Retired Firefighters Reminisce as Station 41 Nears Final Days : Memories: Watching a drill on the roof, original battalion leader Val Smith, 91, said, ‘It’s sad to see it go, but everything has its time.’

Val Smith had seen it all before--a team of crack Ventura County firefighters scrambling up a ladder, axes and chainsaws in hand.

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But on Monday, Smith, a 91-year-old retired Fire Department battalion chief, wasn’t watching an attack on a blazing home fire. He was watching a new generation of firefighters knock holes in his old fire station.

“It’s sad to see it go, but everything has its time,” he said.

Standing by with a handful of other retired firefighters, Smith looked on as the crew made the first knocks at tearing down the abandoned Fire Station 41 on Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley.

The fire crew was using the building for a training exercise. The real demolition will happen later this month, officials said.

Smith was the station’s first fire captain when it opened in late 1956, and he watched over his own team of firefighters back then. A few of his old crew had come by for one last look at the station, which was abandoned in 1988, when a new one was built just around the corner.

Smith and his crew saw a lot of fires while the old station was operating. In the first week after it opened, Santa Ana winds fueled wildfires in Box Canyon, in the Simi hills and near Moorpark. The winds were so strong, Smith said, that they blew off the new station’s roof.

“I think they’re going to have a tougher time getting it off this time,” Smith said, while watching the crew prepare to hack at the building.

The station cost a little more than $66,000 to build. It is going to cost about $63,000 to tear down the old building, said George Zettle, an official with the Simi Valley Unified School District--which plans to take over the property.

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Standing in the lot between the firehouse and the old dormitory, Smith said he had lived in a house in the back with his wife and three daughters.

At that time, the Fire Department depended on volunteers to help, and the department used a huge siren on top of the building to sound the alarm, Smith said.

Using a code, the station was able to alert the volunteers as to the general area of the fire. On the way to the fire, the engine would stop to pick up volunteers on street corners, Smith said.

The firefighters on duty lived in the dorm, and in the evening Smith’s wife would bake the men cookies or make pies.

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“It was more like a family back then,” said Cliff Pape, 55, who started as a volunteer at the station house and still works as bulldozer driver for the county Fire Department.

Pape, Ray Jiles, 62, Tom Temple, 54, and former Fire Chief Willard Burkhart, 70, stood around remembering their days at the station. Mostly remembering how Smith kept them busy, trimming the lawn, tuning up the old Ford and International fire trucks, and sprucing up the place.

“Looks like that flagpole needs some paint,” Burkhart joked with his buddies about the station’s rusted white flagpole.

He was happy that the demolition had brought out his former colleagues.

“This is great,” Burkhart said. “We don’t ever really get a chance to get together like this. This is nice.”

Each man had his memories of wildfires or bad traffic accidents. Burkhart recalled a wreck in front of the station, where one of the victims was knocked clear of the car and rolled onto the station’s lawn.

“He wound up right at our front door,” Burkhart said.

But all the men seemed to remember an early morning blaze in the mid-1960s that killed five members of one family, sparing only the mother who was at work at the time.

For the retirees, a highlight of the day was seeing firefighters they had known as youngsters now working as fire captains and even fire chiefs.

Assistant Fire Chief Dave Festerling worked at the old station when he was starting out. So did Battalion Chief Ed Bauer and several of the younger fire captains heading up the crews cutting holes in the roof.

One captain had been a high school volunteer at the station just before Burkhart retired.

“When I last saw you, you were just a kid,” Burkhart said. Then, turning to Festerling, Burkhart asked: “What? You’re making kids captains now?”