Angelus Oaks

Myself and another firefighter from 15 were first on scene with our new brush patrol unit. I established the Round Meadow incident command, and anchored at the bottom of the hill. The other FF took the nozzle up the left flank and put down a wet line to the head of the fire. To make a long story short, we got the forward progress of the fire stopped with the relatively little 250 gallons of water from the patrol unit- before the next unit in even got there. Granted, we ran out of water just then, but 128 (Forest Falls) was just in time with an additional 250-gallon patrol. If we had staffing for our Type II engine at 750 gallons, imagine what we could have done...

Also, with my first alarm response order, we had engines and water tenders rolling from all over the place.

My point here is that you can do a lot on a fire with a little bit of water. It's not until the mop-up stage on a fire like this where you need massive quantities of water and/or foam.

This is to state that the Angelus oaks Fire Safe Council is for education,area cleanup,with dumpsters and area cleanup. We do not have funding for SBCFD equipment, it is not part of what we are. The water tender you speak of was 1000 gal and could not be maintain after Korean war parts shortage. The FD could stand more individuals to join,then what we have could be manned. The brush truck should be out of the shop in the near future. They are working on the Butler building...... for the other equipment. A new building is in planning/funding stage.

Norm Cione
Chairman AOFSC