Voices of the Past: The History of the Moraga Fire Department as told by Fire Chief Ed Lucas in 1989
Ed Lucas (1936-2012), chief of the Moraga Fire Department during 1986-1991, provided an hour long talk about the History of the Moraga Fire Department on November 26, 1989, introduced by Bob Atkins and Gerry Mazaika, and taped by Don Falconer. The original tape existed as a VCR cassette (Tape #17) which was converted into a DVD, which in turn was converted into an MP4 so that it could be posted on the MHS YouTube Channel. The transcript was generated by YouTube. It has been edited to remove word duplication, add punctuation, paragraph breaks and sometimes improve grammar. Many thanks to Mitch Reichenbach for his assistance in making this Voices of the Past episode possible.
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0:00:50 – Introduction by Bob Atkins
Good evening, Marj and I feel a very close affinity with the Moraga Fire Department because Moraga’s Fire Department introduced us to the town. It was back, I think, in 1958, that we lived as newcomers to Northern California in Concord, and we saw a movie playing at the Rheem Theater, and so we looked at the map and we were able to somehow locate where Rheem was, and got a babysitter, and took off. And in my great sense of direction I went from Concord to Orinda and came down Moraga Highway. And I didn’t see a thing, not a thing. It was dark, and all of a sudden, there was a little light and it was a fire. I pulled in. I said, where are we and where is the Rheem Theater? And so very kindly they directed us to the Rheem. I don’t even remember what the movie was, I think it was Birth of a Nation or something like that. That was our introduction. (Laughter from the audience, Humphrey Bogart called out.)
I might have one other little anecdote that Maggie Skinner gave me. Our former Fire Chief Skinner and Maggie had kind of an indirect relationship because every time she went into the Moraga Cleaners she said, “I’d like my cleaning, my name is Skinner”. Out would come the chief’s uniforms. So, when he retired that problem ended.
My job tonight is very easy. I have to introduce a very prominent and lovely resident of Moraga, Gerry Mazaika and otherwise Mrs. Mike Mazaika. Gerry’s family has been in this area since 1916, Mike has been in the area since the mid-30s and, as many of you know, was an outstanding football player at St Mary’s. Gerry’s father, Alfred Carr, came here in 1916 and joined in partnership with Frank Sanders. (Confused background noise.) I’ll turn it off, sorry, and, also as I hope Gerry will talk a little about their son Steve Mazaika, who is now a Moraga fireman, has been one since age 16 on a part-time basis, and is now a full-time Moraga fireman. And without further ado I’d like to introduce Gerry.
0:03:49 – Introduction by Gerry Mazaika
Well my, our son, that’s our second son Steve, always wanted since a little boy, wanted to be a fireman, and so he used to volunteer during his vacation from high school, he loved it, and eventually he became a regular fireman when he was 21. And he no sooner became a regular fireman when a couple months later he was drafted. But he came back and he likes being a fireman. And now I’d like to introduce you to Chief Ed Lucas. I’ve known Ed many, many years.
0:04:34 – Fire Chief Ed Lucas takes the podium
Okay, well you know before I start this, we’re here tonight for the History of the Moraga Fire Department, I’d like to talk to about Gerry’s son Steve. Goes way back because I’ve been in the fire service 30 years and I used to see this little twerp wander down with his grandfather and his father Al Carr. Gerry’s father was very prominent in the fire service years past and little Steve was always there. He was under your feet, a little rug rat. He grew up, he went to Acalanes High School and at that time they were living in Lafayette and every time we turned around Steve was there. He turned 16, he started in the volunteer program and he loved the service. When he hit 21, at that time it was Al Baitx who was our boss, and he hired Steve. As soon as he hired Steve Vietnam came along and we had to have a party for Steve, a going away party September 28th, 19…I have to figure out how old my son is because this the whole part of the story, 23, so we’ll go back 23 years (1966). We had the party up at a fellow fireman’s home, gentleman by name Lou Mossano. Party was going great, but right in the middle of it my wife ended up in labor pains. I ended up at the hospital and we had a son, we named him Steve. Steve (Mazaika) spent two years in Vietnam, came back, been a firefighter with us since. He’s one of our better firefighters. He’s a senior fireman, and I hope in the near future he will be Captain. He’s one of several local residents who grew up in the area and I’ll discuss that a little later on. But I just had to talk about Steve because he’s one of my favorite firefighters, because I’ve seen him grow up, really.
0:06:36 – How did the Moraga Fire Service start?
Okay, what is the Moraga Fire Service and where did it start? Well, actually it had a very humble beginning, June 12th, 1946. The Board of Supervisors of Contra Costa County realized there was a large area in the county that had no fire protection. It was areas that extended from the city, excuse me, from Orinda to Pittsburgh and Antioch. There were big areas in a big swath of area where nobody wanted fire protection because there was no money. There’s no tax money. It was all open land. So that year, on that date, they established the Eastern Contra Costa Fire Protection District. It was all areas in the eastern part of Contra Costa County that were not under a fire district. It covered 216 square miles, 1/3 of the county. So, I say it started where Orinda is now, used to be known as Orinda Crossroads when it was just a Crossroads. It was a couple stop signs and a bar and grocery store, Bradley store, and everything in from that point clear to Pittsburgh and Antioch was the Eastern Contra Costa Fire District. It went out, it covered, went around Danville, it covered San Ramon Village, Tassajara, Marsh Creek and over in Antioch and Pittsburgh, 216 square miles.
