Mayor Pro Tem Pamela Conley Ulich’s idea to create a group of civilian firefighters in Malibu similar to the one in Topanga and other rural areas did not go over well with a battalion chief and Malibu’s Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesperson at Monday’s City Council meeting. But Conley Ulich wants a second opinion from the top of the food chain, encouraging her colleagues on the council to approve a letter to Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman to consider the concept.
At a somewhat hostile session in which Mayor Jeff Jennings had to calm the scene several times, a few of the city leaders verbally sparred with the fire officials about whether Malibu needed what Conley Ulich was proposing.
Conley Ulich said the Call Firefighter Program was needed in Malibu because many people do not evacuate during the fires, and they should be trained to protect the city.
“People will die if they do not get the training,” Conley Ulich said. She continued, “They will stay and fight the fire … I want to make sure the people here in Malibu are protected, and that’s my job.”
Los Angeles County Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett, whose jurisdiction includes the Malibu area, at the meeting said he did not support having such a program in Malibu. And Chief Reggie Lee, who is directly in charge of Malibu, does not support it either, although he did not attend the meeting.
“Making them [Malibu residents] Call Firefighters will not necessarily make [it] better or worse [if people decide to stay during a fire],” DeJournett said. “When we assign them to a unit, we’re going to send them where we need them. Because they’re no longer Malibu’s Call Firefighters, they’re my firefighters.”
After hearing this, City Councilmember Sharon Barovsky suggested the program Conley Ulich was proposing might be something different than she originally thought it was.
“If we’re going to hire seven movie producers to go to Lancaster to fight a fire, it’s kind of laughable,” Barovsky said.
DeJournett and Malibu fire spokesperson Maria Grycan explained that those involved in the program must undergo 64 hours of training. They have to wear pagers, and are on-call 24 hours a day, and must report to any incident in the area to which they are assigned. They said what Conley Ulich is looking for might be better accomplished by people taking the city’s Community Emergency Response Team training course.
Grycan said Topanga has the Call Firefighter Program because it has one fire station in an area with 12,000 people. She said the other areas with the program are even more rural than Topanga, adding that most of those areas are 20 minutes or more away from the nearest station, while all of Malibu is four or five minutes from a station.
The program would require approval from a majority of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Chief Freeman.
Conley Ulich said she still wants to pursue it.
“I am going to support this,” she said. “And we have to go to the supervisors and get three votes, and if we can’t get the three votes, then we’re going to have to keep trying as a city to empower our community and save lives.”
The council unanimously voted to send the letter to Freeman.