Fires Stretch Resources of City, County Departments

When fires fanned by raging Santa Ana winds erupted in the Los Angeles area early Thursday, the city and county fire departments committed about 50% of their on-duty forces to battle the blazes and protect the community, officials said.

As a devastating blaze first hit Baldwin Park around midnight, and then another flared a little more than an hour later in the La Verne area, county fire officials dispatched about 300 firefighters, called about 300 others back to duty, and turned to mutual aid from other communities.

The Los Angeles Fire Department committed 30 engine companies--averaging five men per company--to fight a blaze in Eagle Rock, while other firefighters from Glendale, Pasadena and other San Gabriel Valley departments battled the fire on other fronts.

Half of Force Dispatched

Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said that for a time Wednesday night and Thursday morning about 350 of a little over 700 of the city’s on-duty firefighters had been dispatched to fires.

And, because of the potential danger posed by the high winds and downed power lines, single engine companies were being sent on calls that normally would be answered by several units.

“If we had had anything else that had taken off, then I would have given the direction to go to recall” of off-duty personnel, Manning said.

As bad as the fires were, both Manning and county fire spokesman Battalion Chief Gordon Pearson on Thursday reflected on conflagrations in the past that were even worse, placing much higher demands on the two departments.

Pearson remembered October, 1978, when wind-whipped flames from several fires destroyed 230 homes and several other structures from Malibu to Agoura and Mandeville Canyon. He estimated that about 75% of the county’s firefighters were committed at one time to those blazes.

Manning recalled the Bel-Air fire of November, 1961, which destroyed 484 homes worth an estimated $25 million. He said fire companies came all the way from Northern California to help battle the flames.

When conditions clearly outstrip the ability of a fire department to cope with an emergency, fire officials turn to mutual aid agreements with other communities in a progressive, coordinated buildup of personnel and equipment that can eventually encompass the entire state.

If a fire department needs help, it requests it through a regional office of the state’s mutual aid system, which asks other fire jurisdictions to respond if they can spare engine companies and still protect their own communities.

“It’s really a confidence builder when you realize that you have a tremendous amount of resources,” Pearson said. “The only time that we are going to run into a manpower shortage is when we get that big earthquake that’s predicted.”

For example, in Thursday’s San Gabriel Valley fires, five 20-member task forces came from other departments, including San Bernardino County, Long Beach and the Downey-Montebello-Santa Fe Springs area, to fight the Baldwin Park and La Verne fires, a spokesman said.

And, when Los Angeles County firefighters left their stations, engine companies from Orange County moved in to cover for them.

“If we were to say, ‘regardless of whatever happens in Los Angeles, we are going to have enough (firefighters) on duty (to handle it),’ we’re going to have a fire department five times its (normal) size,” Manning said.

“So, what you do is you have plans that will allow you to handle all your responsibilities and to get reserves--either through mutual aid, or through recall to give you backup.”