They had a district. How do you protect the district? Well, their answer came, that they were going to, they had the farmers in the area. They bought seven Jeeps, 1946 Jeeps, couple surplus Jeeps, put 100 gallons of water on the Jeeps, and this was our first fire protection in the area. It was all volunteer. They had one fire chief at that time. I think he got $50 a month. His name was Jerry Gill, and this goes back years. He was the owner of the Marsh Creek Springs which at that time was a big area for picnics and so forth. He was the fire chief. He had control of the whole area. Each area had its own volunteer group. In our area we had a very active group of 25 volunteers. Al Carr, Gerry’s father, was one of the original volunteers. His brother Sam Carr, John Sanders, Frank Sanders, Al Manuelez, worked for Moraga Land Company. Bill Barnes was an unofficial volunteer. He didn’t do much, but he was there, he donated a lot for the district. Art Fleuti, you all know Art, any of you people that know Art you’ve got a smile on your face because he was a great person. He’d do anything for you. Let’s see, Tom Carroll was one of the original volunteers and there were many others. As the time went on the area changed and we the volunteers went from ranchers to suburbians. We had Dick Irving, Frank Seris and lots like Jack Winters, who used to be a postman here. But the original group were all ranchers. They had a very real concern. They had many fires in the area. Till that time if you had a fire you had to call the Orinda Fre Department. And they would come out clear from the Orinda Village to fight fire. We were losing many acres of grazing land and that was their livelihood. So we did have a volunteer fire department and that same year Bill Barnes donated our first fire station.
0:10:10 – The original Moraga Fire Station donated by the Moraga Company
I’ll show you a picture. Here, it’s in your book, it’s on the wall, there’s many, there’s lots of unknowns about it. Some say the building was built there just for the fire station, others say it was an old feed storage area. And I think that was probably the truth because when I went in there in 1959 the floor was concrete and there you could see where stalls had been and so forth. But whatever the case may be, we did have a fire station. We didn’t have a pumper. We had one Jeep and an old “crash” vehicle in it, and this was a fire department.
0:10:35 – How did the volunteer fire department work?
How did it work? Well, if there was a fire the ranchers would have to go down to the station, blow the large siren on the top of the station, and that’s how the volunteers were called. Some were called by phone but basically it was a situation where somebody had to go to the station, push the switch, and blow the siren, get the volunteers, and go by the Moraga Barn. That was a priority. I learned that when I came on in 1959. You go by the Moraga Barn and pick up help, and you went to fight the fire. And that’s the honest God’s truth.
0:11:19 – The volunteer fire department as a social group
So anyway, we did have volunteers and they got along very well. Something you have to realize, in those years the volunteers were a very social group, realize this area was small. According to our records in 1954 there were only 254 residents in the valley, so it was a small group of people. They were very tightly knit, and the volunteerism gave them a social aspect. They had many dances. Gerry can talk about dances at the old Moraga School. Barbecues you needed meat, you just went out and picked up a deer somewhere, and you had a great time. And then they had their annual parties later on at the Carroll Ranch that probably most of you have never seen. It was a real nice place. When Tom Carroll came in parties were held there and it was a priority that the fire chief always ended up in the swimming pool, clothes and all, but it was there Dave Cradish usually ended up in, there too. I don’t know how many of you know, remember Dave. That was before. Dave was a very interesting man. He was one of the honorary volunteers. But the community rotated around this group of people and it was fun. And there’s stories we can’t talk about that happened with that group. But it was a great group and as I say that was a community organization. This went along pretty well until 1950. It was just strictly volunteers.
0:12:52 – Around 1952 things start to change as development begins
In 1952 incidents happened and we realized that things had to change. Our little area was starting to grow. There was talk of growth. That particular year there was a home on Camino Pablo, Alexander home residence, that caught fire. Everybody ran for the fire truck which was an old “crash” vehicle on a Jeep, wouldn’t start. It was seen last with four volunteers pushing it down the street. It never got to the fire. It was a dead battery, had problems with it. That was the first incident. Second incident was alongside the firehouse on 1000 School Street which is now a novelty shop. There used to be a second cookhouse and it burnt down right alongside the firehouse. People said, wait a second, we’ve got a problem. That year they decided, and they met with these volunteers and Gerry’s dad, and her brother. And the group went over, met with Jerry Gill, and said, “hey look, we’ve got a community, here we’re paying taxes, we see a future growth, we want something better than what we have”.
