A Burning Desire to Fight Fire

Brett Willis remembers his first fire. March 1999, 2 a.m. Single family home on Faust Avenue just north of Roscoe.

“It was huge,” he said of the Chatsworth blaze. When he and his fellow Explorers arrived at the scene, they looked at each other and said, “Oh my God. What do we do?”

Willis has been a member for four years of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Explorer program, in which boys and girls from 14 to 21 years old work as volunteers to learn how to be firefighters.

The Explorer program was created by the Boy Scouts of America in 1962 to introduce young people to professions such as aviation, the sciences and arts and humanities. About 300,000 youths nationwide participate in the Explorers. The city Fire Department started its program in 1979 and has 11 posts for Explorer training throughout the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles.

For Willis’ first fire, he and two other Explorers put into practice what they had learned in lectures back at the station and helped save neighboring homes by dousing them with water. Willis, now 20, remembers the thrill of being on the front line of the blaze. He stood at the entryway of the burning home and fed hose through the doorway to firefighters battling the flames inside.

“It was smoky and hot,” he recalled. “I was kind of loving it.”

Willis--who graduated from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills in 1998 and will finish up at Oxnard College in Ventura County in May with an associate of arts degree--has loved everything about fighting fires since he was a kid growing up in West Hills.

As children, he and his twin brother, Bryan, would fashion their Dodgers batting helmets into makeshift fire helmets. They would attach a garden hose to a wagon and pull it with their bicycles.

“Then we’d just spray down the grass,” he said.

At a time in his life when most boys tire of playing firefighter, Willis’ passion remained. He said he hopes to parlay his Explorer experience into a full-time job.

While the Explorer program does not guarantee employment, the experience gives job candidates a leg up if they choose to pursue the profession, said Capt. Rick McClure of the city Fire Department.

Willis’ Explorer post meets weekly to review drills and procedures. Each Tuesday night he and a troop of about 15 other Explorers report to Station 100 in Van Nuys for roll call, announcements and training exercises.

“We give them lots of hands-on work to try to keep these guys and gals motivated and sharp with their skills,” McClure said.

Explorers work on everything from “throwing ladders” to learning how to operate equipment. In time, they can participate in ride-alongs dressed in their “turnouts”--or firefighting gear--with the rest of the crew. Willis has accumulated more than 2,500 hours responding to fires and paramedic and traffic accident calls at stations in the Valley and Los Angeles.

When things are slow, he pitches in around the station scrubbing the kitchen or restrooms. He often reads training manuals or books on firefighting from the station’s library.

“We’re the first ones up and last ones to bed,” he said of Explorers, who typically volunteer at stations in 24-hour shifts.

Recently, a woman showed up unexpectedly at Station 105 in Woodland Hills, where Willis was putting in a half-day shift before heading to his part-time job at a sporting goods store. The woman needed sandbags to protect her home from a coming storm.

Willis sprang into action--retrieving 10 or so bags for the woman and then showing her how to place them for maximum protection.

Earlier, when the station received a call about a diabetic in need of emergency care, Willis bolted from a rookie’s lecture in the station’s makeshift meeting room and responded to dispatch that help was on the way.

Fighting fires is a passion for the Willis family. Each morning as Brett leaves for the station, school or work, his mother, Cindy says, “Pray for smoke.” His father, Beny, installs and services fire sprinklers and alarms in homes and businesses.

Best of all, brother Bryan recently landed a job as a rookie firefighter in the department.

Brett said he hopes his turn is next.

For more information about the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Explorer Program, contact McClure at Fire Station 73 in Reseda at (818) 756-8673.

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