ALWAYS READY: When San Francisco suffered an...

ALWAYS READY: When San Francisco suffered an earthquake in 1989, Orange County Fire Department battalion chief Chuck Nicola was among the first called to the scene. Last year’s Hurricane Emily off the Carolina Coast: Nicola was there. So no surprise that Nicola, head of the county’s 56-member urban search and rescue task force, took his whole crew to Northridge after Monday’s quake. . . . “He wrote the book,” says a Fire Department spokeswoman, “so you know where he’s going to be any time there’s an emergency.”