0:13:57 – Al Baitx hired as first Moraga Fire Chief
That year they hired their first employee, his name was Al Baitx, later became chief. He was a resident of Moraga. He lived on what is now Baitx Drive. He was working in Oakland as a deliverer for a flower shop. He didn’t know a damn thing about the fire service but he had a heart as big as gold. Anybody knows Al, he’d do anything for you. He took over the job in 1950. He was the first employee and his job was basically to make sure that darn truck started. I mean it was a 1941 “crash” truck. A little known fact I’ll pass out, one of the few pictures we got of the original building as it looked with the two vehicles in it: 1941 Army “crash” truck and the Jeep. And his job was that, if there was a fire, he worked from 8 to 5 at the fire station. At night he went home, and he had a phone at home, and if a call came in at night, he ran, drove down to the fire station, blew the siren, and then the volunteers would come. During the day he was on the scene, he was driving that jeep, that shown in that picture, and he had a radio in it. We had communications with the sheriff’s office at that time and that was the first start of the fire service.
Al did an excellent job, really did for what he had. He put up with a lot of problems, lots of political problems because nobody wanted to spend money at the county level. They wanted the ranchers to put it up, yet the ranchers were the ones paying the taxes, supporting the county. It’s the same old thing but it went that way for quite a while and then in 1952 we hired our second employee, John Huff, later become Captain Huff, now retired, still lives on Larch Avenue. Again, he worked during the day, it was a situation, the area wasn’t that large but there was a need for the fire service.
0:15:59 – Fire Department as a Public Services Department
I think you’re all very aware even then fires were just part of our problems. Public service was a bigger part, from medical help, any type of first aid situation, to helping 4H people deliver sheep as I did one day when I first started. A little girl called, Wendy was her name, and what’s a female sheep called – ewe – was having babies, and there were problems, so the fire service ended up over there delivering sheep. I mean we were there, we were the only people in the area, so we, you learn, we learned, but we were there for all types of things.
You have to realize at this time the community was very small, the station still there, it was sitting there, but you have to realize Moraga Road is where Vater Street is now, you know, just 150 ft out from the fire station, was Moraga Road. It went in front of the Barn, made a sharp right turn, went another 300 200 yards, made another right turn and you run into Canyon Road. That was really a sobriety drunk test for the community. If you can make those two turns to get home you’re okay. We had many accidents in the area. Moraga Road used to come there and, as I say, it was just past the firehouse, that was a dead end. There were no lights, there was no shopping center, people would come down Moraga Road, it’s a straight road, they just keep going, end up in the ditch, we go pull them out, send them home, sober them up, and send them home. That was a community and it was great, it really was. I mean I’ve seen it change so much. I’m not saying it’s not great now. It’s a great Community to live in but it was a different atmosphere and everything was built around the fire service and the Moraga Community Club in those days.
0:17:52 – Moraga community begins to grow in 1952
And then in 1953 we hired our third employee and we started our first 24 hour shift. We had three people, so they worked on and off, they worked 90 hours a week, they got paid $210 a month, big money in those days, and we had one person on 24 hours a day. 1953, the first year we bought our first pumper, as it’s shown in the pictures, a 1953 GMC and the area started to grow. We had to start at the Ivy Drive area. I’m going to go back a little on this one area here. Originally I said we went clear to the Orinda Crossroads, Highway 24 as we know it now, but as the area grew out that way in the late 40s and the early 50s we lost area because we didn’t have a full-time fire department. So it was always annexed into Orinda. Came all the way to that point until the early 50s at Ivy Drive when we had our own fire service in Moraga. We go to Ivy Drive we go out of city limits of Moraga, but that became the drawing line. From then on we held our own, but up until that point every time something was developed, El Camino Moraga, Glorietta, then it was annexed into Orinda because they had a fire district. Same thing happened with the postal district. We didn’t have a post office delivery service so when something was developed it was put in the Orinda postal District because they had the resources. So we started losing area.
0:19:19 – Donald Rheem builds fire station for Rheem Valley
So in 1954 we did hire, 1953, excuse me, we hired personnel and then we had our first pumper. I’m really open to any questions, please, I’m trying to cover this, anything you would like to ask please.
As I mentioned before we had approximately 254 people in the valley. Then the Rheem Center had started. Mr. Rheem had started his expansion up there, his estate and his maintenance yard up on the hill, and so the growth had started. It started slow, very slow. Again, we were still Eastern Contra Costa Fire Protection District and with that there were some very political problems that we will cover here in a minute. But Mr Rheem came along and he said, “hey, I’ve got a center as you probably heard”. Before he had a post office there he wanted it known as Rheem Valley California. And he donated a piece of property. He wanted a fire station. He donated a fire property and built a fire station up there with one stipulation, just saying Rheem Valley Fire Station. And it was a $47,000 Fire Station built in 1946. Built a beautiful station in 1946, open the front doors and didn’t have a fire truck. Planning! Fire truck was bought in 57. A year later (1947) a gentleman by name of Lou Mossano, since retired, was our first firefighter out there. He says, I was in there for 2 weeks and I walked in, Al had hired him, he walked in, he came up the morning to start July 1st, looked around, here’s a beautiful engine room, not a damn thing. He says, what do you do? He said, what am I to do up here? He (Al) says answer the phone. He (Lou) answered the phone, he cleaned, he cleaned that engine room twice a day, he cleaned quarters. And the second week they brought the Jeep up from the other station and that was his fire truck. It was a very interesting time, really, I mean you laugh about it now.
