Ever Vigilant, Seldom Called : John Wayne Airport Fire Crews Spend Time Watching, Waiting

John Wayne is the fifth-busiest airport in the nation, but for the firefighters there the bell rarely tolls.

Fewer than 100 calls came into the Orange County Fire Department’s special airport rescue unit in 1991, and the last time there was a major crash at John Wayne was 1981. Still, seven men are on duty, 24 hours a day, just in case.

“A lot of people think it’s real easy (to work) here because we never have a call, but when that call comes, you better be ready,” said Capt. Brian Stephens, who heads one of the three seven-man teams that staff Station 33. “Sometimes it’s more pressure than being at a busy station.”

Just ask Bob Coats, who spent 4 1/2 years on the crash crew and now fills in on overtime duty there. “Just like a soldier, the waiting is often worse than the battle,” Coats said, adding that his most exciting moment at the station came during a disaster drill.

At Station 33, days are filled with training seminars, physical exercise and special projects rather than the emergency medical calls and mini-blazes that make up most firefighters’ log books. The men rarely leave the station, a spacious complex with a library and recreation room tucked along the airport fence just behind the taxiway.

Model airplanes and helicopters join mini-model fire trucks on the knickknack shelves of Station 33. Photographs of planes in flames adorn some walls; snapshots of celebrities who have visited the airport, including Ross Perot and Willie Nelson, hang on others. A portrait of John Wayne, himself, sits in a space of honor.

Above the stairs leading to the watchtower is a wooden propeller signed by every firefighter who has ever worked the airport beat.

Firefighters must have two years of experience before they can be assigned to the crash crew. Substitutes take a special training course before filling in at Station 33, and regulars go to weeklong off-site aircraft rescue seminars once every three years.

For many stationed there, the airport represents a welcome career shift.

“There’s a point in your career where chasing the fire isn’t as exciting,” said Paul Nowotny. “We’ve done quite a bit as firemen, and now we’re kind of specialists.”

Specialists indeed. The crew members wear special uniforms, heavier and metallic, to protect against the intense heat of crash fires. They drive special engines, equipped with foam rather than water to battle flammable liquids. And they take on special projects for the department--such as cataloguing videos and refueling engines--because they have more free time than firefighters at other stations.

At least one member of the crew takes the aviation specialty a little more seriously--Jim Wright, an eight-year veteran of Station 33, got his pilot’s license in 1987. “I like planes,” Wright explained simply, noting that his father worked at McDonnell Douglas.

The crash crew may rarely get busy, but its members are aware of the magnitude of their responsibility. Stephens pointed out that there are typically only a handful of victims in a house fire, while the crash of a large airliner at John Wayne could instantly kill as many as 150.

“During the riots in (Los Angeles), 52 people died, and that lasted three days,” Wright explained. In an airliner crash, he said, “we can lose three times that much in 90 seconds.”

That reality is what makes the adrenaline rush every time the crash line clicks, even though most of those calls are fuel spills or false alarms. Sometimes they are also so-called bunker drills, when Stephens or one of the other captains tests the men to make sure they can get out of the station in less than 30 seconds.

One day this summer, crew members sat in their plush brown leather recliners, watching a training video about a crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in March, 1991. A bell rang, and Coats snapped his seat forward while the others, sipping Diet Pepsi with their feet up, laughed.

“Those overtime guys, I tell you,” joked Coats, the overtime guy, as he realized the alarm had come from the TV. “Well, I wouldn’t have been the last one in the truck.”