Plan to Close Hillside Fire Station Becomes Hot Issue

Up in the wooded hills of Monte Nido, residents are resigned to the fact that nature--sometimes helped along by careless humans--occasionally cleans house with the rapid fury of a brush fire.

Fire insurance, if they can get it, is expensive. Hot, windy days are watched with caution.

So it is absurd to residents of the remote Santa Monica Mountains community that Los Angeles County officials today will consider shutting down the local fire station to make ends meet in a tight budget year.

Fire Station 67, built in the 1930s, is the only one of the county’s 127 fire stations that may close as part of $3.9 million in cuts to the Fire Department’s budget. Fire officials figure they can save $860,000 by closing the station and transferring its nine firefighters to other posts.

But residents complain that any savings from Station 67’s closure will probably be wiped out by the first blaze requiring immediate attention. If the station is closed, emergency fire and paramedic services would have to come from Calabasas or Malibu, each eight to 10 miles away on narrow, twisting roads.

That sort of delay could mean the difference between life and death--or between a small fire and a major brusher.

“We’re being abandoned and cut off from the world,” said David Pevsner, president of the Monte Nido Valley Property Owners Assn., one of about 75 residents who rallied outside the station Monday afternoon. “We literally can’t do without it.”

The proposal has become a hot local issue. Signs protesting the closure and urging residents to attend today’s hearing have been tacked onto trees along Piuma and Cold Canyon roads, the community’s main drags. The crowd that gathered outside Station 67 Monday formed after word spread that a Times photographer was coming to take a picture of the building.

County Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents the area, has sided with the residents, vowing Monday that he would fight the closure.

“Keeping a fire station open in semirural areas is very important,” he said. “We are looking at ways to do that.”

But, Edelman acknowledged, keeping Station 67 open would mean taking funds from other parts of the county’s already strapped budget and limiting other services. The county faces an $833-million budget shortfall, the result of state budget cuts that drastically reduced payments to local governments.

“We need to move money around,” Edelman said. “But as you know, we are in bad shape financially.”

Under a plan unveiled Monday by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Station 67 and other endangered services would be spared with money borrowed from various county accounts, including an employee retirement fund. Antonovich’s proposal would secure about $53 million to preserve programs and services sighted for cuts.

County fire officials, likewise, do not want Station 67 to close, but they see no alternative.

“It’s as if someone said to you, ‘Like it or not, you must amputate one of your fingers,’ ” said Chief Deputy David Hanson. “Which one will it be?”

Most of the county’s fire stations are run with money raised by special fire district assessments, which are levied on homeowners’ annual property tax bills. This month, the Board of Supervisors raised those fees to stave off staff cuts and station closures.

Another 32 stations--including Station 67--are run with money from the county’s General Fund. Of those, fire officials determined that only Station 67 could be closed because firefighters there respond to only one or two calls a day and other nearby stations could provide service.

But, Hanson said, the station’s location makes it critical to fighting brush fires that erupt in remote areas of the Santa Monicas. So if Station 67 is closed, Hanson said, its reopening would become one of the department’s top priorities.