0:21:28 – Rheem Valley Station gets a fire truck
The following year they did buy a brand new fire truck, in 1956, it was 1957 before they got it. It was a great truck. Then we had a fire truck up there with one individual. One fireman in a fire truck doesn’t make a fire company. So after some consideration at both ends, they decided that we should have, from 7:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m., will bring a sleeper in. So they hired people from Brother Dennis’ college, St. Mary’s, to work 12-hour shifts. They were paid $5 a night. They had a place to sleep, so that’s how we during those hours had two people on duty, and that’s how it really started. It was lots of interesting times.
Volunteers were still very strong. We had parties at the new station, and things we did that today make me shudder. Now I mean it was nothing to have a beautiful spaghetti feed up there and go through 10 or 15 gallons of wine in a county public building, and never think anything of it. But you’d end up not only with volunteers, you end up with other people, you’d have 50 60 people at one of these. It was a community organization. After you get done there Art says, let’s go down to the Barn, and everybody ends up down at the Barn. Gerry can tell you about that, I’m not saying Jerry from the Barn. But it was, it was lots of fun and the area was growing.
0:23:07 – The Fire Department Christmas Santa Program
With the growth came changes, some good some bad. In 1958 we started our Christmas program. We felt we wanted to get a little more contact with the community. So that year we had our first Santa Claus. We put Santa Claus in a jeep. We had a gentleman by name of Harry R., whom Lafayette is named after. He was one of the volunteers. He was also president of See’s, White Candy, excuse me, first year he donated 200 candy canes. The Jeep of Santa went around and toured the area, blew the siren, the kids came out, gave out candy canes, very community oriented. When the program ended in 1968 we had four jeeps and four Santa Clauses, and went through better than 2000 candy canes. We just out, community outgrew the program. But it was fun, it was really a great thing to do. The kids enjoyed it. We’ve gone back to the open house concept to bring the kids back in the fire station.
Santa and that type had brought the kids around. It brought young Steve around. It brought him, Mike Mazaika, his parents own the Moraga Grocery Store. excuse me, pardon, Mike Kazar, his parents own the Moraga Grocery Store, the original Safeway of the community. They lived in the back of it and Mike came around the fire station. Today he’s a captain in the Moraga Fire Department, same as Steve. He worked, has worked around there, we couldn’t get rid of him, so we hired him. And they’re great people because they grew up in the area and they appreciate the area.
0:24:44 – Moraga becomes part of the Eastern Contra Costa Fire District
But things started to change with the other fire station. Scott Ball came and built all the original homes on Rheem Boulevard. The area started to grow. With that came more people and then we ran into a little problem, a political problem. We were still known as Eastern Contra Costa Protection with the Rheem Valley fire station in it, but we wanted more. And the other areas of the community, at that time we had a tax rate of 25 cents, and the other, we wanted to raise, the community wanted to raise their taxes to have fire protection because the area was growing. We had Ivy Drive. By then we had a good portion of Rheem Boulevard already in and over the hill. So we ended up in 19.., this is what happens after 30 years, you forget these things, in 1959 we ended up as a division of Eastern Contra Costa Fire District. We ended up as the Moraga Division. And we had a tax rate of 88 cents and the rest of the rancher area had a tax rate of 25 cents. With that differential we were able to hire people.
0:25:55 – On becoming the Moraga Fire District of Contra Costa County
I was the eighth person hired in the District and I came in May of 1959. The following year we hired four people and that’s really when the fire department started to take a hold. Chief Baitx was still on board, became assistant fire chief because Jerry Gill was still sitting there with the big white hat on. Even though Al was the assistant fire chief, he was the chief here, county title was assistant fire chief, but he was our chief and he was treated as our chief, and then on July 1st 1967 Moraga came out on their own. We became a separate fire district. We are a County Fire District, our official title is Moraga Fire District of Contra Costa County. We’re one of five County Fire Protection Districts. Al was made our official chief.
0:26:48 – Moraga fights Consolidated Fire District annexation
We had two fire stations. We had some pretty good equipment because the people in the area felt it was needed, and the area was growing. And from 1967 we went pretty well status quo. In 1968 Al retired, he had hit the age of 60, it was mandatory retirement, he retired out of there, and we ended up with a captain from the Consolidated Fire District, fire chief’s name was Don Skinner, one hell of a good man, he’s what the community needed. He was a very progressive fire chief. He came aboard in 1968. Things start to change. We became a professional service, I’m not saying we weren’t a service before, but we made radical changes in the next few years. Just to cover a few, we had one dark area. That was 1969. The board, because of certain politics, the Board of Supervisors says, hey, you’re no longer Moraga Fire District, you’re part of Consolidated Fire Districts, we by action of the Board of Supervisors. For one week we were members of the Consolidated Fire District. They annexed us in, politically they could, they’re still our bosses today, politically they thought they could.
The people of Moraga went bananas. They asked for a vote and the commission said, if to have a vote, you need a petition. They put a petition together, was something like 87% of the people asked for a vote to decide their own issue. They had the election and it was something like 90% voted “out of consolidation”, and we were back. As we’re on fire, the best thing that ever happened for the community in future because we have things that the other areas and Contra Costa do not have. Okay we went through this dark period of consolidation. After that it was over with, it was done.
