Firefighting Equipment

When Sunny Starbuck traveled last year to Cabo San Lucas, Newport Beach's sister city, she heard there was a movement afoot to establish a volunteer fire brigade in town. On Thursday, thanks to Starbuck and the other members of the Newport Beach Sister Cities Assn., the Mexican town's budding Fire Department got a little boost. The group bought a used firetruck from the Newport Beach Fire Department to donate to Cabo San Lucas.

The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday celebrated 50 years of helicopter firefighting with a fly-in at the Rose Bowl parking lot by one of the original whirlybirds used to fight the 1947 Bryant fire in Angeles National Forest. One of the two Bell model 47B helicopters that responded to that wildfire was on display along with many current models. Michael J. Rodgers, supervisor for Angeles National Forest, also dedicated a monument to the helicopter pilots who have battled fires.

The Orange County Fire Department has proposed a $1.2-million plan to add a helicopter to its firefighting arsenal in an effort to avoid the kind of disaster that devastated Laguna Beach last fall. Having already endorsed the program in concept, the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve the request Tuesday so that the helicopter can be in place by the Fourth of July weekend, a potentially hazardous period for fire and other emergencies, officials said.

High-technology arrived just in the nick of time to save a 65-year-old disabled woman trapped by flames that enveloped the bedroom of her Panorama City home this month. Earlier that day, firefighters in the Los Angeles Fire Department's 39th Squad, an elite unit based in Van Nuys, received one of the department's two new thermal-imaging cameras. The other went to a similar unit in Chinatown.

Helicopter 18, a multimillion-dollar rescue and firefighting powerhouse, has protected scores of Los Angeles County homes from advancing brush fires, buzzing rooftops to douse a flaming hillside with up to 360 gallons of water. It's raced heart attack victims to faraway hospitals; it's landed on freeways to transport injured motorists faster than a wheeled ambulance.

Los Angeles County on Tuesday became the first California jurisdiction to acquire a long-coveted Canadian tanker plane that fights brush fires by bombing them with up to seven tons of water scooped from lakes or the ocean on the fly. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to lease the Canadair CL-215T, or "super scooper," from the Quebec government for up to three months, beginning in early October.

Aside from silvery skeletons of Douglas fir silhouetted against the sky, little hint remains of the fury that once engulfed a high mountainside in the Shoshone National Forest west of here. On a hot August afternoon in 1937, sudden winds blew a lackadaisical forest fire into an inferno. Eight men who had clambered down loose volcanic slopes in pursuit of stray embers perished when a narrow gulch--a convenient chimney for the fire--turned into their death trap.

The blackened, rubble-strewn floors of the First Interstate Bank building had hardly cooled when Los Angeles' top-ranking fire officials turned to the lessons they had learned from the devastating high-rise blaze. Chief among the conclusions they have reached is that sprinklers are critical to the safety of thousands who work in about 500 high-rise buildings in Los Angeles without sprinklers, including City Hall and City Hall East, where Fire Department headquarters is located.

A thousand pairs of fireproof pants have been delivered to the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Two gleaming, banana-yellow Super Scooper airplanes are poised for action on the Van Nuys Airport Tarmac. And hundreds of fire engines from Malibu to Mission Viejo are being fitted with everything from flame-retardant foam to swimming pool siphons. A firefighting arms race of sorts has swept cities and counties from Ventura to San Diego since 17 fires laid siege to the region a year ago.

The budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Tuesday canceled the contract for California's largest firefighting tool, a DC-10 jet, to save $7 million. But the long-term cost to taxpayers could far exceed the savings. Depending on the severity of this fire season, California could potentially spend millions more for aerial firefighting, already one of the most expensive components in wildland firefighting, according to a state analysis.