Palmdale Gives Gift That Will Keep On Giving

It was a sign of international good will that took more than two years to bring about and involved everyone from Palmdale civic leaders and high school students to firefighters and prisoners. But on Wednesday morning, all the work paid off.

A refurbished, gleaming red 1954 fire engine was hauled out of Palmdale, starting an arduous 1,300-mile journey south to Palmdale’s Mexican sister city of Poncitlan. The pumper will help the city of about 30,000 people create its first-ever fire department.

The fire engine, which the Palmdale/Poncitlan Sister City Assn. bought two years ago for $1,000 from Chaffey College in Alta Loma, had to leave Palmdale on Wednesday to arrive on time for its scheduled unveiling Sept. 16 on Mexican Independence Day. It is being trucked and shipped to its destination in the west-central Mexican state of Jalisco, along with donated firefighting equipment.

“It’s our . . . intention to take that little town an entire fire department,” said Don Pierpont, a Los Angeles County Fire Department captain who located the pumper.

Organized Donation

“Right now, they have to put their fires out with buckets or barrels or whatever they can do,” said Jay Lewis, a Palmdale restaurant owner and former city councilman. Lewis helped organize the donation.

In mid-September, a delegation of about 20 people from Palmdale, several of them city officials and members of the sister city association, a private group, will fly to Guadalajara. From there, they will travel to nearby Poncitlan to celebrate the engine’s arrival. They are to stay with local families and see the pumper unveiled during an Independence Day parade.

The fire engine is the latest in a series of donations from Palmdale during its 15-year sister city relationship with Poncitlan. Past donations have included an ambulance, a commercial washer and dryer for the town’s senior citizens home, baseball equipment, and a program of eye exams and glasses for the town’s children, Lewis said.

While they are in Poncitlan for the celebration, Pierpont and another county firefighter, Ozzie Amparan of Palmdale, will help train the city’s police officers to be firefighters.

Lewis said about 140 U. S. cities have sister cities in Mexico, and many have donated surplus equipment. But the Palmdale gift is unique because so many people had a hand in making it come about, he said.

Members of Palmdale’s sister city association raised the $1,000 needed to buy the fire engine and another $4,000 to help refurbish it, Lewis said. Students in Palmdale High School’s auto shop helped put the rig in good mechanical shape.

Repainted by Inmates

Then Pierpont arranged for the pumper to be stripped, primed and repainted by inmates at a state Department of Corrections-county Fire Department camp in the Green Valley area. He worked with the county Sheriff’s Department to get inmates at its Pitchess Honor Rancho in Saugus to reupholster the engine’s seats. Finally, Pierpont and a colleague repaired the engine’s tangled electrical system at a fire station in Agua Dulce.

Moving the fire engine and its accompanying hoses, helmets and other gear--including shipping the cargo from the Port of Long Beach--is being done free of charge.

More than a year ago, the then-mayor of Poncitlan came to Palmdale on a visit and saw the fire engine being readied for his city, Lewis said. “He almost dropped his drawers,” Lewis recalled. “He couldn’t believe it. He turned to me and said, ‘This is really going to be ours?’ ”