0:28:52 – Moraga gets a Basic Medical Service ambulance
1970 came along and we had something very interesting happen, really changed the world, changed our perspective of the fire service. In 1970 a gentleman by the name of Dick Kirsch had an accident. He was riding his kid’s mini bike, fell off it, and split his leg open, took out the artery. Jean called for an ambulance. 45 minutes later the ambulance came from Walnut Creek. After 45 minutes they got him to the hospital and his blood pressure was zero. They brought him back. He still limps around with a very bad leg. But the community and Jeanne and Jerry Meyer, and a few other people in the community, Mrs Rye sitting back there I think had something to do with it, said, hey, we need a medical service in the community. Area is growing, we need help.
So they got together with the Moraga Service League and went door to door, raised $10,000 in about 3 to 4 weeks, went down and bought us our first ambulance. It was a 1970 Dodge van, and equipped it, and we started our Basic Medical Service. Medical service conditions were, for any life threatening injury, we would transport. We couldn’t transport for the cut fingers or things like that. But if it was a life death type of emergency we transported. That could be a heart attack, it could be a broken leg, a broken arm with problems involved, then we would transport. And that’s how we started in the medical business. That went along fairly well until 1977 when the same group said, hey we want paramedics. In 1977 they were on TV, Emergency One, Rescue One, an LA paramedic service came to life. The same group of people says, why can’t we have it?
0:30:55 – Moraga Fire Department gets into the paramedic business
Well, to be very frank with you, we were very skeptical about going into the program realizing the work that was involved, and could we handle it? Was the best thing that ever happened to Moraga Fire District in the community. Same group got together, pushed, pushed some buttons politically. We were able to send four of our firefighters to Stanford, to the paramedic school. There they spent six months at school in Stanford. We had our first four paramedics, we had a brand new ambulance. The 1977 ambulance alone cost was $50,000, county paid for. Moraga Fire became the second fire district in Northern California with paramedic service. The community of Compton beat us by one month. So we started our program. Since then we are still the only paramedic firefighting organization in Contra Costa County. Danville has paramedics but they’re supplied by John Muir Hospital. We’re the only ones in the county.
With that came many changes in personnel and all for the better. Paramedic service started and immediately we saw that it was the best thing to happen. A couple things that happened with it. The caliber of people we were getting was excellent. We decided after the first four that we were going to, rather than train paramedics, we were going out and steal them from private industry. Costs about $20,000 to train a paramedic because you’re paying the man’s salary while he’s at school and you have to pay overtime to replace him, so it is a very expensive situation.
So realizing this and realizing that there’s lots of great people, good qualified people out there, we from that point on, we’ve actually stolen them. For private Industry gave us a couple advantages. First, we saw the track record. We won’t take a paramedic unless he’s been out in the public domain working for at least three years as paramedic. There’s a lot of paramedics out there that we will not hire. We want qualified people. We’ll go through an example I’ve got. Yesterday they had the Agility Test and there were 47 people who took the Agility Test. And they were advised that we’d probably hire one or two paramedics at the most. They all want to get into the program and that’s great. I’ll go through all 47 names because when the time comes, I’m going to find two out of that 47, and we’re going to take them from private industry. And the guys are happy to come to me to the fire service. We work a 56 hour week. They’re out there working a 72 hour a week, and not having the same living conditions we are. So that’s how we got into the paramedic field and it’s been the best thing that’s happened to us.
0:33:49 – Getting victims breathing enroute to ER
We have our sad moments. I had a very sad moment tonight. On the way home I got a call, two doors down from me a very close friend of mine passed away, and we had to go on. That does bother you, that’s why Jerry Meyer isn’t here tonight. She was a very close friend with Gerry and those divert you, but we had been at her house three other times in the last 6 months because of her illness, and we were able to help her, so we were there. Lots of good things happen, there’s lots of bad. We had a 74 year old man two weeks ago, thanks to three local Moraga citizens, saved his life. He was jogging in Rheem Center and he pulled a full arrest heart attack. We got there, three people were working on CPR, two nurses and the town employee, Steve Roper, were giving CPR. The individual lived. He lived, but he passed away yesterday. But we gave him a chance, a chance that he wouldn’t have had. Our paramedics got there, there was still no pulse or breathing on the way into the hospital. We turned him around. When we got to the emergency room at Kaiser he was breathing and he lived a week. Most of those people that go in and get breathing, they walk out. People here we know, rescued one Mr Martin who’s been there twice.
0:35:10 – 45 minutes of persistence and 11 electricity zaps pays off
We had another case where we actually zapped a person 11 times and I left the area. She was a secretary of Brother Mel. Brother Dennis knows her husband Glen and he was zapped 11 times. I left the room there because we worked on him 45 minutes and no result. Said we aren’t going to give up. I went back and called my wife and told her you might want to go up and see Dorothy because she’s going to need help. I was made a fool though. They got him into the hospital and he walked out 3 weeks later and lived seven more years. So those type of things really make it worthwhile. We defibrillated him 11 times. He came in and you know came by and thanked us. He’s talking to me, and he says, I don’t know, but my chest is still sore, what’s make it sore? I said you got hit 11 times with electricity. He wasn’t even aware of it. It has lots, the service has lots of good, you get lots of great feelings, you have your sad times.
