Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

A team from the California Youth Authority trains with the Alma Station helicopter crew.

Watered Down

CDF battles blazes and budget cuts from the state

By Jeff Kearns

The faint sound of the helicopter's blades chopping through the air echoes across Lexington Reservoir just before the chopper pops out from behind Aztec Ridge. In a minute or so, it floats down over the brown and green hills to the concrete landing pad behind the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Alma Station, pokes its nose up a bit and drops down gently on its skids.

CDF's red-and-white UH-1 Huey has been popping up on the evening news and in photographs in Bay Area newspapers lately, as wildfires start to make headlines. This morning, with the heat already pushing up, the helicopter door slides open and disgorges a team from the California Youth Authority's Youth Conservation Camp in Ben Lomond. It is one of four CYA camps in the state, operated jointly with CDF. About 75 young men between the ages of 18 and 25 live at the minimum-security facility and work as hand crews for CDF.

Dressed in Caltrans-orange fire-retardant gear, the hand crews, escorted by firefighters in bright yellow gear, crouch as they walk under the whirling blades, away from the aircraft. The firefighters hop back in and slide the door shut. The helicopter lifts up and dips its nose slightly as it glides back out over the reservoir and up to the peak for another load of trainees.

The hand crews, after watching a safety video, suiting up and getting a short lecture on safety, are being certified to work alongside the firefighters on big blazes. Today, the crews practice being inserted into the drop zone, a special clearing used for training on top of one of the peaks.

"It's a little scary at first, but you get the hang of it," says Troy Brannon, 19. "It's like a roller coaster." Pay for the job is just a dollar a day, but Brannon says it's worth it. "It's a great way of giving back to the community," he says, before the group takes off to spend the rest of the morning learning to clear lines with shovels, rakes and chain saws.

As fire season shifts into high gear, the Alma Station, located on Old Santa Cruz Highway, is fully staffed again. This year's season started late, after heavy winter rains lasted into June, but now, the summer fire danger is back to normal. The firefighters train with other CDF departments, such as the San Mateo/Santa Cruz Ranger Unit, and local departments such as the West Valley's Central Fire District.

The Alma Station is one of 12 in the Santa Clara Ranger Unit, which covers Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and parts of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. Alma is the only station with a helicopter base, or Helitack--which has been there for more than 15 years--and an engine company. Most stations have one fire engine.

The ranger unit also has two tanker planes based out of Hollister, an airborne communications plane used to coordinate large-scale firefighting efforts and bulldozers in Morgan Hill and Sunol. The tanker planes carry red fire retardant, which is actually a kind of fertilizer dyed so that pilots can see where their drops have landed.

The district also monitors different stations around the region several times each day and adjusts how large a response each fire gets based on weather conditions.

So far this season, CDF has responded to wildfires in south San Jose, Oakland and Livermore, all of which were quickly controlled and caused little or no damage.

CDF firefighters, who are trained in first aid, also respond to medical emergencies and highway accidents, Capt. Mike Wemp says, as well as structure fires, hazardous materials cleanups, boating accidents, floods and other emergencies. And because the statewide department is well-versed in coordinating large efforts, CDF has taken the lead in logistics support for major disasters like the Oakland Hills fire and the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes. In addition to firefighting, CDF also helped house and feed victims.

During fire season, about 20 firefighters staff the Alma Station, living in bunkrooms (all beds neatly made, army style) and eating in a common dining room. Staff shares cooking duties, a far cry from the good old days back in the '70s when the money flowed more freely and the station had a full-time cook on staff--now, the state deducts $2.50 from paychecks for each meal.

The department is constantly defending itself against budget cuts in Sacramento, and in recent negotiations over the state's surplus, a long overdue raise for firefighters was scrapped. The cook wasn't the only casualty of belt-tightening: the firetruck is currently staffed by a driver and two firefighters. It used have a staff of six.

The firefighters work four-day shifts, with three days off. "It's not like a 9-to-5 job," Wemp says. The schedule starts at 6 a.m., with breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at five and quiet time at 10. Somewhere in the schedule there's an hour for working out.

The station was built in 1955, after it was relocated from what's now the bottom of Lexington Reservoir. CDF is leasing the land and plans to rebuild the station in the near future, but the state is still trying to buy the land. Negotiations with former landowners Arlie Land and Cattle Co. were slow, contentious and ultimately fruitless. The process started over again last month when the property was purchased by Frontier Technology, a hydroelectric-equipment maker in Oregon. The lease runs out in two years.

Wemp, who has been with the department for 26 years, drives the truck. It's a $250,000 model with two engines (one for the pumps), a 750-gallon tank (always full) and several hundred feet of hose. It produces fire-retardant foam that can be used to coat a house, and because wildfires don't usually break out near fire hydrants, it can suck water from lakes, pools or streams.

The department picked up the helicopter, an old army model, on the cheap from the federal government and upgraded it for use fighting fires. It carries a crew of nine and a collapsible "Bambi Bucket" that can scoop 325 gallons (2,500 pounds) of water. Capt. Rob Van Wormer, who commands the Helitack crew, says they can set down, deploy the firefighters, hook up the bucket and be off the ground again in 90 seconds. (The orange bucket, made of plastic and nylon, folds up neatly into a duffel bag when the fire's out.) The crew is also trained to pluck victims from the ground by lowering a firefighter down on the end of a 60-foot harness. It hasn't been needed yet, but the training continues.

The Helitack unit also has its own mobile ground crew, with a tanker truck full of Jet-A fuel that also carries gear and clothes for the firefighters. "It's got our extra underwear on there, too," says firefighter Will Kron, "and our shaving kits."

Polishing the glass nose of the helicopter with his T-shirt, Kron says having the aerial response probably made the difference with last year's Cats fire. "That was a real wake-up call for Los Gatos. They can't afford not to have something like what we've got here," he says. "It could have been a lot worse."

CDF boasts that it keeps 90 percent of fires under 10 acres. For the others, crews set up camp and bring in more equipment until they have enough to do the job. For a major fire or emergency, the state agency acts as a whole, calling in ground crews and aircraft from other regions and spreading out other units to cover stations left empty.

Until the early '90s, the CDF staffed lookout posts on mountaintops, but budget cuts and other factors forced the department to abandon the practice. In recent decades, air quality statewide has dropped visibility to dismal levels. And because cell phones have become more popular than ever, more and more reports come into the department's Morgan Hill headquarters from passing motorists.

The fire danger slackens when the rains return and the hills turn green again. The station is staffed year-round, but many of the firefighters, who are employed for about six months out of the year, will return to other jobs or school, and many will look for permanent jobs with other departments.

Kron spends his winters in the carpentry business and says he's thinking about getting another degree on top of the one he got last year in fire sciences, but this winter he plans to take some culinary classes and try to get work as an emergency medical technician with an ambulance company. Mike Harrison is heading back to Sacramento State University to work on his degree, also in fire sciences, and leading a men's Bible group. Herb Alpers is going back to Mission College and another full-time job, and wants to spend more time with his 3-year-old daughter.

All of them say they would like to get a permanent job with a department, but jobs are few and far between, and firefighters are flooding the field with more and more impressive résumés.

Wemp says that during World War II, women were trained to drive the fire trucks and when a fire broke out, fire departments rounded up civilians to help fight fires. But now, thousands of firefighters will apply for departments with just 10 or 15 openings; "They were pulling people off the streets in the '40s, and now we've got to beat them off with a stick," he says.

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