Trained firefighter program paved the way for Malibu’s community brigades
A game changer for fighting fires locally, the call fire fighter program is celebrating 15 years of service to the Malibu community. The part-time and on-call firefighters marked their 15-year anniversary Saturday with a reunion with members and their training sergeant.
After the Corral Fire in 2007 took 53 homes, then Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman met with the community and listened to a lot of “anger and heartache” from local residents. Matt Haines and Paul Morra decided to take action. With the help of Freeman and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, they resurrected the call fire fighter program that had been in place in Catalina and the Antelope Valley, two communities, like Malibu, that were rural, remote communities that can be hard to reach.
It took a few years, but when the call firefighter program was initiated finally in 2010, 40 residents applied. However, due to strict requirements with background, medical checks, and physical agility tests that number dropped to 10 call firefighters. The community raised funds to buy a fire engine, 271, and a firehouse that is expected to break ground later this year.
Morra, Haines and the initial cohort trained at the Los Angeles County Fire Academy in downtown LA that first summer, putting in about 80 hours. “We trained every weekend,” recalled Morra. “We all were career professionals elsewhere. Our training captain Steve Swiatek was one harda** of a drill sergeant, but you have to be in these situations because people get killed and so he didn’t treat us any differently than he would’ve with real firefighting candidates.”
Now Morra credits the call fire fighter program with paving the way for other Malibu volunteer firefighters.
“It helped blaze the path for the community brigades with Keegan Gibbs and others who helped create those brigades after the Woolsey Fire,” he said. “That success opened the door for future partnerships, like the community brigade with LA County fire so I believe that it absolutely is a game changer. Also, I think it encourages the neighborhood and the community as a whole to come together, to work together. Not everybody should stay behind in a fire, but those who are willing, those who are equipped to do so can save homes together. The brigades are a perfect example. I mean the work that they did during the Palisades Fire has to be commended. The amount of sacrifice that those guys and women went through to help save as many homes as they could. I’m really proud of the work that they were able to accomplish and ofcourse, the ongoing work the call firefighter program continues to do.”
Haines who is still a call firefighter explained academy training includes “everything from the basics of firefighting all the different types of fire, fire preparedness, safety measures, all the way through pumping operations ladders, and everything that’s involved. One thing that’s unique about our program is the typical fire department will train you as a firefighter, but with ours since we have our own engine in our community we are trained in all aspects of the fire department requirements for a firefighter, fire captain and a fire engineer because we have to know how to drive the engine, pump the engine, talk on the radio like a captain does, and make calls.” In the 15 years of the program, they’ve made countless calls in Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. Haines and the group train every other weekend even though only 40 hours a year is required.
Swiatek, now Chief Swiatek commented, “It’s a very important program because the call firefighter program is designedto serve rural areas within the county of Los Angeles, where the population in those areas don’t mandate that a full-time fire station be constructed and especially in Corral Canyon where it’s so isolated with a very small population. It provides a quicker response time for a LA County firefighting unit to respond to whatever incident they’re responding to be it a brushfire, structure fire, or any other kind of special incident and so having the call firefighters in Corral Canyon is extremely important and extremely needed.”