0:36:11 – All firefighters are trained EMT-1A, one step below paramedic
Okay, we went into the paramedic business under Chief Skinner’s guidance. Now we started with four, now we have 13 paramedics and we are running two ambulances, one fulltime out of the station, the Rheem station, and one 9% of the time. As the personnel available at a station, Rheem station, what happens there, you won’t see an ambulance, you’ll see an engine company a full squad. This is paramedic with all the equipment on board that unit. We can’t run a second ambulance out of there right now because of manning, but we can run a firefighter in paramedic and do the same thing and that’s why we’re doing it that way. They won’t let us run in tandem. With a paramedic and firefighter we have, that’s two paramedics with 13 paramedics on duty. You can’t guarantee you’re always going to have four on duty every day because they look kind of ship bases. So we normally have at least three so we can run one up there with a firefighter and it’s usually a good firefighter, usually by the name of Mazaika. You can see we train, all of our firefighters are EMT 1A. They’re just one step below paramedics. We’ve got 27 people. 13 of those are paramedics and the other ones are all EMT-1A. They go through a minimum of two full weeks training a year, and just on that one subject, that’s an 8 hour class a day for two weeks. And keeps proficiency. Coming down here pretty good.
0:37:44 – The quest for an administration building
Paramedic service went well and at that time we still didn’t have any administration buildings. 1978 we had a set of plans for an administration building. We had a little problem. It’s called money. We didn’t have money to build one. We had a set of plans that were drawn up by the county, and I got a call one day for Chief Skinner, he was out. Bob Schroder, who at that time was our Board of Supervisor, says, hey Ed, you got plans for administration building there? yeah, said I’d like you to submit it. There’s grant money available from President Carter. At the time it was called public assistance grant money. So I’d like you to submit the plan. I say, Bob, they aren’t going to give Moraga public assistance, you know we got Richmond, everybody else out there. He says submit it, see what happens.
Well, we submitted our plans in 1978, forgot about it, you know we figured we’d be down at the bottom of that list. The grant date expired and I got a call the next morning. Schroder says, you got an administration building. He says you got $178,000 out of county’s $500,000. I said, how come everybody, nobody, thought that they were qualified for it? And he says all that was submitted was your proposal, $300,000 for San Ramon school district for fire alarms, and $50 for a generator. So I’m dumbfounded, you know I said, how are we going to qualify? So we went to the federal meetings and we qualified. It’s not a question where the building went. Nobody realized it’s a question of where the work force came to build a building. The contractor was from Martinez. He hired two minorities from Richmond and he built a fire station. We got $178,000, the administration building for nothing in the community. The day that the contractor made the 60% mark of minorities on building a building, minorities were let go, two people from Martinez Building. But that’s how we got a free administration building. I mean it was ridiculous, but we were there at the right time at the right place, that was 1978.
0:40:04 – While California votes for Prop 13 Moraga votes for paramedic tax boost
1980 came along. That’s a year that scared the hell out of everybody. It was called Prop 13. You know the world was going to come to an end, we couldn’t survive, and we felt the same way about it. We were very concerned that we were going to lose our paramedic service with Prop 13 coming up. So on the same election we had to go for a paramedic election. I don’t know how many of you remembered that. And when Prop 13 overwhelmingly went through with probably 85 or 90% of the people voting for cutting taxes, the community of Moraga had an 87% vote to raise taxes for the paramedic service. The politicians were flabbergasted. We ended up with our fire flow tax that since 1980 we’ve only used five times. Five years since 1980. We probably next year go down to one penny. We’re 3.73 this year. And we are very grateful because that’s made the paramedic service.
0:41:08 – The formation of the Rescue One Foundation
Excuse me, I missed one area that I’m very embarrassed that I missed because I’m damn glad Jerry Meyer isn’t here.1977 was the year we got the paramedics. We also had the Rescue One Foundation incorporate that year. This is a group of interesting Moraga citizens. We lost one tonight, the original secretary of the group, Jerry Meyer, several others, Jean C A, Julie Fisher that wanted to support the fire service and the paramedic association. They’ve got the Rescue One Foundation and that’s available to anybody wants to donate money to Rescue One. All the money is used in the paramedic program. They do not solicit. They help put on our open house so anybody went to our open house this year and it’s a great program. A great group of people that came into effect in 1977. It’s going strong, very supportive group, they meet monthly. They bought the defibrillators that we’re using. They upgraded defibrillators when they needed to be upgraded. They bought cell phones for the units because of our communication problems. We’ve always had direct communication by radio to our main hospitals, but we might as well let private industry do better for us, and a cell phone gives us a better communication system.
