ON THE JOB : Firemen on Call : ‘If it’s a car fire, a house fire or a burnt pot of beans, they’re ready.’

There was no time to spare. Roger Campbell, who had been awakened in the middle of the night, scrambled up the stairs of a Fillmore apartment building. Summoned by a woman in labor, he raced past his fellow firefighters.

His intuition, not to mention his agility, paid off.

“I went into a slide and caught the baby just as it was about to hit the floor,” Campbell, 39, said. “The father was there, but he was freaked. He was useless.”

That was seven years ago and it was the first birth Campbell witnessed during his 17 years on the Fillmore Volunteer Fire Department. The second came this last May when another woman failed to make it to the hospital in time. The baby arrived just before the firefighters and, luckily, without any complications.

So it goes for Campbell, who divides his time between answering emergency calls, helping decide the city’s fate as a councilman and fixing cars. As one of 20 men on the volunteer force, he is known to drop everything when a voice on the radio squawks “Patrol 6.”

“If I’m on the phone with someone who doesn’t know what I do, I just tell them I’ve got to go,” he said “I don’t do a lot of explaining.”

And calls seem to come at the most peculiar times.

In 1984, during a heated debate among City Council candidates, fire bells rang out while Campbell, vying for his first term in public office, was stating his case. He didn’t want to miss out on the forum, but he also couldn’t sit still knowing that a fire was threatening a nearby hill.

Sensing his anguish, the audience fell silent then broke into laughter.

“I didn’t end up going, because we soon learned it wasn’t that big of a fire, but it was difficult for a few seconds,” Campbell said. “It was a tough decision.”

As a newcomer to the City Council that year, Campbell skipped out on council meetings to fight fires and respond to traffic accidents.

“I’m probably the only one who has gone to a fire in a suit and tie,” he said.

Since 1911, Fillmore has received its fire protection from volunteers, residents who have agreed to be on call 24 hours a day. For the first few years, a couple of county firefighters lived at the station, which was then located across from Fillmore Central Park.

When a fire broke out, the telephone operator would call the station and announce the location of the fire, and one of the firefighters would run outside and ring a big bell. In a town with only a few hundred citizens and a dozen or so fires a year, using a bell to beckon the volunteers worked fine.

But as the town grew, the operation needed to expand. Three sirens were installed in town to notify volunteers of an emergency, Campbell said.

And when they blared, Campbell said, it seemed that the whole town poured out into the streets to see what direction the fire engine was headed.

All this public attention backfired on Campbell, who decided once to run from his garage to the fire station a block away. Speeding past the opened doors and curious faces, Campbell saw a small dog in front of him and realized that he was going to have to step on the dog or tumble onto the sidewalk. He chose the latter.

“I twisted my ankle, but with everybody watching, I was not about to start limping. I kept running, with tears in my eyes,” he said. “I walked with a limp for a month afterwards.”

In the summer of 1987, when the city began contracting for police service with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, the town sirens were replaced with radios, which are carried by each volunteer. The city’s “911” emergency calls are dispatched out of Ventura and relayed via radio.

Like his father, George, who served on the volunteer force for 30 years, firefighting is a basic part of Campbell’s life. In the showroom of his garage, he has set up the Fillmore Fire Museum, complete with the department’s 1926 fire engine, antique oxygen tanks, sirens and helmets.

Fire Chief Pat Askren said the department relies heavily on Campbell’s experience.

“He’s so busy that he’s spread thin,” said Askren, who is Campbell’s brother-in-law. “But he’s willing to drop everything when I need him. He’s the one we really depend on.”

For his firefighting efforts, Campbell is paid $75 a month to cover the cost of cleaning his uniform, another $75 a month because he is an emergency medical technician and an additional $200 for his role as assistant fire chief.

“It sounds like a lot of money, but it isn’t when you consider the time that goes into it,” Campbell said. “Nobody does this for the money.”

In fact, Fillmore couldn’t afford to pay for full-time fire protection. It would run four to six times the amount of the department’s $111,250 annual budget, said Mayor John Murphy.

“I don’t even see where the monies would come from. We barely squeaked through with a balanced budget this year,” Murphy said.

Campbell is proud of the Fire Department, which received a 4 rating (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the best) from a private company that inspects fire departments for insurance rate-setting reasons. With an average response time of 2 1/2 minutes, they improved their 1975 score by two marks.

Dorothy Haase, who has worked since 1974 in the building that houses the Fillmore Historical Museum, can’t believe how quickly the firefighters assemble at the station on Main Street.

“They used to blow the siren from City Hall and they would all come running. It amazed me how quickly the fellow would get on the truck and get started,” Haase said. “Now that they do it by radio, I just hear a bunch of cars rushing up and see people jumping out. If it’s a car fire, a house fire or a burnt pot of beans, they’re ready. The department is probably one of the most, if not the most, important things in town.”

Campbell’s wife said she’s had to adjust to her husband’s second career, which sometimes takes him away in the middle of dinner, a movie or a family gathering.

“Thank goodness for microwave ovens. Now he doesn’t have to have a cold dinner,” Kathy Campbell said.

“I admire him and all the other guys,” she said, turning serious. “They constantly put their lives on the line. Once in a awhile they need to be reminded that they’re appreciated.”

UP CLOSE ROGER CAMPBELL

Vocation: Volunteer firefighter, councilman and mechanic

Age: 39

Birthplace: Fillmore

Favorite cold drink: Pepsi

Toughest rescue: Dislodging a 9-year-old boy from an irrigation pipe

Driving distance from home or work to Fire Department: 20 seconds

Dressing time in middle of the night: Five seconds

Funniest moment: “About two years after I got on the department, we were doing a hot drill. I was on the end of the hose and yelled for water and instantaneously, there was 450 pounds of pressure. It picked me up like I was a rag doll and threw me in the air. Then, it turned and attacked me and blew a shirt right off me. This all happened in about 30 seconds. It was just like a cartoon.”