Marine Base Has Extra Brush Hazard
Covering almost 200 square miles between San Clemente and Oceanside, Calif., the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base has a large and busy fire department. Forty thousand full-time residents live or work in the many homes, warehouses and schools on the base. It also has an airfield, a nine-story hospital and even a nuclear power-generating station. All of that is surrounded by thousands of acres of brushland.
The Camp Pendleton Fire Department has 109 men working 72 hours each week, plus four fire inspectors, two suppression chiefs, two administrative chiefs, three dispatchers and two secretaries. Eight stations have three types of apparatus each, and there is one heavy rescue truck. Each engine company covers about 25 square miles, yet no home or high occupancy building has over a five-minute response time from any station.
Standard federal pumper
Each engine company has a standard federal 750-gpm pumper. Recently, however, we have taken delivery of three custom crew cab 1000-gpm pumpers. These seem to be replacing all of the 750s as the standard federal pumper.
There is also a brush truck assigned to each station. These are 5-ton, 10-wheel trucks which were custom-built to our needs by Camp Pendleton’s own personnel in the late 1960s. They carry 800 gallons of water in a fiberglass cylindrical tank that sits into the chassis instead of on top of it, thus allowing the vehicle to climb at greater angles than almost any comparable brush truck used today. Fiberglass was chosen to prevent rust and reduce weight.
The auxiliary engine on the brush pumper powers a high-pressure 450-psi pump that feeds two 1-inch reel lines with gun nozzles. There are also 1 ½ inch discharge outlets on the pumper for progressive hose lays and protection lines. Nine hundred feet of forestry hose is carried along with hand tools, extra fuel and drip torches.
The climbing ability of the vehicles is important. It enables us to make running attacks on the fire line while other departments would still have to make long hose lays. Brush must be protected because it is also necessary for cover during training of Marine troops.
Three brush pumper replacements are on order for this year. These should be very close in design and function to the units we are currently using. However, the manufacturing of these units will be contracted out rather than our personnel doing the work.
Responding with each 800-gallon brush rig is a small four-wheel-drive utility pickup truck equipped with a 160-gallon tank of water and a small pump. These units are usually the first to arrive at a brush fire. They scout the fire and do what they can until the brush truck arrives. A first-alarm brush assignment receives at least three brush trucks and three pickups, depending on the area and response time. Traffic accidents are common on the nearby freeway between San Diego and Los Angeles and on hundreds of miles of roads on the base. We have a heavy rescue truck to handle these situations. It is stationed at headquarters and carries the jaws, cutting torches, air chisel and all kinds of rescue and lifesaving equipment. The rescue truck is staffed by an EMT duty driver and a paramedic officer. It can also transport if Navy ambulances are not available. The unit also serves as a truck company although it carries no extension ladders. It responds to all structure fires on the base, performing salvage and overhaul operations, as well as to rescue calls.
Over 2000 calls
Dispatching duties are handled by non-fire personnel. In 1979, the department answered 2263 emergency calls. A recent addition to the dispatching center was a tone alert system. This system has made the alarm bell system a back-up in case the tone system malfunctions.
Camp Pendleton also has a mutual aid agreement with its neighbors, including the United States Forest Service, The California Department of Forestry, the Naval Weapon Station in Fallbrook, and the cities of San Clemente, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista, and Fallbrook. Major brush fires requiring mutual aid are not uncommon when the hot, dry Santa Ana winds come from the east.