0:42:35 – How the parademic and doctor interact enroute to ER
Right now if you were to, we don’t want you to have, but should you have a medical emergency, let’s say a heart attack, we put the defibrillator and the machines on you and your EKG comes over showing your heart rate to the paramedic in front of you. It’s tied into the cellular telephone and the doctor at John Muir Hospital he can see the exact same thing that the paramedic does. And he decides what type of medication you should be given. Paramedic is just a doctor’s hands. A paramedic cannot give any medication without that doctor’s approval with the one exception. That’s if he’s full of rest and he gets on the scene, he can put the big needle in and try to get you started. But any type of medication that’s needed to sustain you on the way to the hospital or to make your heart regular, the doctor sees the same thing the paramedic sees in front of him. He reads it back to the paramedic, and he says do you see the same thing on your scope, just double check, says yes, paramedic will read his readings. On that the doctor will tell what type of drugs that he may administer to you. Paramedic is a set of hands for the doctor, that’s all he is. He’s an extension of that doctor until you get to emergency. And once a month minimum we are bringing a person back. That’s someone when we arrive on the scene whose heart has stopped, and because of the combination of paramedics and the medical service at John Muir, Kaiser, Alta Bates, we are bringing these people back. And they come back and thank us and that’s the greatest feeling.
0:44:21 – Moraga Fire purchases its first ladder truck
Okay, that’s where we were in 1980. We talked about Prop 13, we came with an 87% yes vote which is still sitting out there in the way of the tax rate. 1982, a little politics. We had a Fire Commissioner by name of Dick Olsen who is vice president of Trans America Corporation, and he was a ball of fire. He felt we needed a ladder truck. The county didn’t feel we needed a ladder truck. He was back in New York, got on the phone with the president of American of France one to one. Two weeks later we were in Seattle, Washington buying a fire truck, a ladder truck. That ladder truck was bought with the intention in mind of the problems we have at Ascot Drive with the multiple apartments and so forth, and the major problems we have at St. Mary’s College. Most people don’t realize we have a five-story structure at St. Mary’s College built in 1928.
Last month on the 17th (October 17, 1989 – Lomas Prietas Earthquake), scared the hell out of me to go over there and see what we had. To my surprise, damage we had that day of the earthquake was at St. Mary’s Library. Those 1928 buildings were built like cast iron. They’re standing and the library was shook and came apart to some degree. But anyway, the fire ladder truck American France was bought for the college and apartment complexes that we have in the area and all the commercial type buildings. You’ll see it probably run on 70% of the fires because it’s handy even on a two story building. Somebody up on the roof in a hurry, you don’t have to extend the ladder up 75 ft, you can do up 25 ft, swing the ladder around and you’re right there with manpower.
0:46:06 – Chief Don Skinner retires 1986, Ed Lucas new fire chief
Things went fine. Then things fell apart in 1986. That’s when Skinner retired. Lucas became chief. Don retired in 1986 and I can’t say enough for what he did for the fire service. He was the right man at the right time. He took a small department and made it very professional. He was there when we needed him. He was there when the paramedic service needed his backing. We were very fortunate to have the other assistant chief John Cooper, that’s his baby, he initiated that program. He’s worked hard in that program and it’s grown and he’s grown. But we do miss Don, he doesn’t miss the golf courses. He’s seven days a week playing golf.
0:46:55 – Moraga Fire earthquake proofs stations instead of paying skyhigh insurance
So, okay I came aboard in 1987. 1988 we had something interesting happen. You remember you read the papers, “Local Community Municipal Taxes went Skyhigh”. You couldn’t buy public liability property damage taxes for any municipality. We were paying at that time $1,300 a year earthquake insurance for both fire stations. We got a quote of $26,000 in one year. Again Dick Olsen, being the individual he is, he looked at that, he says, we’re missing something here. I mean he’s in the insurance business. Trans America Corporation owns their own insurance. He says we’re missing something here. He says we don’t want earthquake insurance. Not going to do the community a damn bit of good for an insurance company to pay off 6 months later after the building’s fallen down around the fire trucks. We have to earthquake proof those buildings so the trucks will be available when we have an earthquake.
And that year we spent $300,000 taking both stations and having them redone totally earthquake proof. The engine rooms they built with steel frames built into the wall. And I think it really paid off. Those things didn’t even show a crack this time. Danville’s got a major problem with their fire stations. You have to realize a fire station is a little different than a home. Lots of open spaces with very minimal, large walls, high ceiling and we were right, I mean we spent $300 plus thousand. Both stations were totally gone through and I think it starts paying. We hope the hell we never have to prove how strong it is. It’s supposed to hold an 8.5 earthquake and if it holds that, that’s fine, because I don’t think much is going to be standing after that anywhere to protect.
0:48:54 – The old house as a fire training site
Okay, 88 we started. I mentioned earlier we started running the second paramedic unit out of the Rheem station. That same year we bought our training site. Very few people are aware of it. We bought the property behind the Moraga Station, the old house, glorious old house. You see it’s been painted, it’s cleaned up a little, that’s a future training site for Moraga Fre District. And we bought it as a future site, but things have changed. That is the site we’ve taken. The building we’re using for training purposes. Now originally the idea was to tear it down a few years down the line, put a tower there. But we realized something right off the bat. We’re going to get more training out of that structure than we will ever out of a tower. We don’t fight tower fires. We fight house fires. There’s a house there. We’ve got smoke machines. We build our own fires without heat. We’ve got smoke machines to smoke that place up and the people go in with air packs. They do all the “evolutions” that you would on a normal fire except chop holes in the roofs. So we are going to use that for as long as that building will stand up, and we can repair it as a training site and it’s working out very well.
