In the Lap of Luxury

Nobody in Company 67 expected room service or complimentary shampoo, let alone mints placed daintily on the pillows.

But these are cushy times for a squad of Newport Beach firefighters.

The engine company is temporarily headquartered in a pair of second-floor rooms at the Radisson Newport Beach, their fire engine parked just outside.

They ended up there because a nearby fire station had a fire. The occupants of that station--county firefighters, actually--subsequently moved out of town. So the city hired another company of its own, but had nowhere to put them. Except the Radisson.

For firefighters who are accustomed to doing their own housekeeping, it’s almost awkward to have their beds made for them and the bathroom scrubbed, with clean face cloths artfully folded on the counter.

Some can’t get used to it.

“They help the girls when they clean the rooms,” said Blanca Chavez, who heads the housekeeping staff. “Many people make a big mess, but not them.”

The familiar image of firefighters bolting from the table at the sound of an alarm, leaving their meals behind, is missing here.

“One time we were interrupted [with an alarm] and the dining room staff kept our food warm for us,” Engineer Terry Lewis said.

It has its drawbacks, though. “If we ate in the dining room all the time, I’d weigh a ton,” Lewis said.

The unique arrangement came about after a malfunctioning heater started an attic fire in a county fire station near John Wayne Airport. Firefighters, who had been sleeping, knocked the fire down in about 20 minutes. Although the blaze was small, the station had to be closed.

The team of firefighters was moved to a county station in Irvine. But that left a gap in the area’s coverage and slowed response times, fire officials said.

Newport Beach, which has long planned to annex neighboring Santa Ana Heights and provide its own fire protection for the area, opted to fill the gap by hiring a new engine company of its own.

One problem: The city didn’t have a fire station there. And the one the county had left behind had burned. .

“The council didn’t want to wait” to get the company in place, said Newport Beach Fire Chief Tim Riley. “They said, ‘Do it and do it now.’ ”

So a fire engine appeared in a reserved hotel space, right by the stairway the firefighters use when they respond to calls.

The firefighters will be checking out in a week or so, when fire officials find a spot for a mobile home to temporarily house the new station.

“It was supposed to be two weeks, and that was a month and a half ago,” said the hotel’s general manager, Mark Zovic.

He’s not complaining, though. “It’s very comfortable having them here.” In fact, he said, if not for the truck parked outside, “you don’t even notice them.”