 5% to 15% of the payment in those disability cases, or about $7,000 per case annually.

Noise in the new trucks at 35 m.p.h. has been measured at 67 decibels, contrasted with 98 decibels in the old trucks, Bowman said. “That’s quite a difference when you take into account that decibel readings are logarithmic.”

The specifications for the truck that he and a handful of other selected firefighters came up with stress safety and ease. Features include rollout trays for the batteries and medical supplies, air tanks that fit into the backs of the bucket seats for easier suiting up and an undivided cab that seats as many as nine. “Someone joked that all we need are stewardesses,” Bowman said.

Fires Not Only Task

Firefighting is no longer the department’s No. 1 service. “We handled over 18,000 calls (in 1986) and 70% of them were rescue and medical aid. It’s been just about that (ratio) over the past eight to 10 years,” he said.

Anaheim has eight paramedic engine companies, whereas most nearby cities have one or two, Bowman said.

In 1975, after two years with the department, Bowman was one of the city’s first nine firefighters to be selected for paramedic training. The prospect of fulfilling his father’s dream for him to become a doctor was shattered by a motorcycle accident; knee surgery for Bowman, then a senior at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, scotched chances for an athletic scholarship. He did, however, obtain an associate’s degree from Santa Ana College, majoring in fire science.

(Off duty, Bowman and his family--wife Kathy and children Katie, 11, Andrew, 4 and Brian, 2--sail on their boat and camp. He also plays organized softball.)

Bowman and six other Anaheim firefighters successfully completed the paramedic course in 1976, and the city’s first paramedic unit was off and rolling. “That,” he said, “was pure excitement.

“We typically had 30 calls in a 24-hour period. We were like Ping-Pong balls going from one call to another.” That initial popularity he attributes to the program’s newness, media hype and TV’s “Emergency” series. “Everybody saw that show and knew if they needed something to just call the paramedics. They had us running night and day.”

When Bowman was promoted to captain in 1979, he left the paramedic ranks “because I just didn’t have time to perform the duties of both.”

Part-Time Paramedic

In 1981 the department had additional paramedics trained and assigned them to engine companies to keep up with the demand. And Bowman became one of the first captain-paramedics, rotating his firefighting duties one day and practicing his paramedic skills the next. Today Anaheim has 14 paramedic-captains. “The ones with the specialized training are the ones moving to the top,” he said.

It was during his stint as a paramedic-captain that the city suffered one of its most spectacular fires, the 1982 Ball Road-Euclid Street blaze that consumed 525 apartments, leaving more than 1,200 people homeless. The $50-million blaze was blamed on wind-whipped power lines that spewed sparks into a dry palm tree.

“It was a Wednesday morning . . . and I was just on my way out the door to drive to work when my wife, Kathy, said, ‘Look at the television set! It looks like all of Anaheim is burning!’ ”

Assigned to Light Duty

Bowman raced to the scene only to watch from the sidelines, his leg in a cast after he had reinjured his knee a few weeks earlier on a paramedic call and was assigned to a temporary desk job.

“We all knew about the danger of shake shingles, but the firestorm that erupted was beyond what we ever imagined,” he said. “We’d seen it lots of times in the Anaheim Hills but never in residential flatlands.”

A city ordinance banning untreated shake shingles on new roofs resulted from the lesson Anaheim learned from that fire, he said.

A 1985 arson at a pesticide and fertilizer warehouse thrust the department into the forefront of a new and more frequent danger: toxic blazes. About 7,500 people were evacuated from parts of Anaheim, Placentia and Fullerton while crews battled flames and chemicals at the Larry Fricker Co. over three days. About 20 people, including four firefighters, were treated for injuries.

New Approach to Toxins

“That fire came at the time our haz-mat (hazardous-materials) program was in its infancy. Anaheim had its first 16 guys in training at the time. Had the fire been before that training program, we probably would have handled it differently. In the old days, as we used to say, ‘Drown that thing with water and let the residue go where it may.’ Not any more. We have knowledge of toxic clouds, downstream problems and hazards to the community water table that we didn’t before,” Bowman said.

Rising out of those ashes was a state disclosure law, requiring businesses and industries to report their chemical inventories to their local fire departments. But, Bowman said, cities are “having a hard time getting people to adhere to that.”

“We don’t have enough time or staff to make sure that everyone has complied. And then we have people like Rockwell who are under federal contract . . . and although they disclose to us, we have to worry about keeping the data intact (secret) . . . ,” he said. Three part-time workers are coding the initial information into a computer; updates are expected every six months.

Anaheim is seeking a hazardous-waste joint-powers agreement with other Orange County cities. Anaheim’s Hazardous Materials Response Team went out on 80 calls in 1986, Bowman said, some of them in other cities. “We have sort of a gentlemen’s agreement that we respond and then get reimbursed for supplies, but (city) liability is the issue--the big issue--now.”

Someday, he said, hazardous-materials crews will be able to pull up to a fire, log on to a portable computer and find out what chemicals are stored where before attacking the flames.

Costs Hard to Pin Down

The cost of the program isn’t known. “The state allows us to charge fees to fund the program so there’s no cost to the city, but until we know what the history of this program is, there is no way we can predict the cost. So, we are running it in the red. And these problems are going to grow. There is no way around it,” Bowman said.

The tab for a three-week cleanup at an East Lacy Avenue industrial site this fall came to about $220,000, Bowman said. “It was just a nightmare: cyanides were stored next to acids” and chemicals had been loaded into a giant dumpster, he said.

Members of the city’s response team and the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Coast Strike Force were called in to analyze the chemicals; the Environmental Protection Agency directed the cleanup. Costs, which were paid for by federal Superfund money, may be passed on to the responsible parties, according to Fire Marshal Michael Doty.

“I’m sure there are thousands of places like that in Southern California today--mini-Bhopals--just waiting for a fire,” Bowman said.

“But the trend of the future is not putting fires out; it’s prevention.”