THE EAST BAY FIRE : Chief Defends Department Against Scorching Criticism

With the devastating East Bay fire finally under control, Oakland Fire Chief P. Lamont Ewell finds himself caught in the eye of another firestorm over his department’s performance.

On the job just 13 days when the fire erupted Sunday, Ewell is struggling to defend his firefighters--and himself--against persistent criticism that they failed to extinguish an earlier blaze, then reacted slowly as the flames jumped densely populated hillsides and raced through dry canyons of brush.

Ewell, 38, who was trained in Compton, said the allegations of sloppy firefighting are unfair and come at a time when the department ought to be praised for heroic efforts against a Herculean task.

“I don’t mind withstanding the accusations,” Ewell said in an interview with The Times Wednesday. “But I am most concerned about the morale of the men and women of this department . . . (who) put their lives on the line. They are the true heroes.”

Growing up in San Diego and attending high school in Compton, Ewell chose a career in firefighting as a way to serve the public, he said. He began his firefighting career with the Compton Fire Department in 1975 and quickly became a protege of Chief Monroe Smith, rising to the rank of captain in seven years.

“You know,” Smith said Wednesday in recalling Ewell, “there are two kinds of employees: one that never does what he has to do, and one that does more than he has to. Lamont was in the latter category.”

Ewell blamed the fire on a combination of factors: inadequate fire codes, the five-year drought, strong Santa Ana-like winds and low humidity. Fire prevention efforts, he argued, are inadequate given the common use of wood in the construction of homes set in heavily wooded, brushy areas.

Ewell denied reports that crews allowed a fire to smolder unattended Saturday, and that his department’s training is inadequate. He said as many as 120 fire personnel fought or observed the Saturday fire, and that the embers had been extinguished by helicopters dropping 500-gallon loads of water.

“No one in this department or in any other would leave if there were any smokers or hot spots,” he said during the interview at his sparsely decorated office in the main Oakland firehouse.

Ewell is a soft-spoken, slender man who chooses his words carefully. It is only occasionally, as he talks about the hours of uncertainty as to whether his family had escaped the fire, that emotion creeps into his voice and mannerisms.

“That was one of the things I had to be concerned about,” Ewell said, “but I had to put it out of my mind.”

Ewell was summoned to the fire scene Sunday morning from a Special Olympics award ceremony that he was attending in Alameda. The home he is leasing in Montclair was well within the evacuation zone and not far from a fire line. He was unable to contact his wife, Mary, and two children until more than 24 hours later.

The Oakland Fire Department has been plagued by budget cuts, internal friction over affirmative-action issues and has seen its personnel reduced from 600 to 450 in recent years. But Ewell insisted that these conditions did not play into this week’s tragedy.

Ewell’s mentor, Compton’s Fire Chief Smith, said Ewell was to him “the image of a chief of the ‘90s, of the 21st Century, a fire chief who is well-educated, (who) has the ability to take advantage of the technology that’s available to him.”

While Ewell’s protege status clearly advanced his management career, it also bred resentment among some rank-and-file firefighters in Compton. Ewell pursued administrative training while spending little time in the field actually putting out fires, his critics said.

“A lot of times these people that are primed for management don’t work very long in fire suppression,” said one veteran Compton firefighter, who asked not to be identified. “He’s short on experience, though I’m not going to say he was short on ability. We’re all proud of him.”

Ewell moved into paramedic training in 1977, records show, and was made coordinator of paramedic services in 1983. In 1985, he was the No. 2 officer in the department’s fire prevention division.

After 14 years in Compton, Ewell left in 1989 to take an administrative job as head of emergency medical services in Prince Georges County, Md. Before leaving for Oakland last month, he had become one of its three deputy chiefs.

Monrovia Fire Chief Ernest Mitchell, a colleague and friend of Ewell’s during his years at Compton, said the word excellence describes Ewell best. “You’d characterize him as bright and progressive and a professional,” Mitchell said. While his Compton friends remember Ewell as a dedicated professional, some rue the fact that the young chief will be forced to stand up to searing scrutiny.

Ewell, who called the fire one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, says that he does not take the criticism personally.

“I have heard the most outrageous accusations,” Ewell said. “I am appalled that people are taking potshots.”

A fire can be monitored day after day, he said, and then it can flare up as long as two weeks later. The embers, he said, get down into the roots and the fire “will find its way out.”

Morain reported from Oakland and Fuetsch from Compton. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson also contributed to this story from Los Angeles.