0:50:12 – Fire department statistics for 1988
So that was 1988-1989. What we have planned, January 1st, we will have three additional people, so we have 30 firefighters out there. County’s agreed to that. That brings us up to date except a little statistics I’ll give you. 1988 we had a total of 936 runs (incidents), 185 of those were fires, 520 of those were EMS calls, Emergency Medical Services. We aren’t a fire department anymore, we’re a public service agency, mainly medical. The other 231 were miscellaneous public calls such as people locked out of cars, out of their homes, cat in a tree. Once in a while we still do that, and there’s a story behind that. You may know Al Baitx, and I know George does, and this is what fellows over there knew. Al, when he was around, you know he’d give you the shirt off his back but sometimes you get 100% hell too. And I’ll never forget one day the lady called, and he just didn’t like her. “My cat is stuck in a tree”. He says, don’t worry about it. You going to come out and get it? He says hell no! Why won’t you? Have you ever seen a skeleton of a cat in a tree? It’ll come down on something. So that really sums it up.
0:51:43 – Ed Lucas opens floor to questions, first question about ER destination choice
I’m open for any questions. I’ve gone over fairly quickly, I don’t know what else I can say, it’s a great life. I’ve been there 30 years.
Indistinct question about where to transport an emergency case.
We transport to Alta Bates and Kaiser. I’ll cover that real quick. The state law says if you’re in a life or death situation, total arrest or a major trauma case, you have to transfer it to the closest hospital which means Kaiser hospital, that’s the closest one. But we can only have one base hospital and it’s John Muir because all trauma cases go to John Muir now. So we can take trauma. But they are in direct communications with Kaiser. We transfer to John Muir or to Alta Bates depending on the conditions of Highway 24. That’s a priority. In the morning I’m not going to take you to Alta Bates, I’ll take you to Kaiser or John Muir. In the afternoon, to get going the other way, it will end up over at Alta Bates, the closest hospital on a real trauma situation.
0:53:00 – How the Opticom system turns the lights green ahead of the emergency vehicles
Something else that we have that you’ll probably see and you’re not aware what it does. On all of our units in Moraga and Orinda we’ve got an Opticom system. It’s put out by 3M and what that does, we control the stop lights in the community. Now you’ll see a strobe light on if you see a fire truck or an ambulance coming towards you with the lights on. You’ll see a white strobe light. What that does, it sends a signal to the stoplight. On top of each stop light you’ll see a little goose-neck on one of the lights, not everyone, and that’s a receiver. And what that does, when that light hits that receiver, 3 seconds later it’ll go to yellow, it’ll go automatic green light. So right now an ambulance leaving this place can get to John Muir hospital without a red. It goes through Moraga, through the town of Lafayette, St Mary’s Road, First Street to 24, gets off at Ygnacio Valley Road, and all those lights are green for you all the way in.
It was done not only to protect the public but to protect our insurance rating. We’re self-insured and you know that’s where our liability, that’s where we’re hanging out in liability. Orinda’s done the same thing. Walnut Creek and Lafayette fire departments are getting into the program. It’s a real safety thing. But we can save a couple minutes. What it also does, it keeps traffic moving because between 1700 and 2300 ft ahead of the signal it reads, and that keeps the people moving in front of you. Hardest problem we have, especially on the Ygnacio Valley Road, got a red light, you got 30 cars behind it, you got an island down the middle so you can’t go around, you make lots of noise and you sit there. With this system you know that a quarter mile ahead the light’s already turning green so the traffic’s moving. When traffic is moving it can move to the right. So it makes a big difference. Please more questions.
0:54:51 – Audience question: Why does the fire engine go with the paramedic unit?
Yes, why does the fire engine go with the paramedic? When you see the two go together, for manpower. The paramedic unit has two people on it, fire department unit has two to three individuals on it. What happens on that, let’s say it was a total arrest, we will take one of our firefighters and put them in the ambulance, so you got a minimum of two people in the ambulance on an emergency for CPR and administering drugs and so forth. Because see one guy has to drive, so unless it’s a minor situation, if we get a call and somebody says my son’s got a, I think a broken arm, most of the time it’ll be just a one unit response, just two paramedics.
But if it’s in a school lots of times it’ll send both because if you have someone that runs into problems, you want the extra people there. They’re radio equipped so they can turn around and go back if they’re not needed. They go somewhere else. That’s the reason you see the fire truck at Safeway store instead of just a pickup down there because they’re radio equipped. If there is an emergency the fireman had the same thing I have on me. He goes into the store with the pager on. He hears all the communication. So if he hears a call he can get back and respond. The unique thing about that is if the van, if the fire truck’s down at Safeway, the response time is better than from the fire station because the guys are in the truck already. We figure 30 seconds to put up from the time the phone rings to get a man in the truck, the truck started, the air pressure up and so forth out the door.
Presentation wraps up.
Audience member: some of the people here might not realize the person saved by zapping 11 times was a former president of Moraga Historical Society!
56:25 – End of Ed Lucas Fire Department History Talk
