AUDREY REED
Assistant News Editor
Photo court. of Graham Shea/Asst. Ph. Edit.
On the outside, apartment C18 in the Lovernich Residential Apartments looks like a student dorm room, except for the small sign that reads “Pepperdine University Fire Department Station 1.”
The 45-member department spends its time taking measures to protect the campus from fires. Fires may be more prevalent because of the large amount of plant life that has grown after the rain, which later will act as fire fuel.
“You can be a volunteer, but you can be a professional volunteer and that’s what these guys are,” Captain Cash Reed said.
With six volunteer firefighters working 24-hour shifts, the department stays active on campus by doing building inspections and practice drills, Reed said. For some of the firefighters, working on campus is their first job after they graduate from fire academy, but some have had other jobs.
“(Working on a college campus) is different, but I think it’s fun because of the students — there’s lots of people my age,” senior firefighter Patrick Smith said. “I used to volunteer at the Ventura County Fire Department for a year and they had frequent calls to a place called Leisure Village, where many elderly people live. So being here at Pepperdine it’s fun for me. A few of the students talk to us freely and that’s cool, I enjoy it.”
Volunteer firefighter departments comprise 76 percent of all fire departments in the country, volunteer Dan Sherman said. While the department’s chief concern is fire protection, it also tries to be part of Pepperdine’s community.
“We are getting more and more active,” Reed said. “I came in two years ago and basically it’s been a rebuilding process. We get out there doing more functions with the community or Pepperdine. We try to be a helping hand.”
Besides being in a Fourth of July parade in Malibu this summer, students have also tried to make the firefighters feel welcome.
Senior Jessica Leonnard is one of these students who invited the firefighters to speak about fire safety at her sorority, Pi Beta Phi, chapter meeting.
“They seem like they want to be part of people’s lives, but they have to restrict themselves because they can’t fraternize with the students,” she said. “I think sometimes they may be intimidating, but they’ve always been really nice.”
The firefighters have experienced a few of the benefits of working in Malibu as well.
“Every person that walks in here I show it to them,” training coordinator Dan Sherman said as he points to a picture of Pamela Anderson posing with some of the firemen. “We saw her one day. She walks by everyday. Me and (Patrick Smith) walked up to her and said, ‘Can you do this huge favor? Can you take a picture with us?’ Note that she’s holding her iPod and she’s a little sweaty. She was a total sweetheart.”
These volunteer firefighters remember what it is like to be a student because most of them are recent graduates from area fire academies. Each of them works one 24-hour shift per week and spends that time doing scheduled activities from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. After 5 p.m., they have free time, but still must be on campus and be able to respond to an emergency. At this time, the firemen can study as some of them take fire-science classes at area colleges, sleep or watch television. For the Wednesday shift, the firemen say thier favorite movie to watch together is “Napoleon Dynamite.”
Even though the shifts are close knit, every six to nine months new firemen arrive and others leave, Sherman said. The firefighters usually stay at the Pepperdine department for about a year to a year and a half, and use the time here as a stepping stone to getting a job at a municipal fire department, Reed said.
“You are here to move from one place to go to another, to get training and keep on doing what you want to do, while you are going to school or doing something else,” Sherman said.
About 95 to 98 percent of the firefighters at Pepperdine move on to big departments, Reed said.
“A lot depends on if they do a bad job here,” Reed said. “If they do a bad job here it’s going to ruin their career, so they want to do as well as they can.”
But not all of the volunteer firefighters follow the pattern of moving to a municipal department. After a year of working as a volunteer, Geoff Golds became the inspector for the Pepperdine department.
Golds and other volunteer firefighters do monthly inspections of each building on campus, and also did inspections while the Drescher campus was under construction.
“It’s important for the volunteers to know what’s inside the buildings,” Golds said. “We make sure that everything is in proper working order so that [the students] are safe.”
Even though Golds works full-time as an inspector, he usually spends Monday nights with the department and does many of the drills with the volunteers throughout the day, as does Sherman with the Wednesday shift.
Even though each day brings a new set of firefighters, Golds spends time working with each of them and sees that each shift has camaraderie among its members
“I’ve gotten to know a lot of the shifts,” Golds said.” I can see that they all get along. A lot of them hang out on the weekend together.”
Golds began working in firefighting at the Utah Forest Service then became an EMT and finally ended up at Pepperdine. Reed too has worked in many capacities as a firefighter. His last job before Pepperdine was working at the World Trade Centers after Sept. 11, 2001 for three weeks. He was part of the crew that worked by helicopter.
“They mobilized us with jets ready to shoot down anything from the sky,” Reed said. “So it was probably one of the — well not a high points — but one of the biggest disasters I’ve worked on. It’s a unique experience, but one I don’t want to go through again.”
Pepperdine did not always have a fire department. In the early 1990s, the original fire department was made up of Public Safety officers who were responsible for keeping the campus safe and protecting it from fires.
Because performing both tasks was time consuming and required lots of training, in 1998 Public Safety decided to try a volunteer fire department. In 1999, the department was officially recognized as a division of Public Safety. Two of the five paid employees, the chief and assistant chief, work at the Public Safety office while the fire captain, fire inspector and the fire instructor work at the station in Lovernich Apartments.
But just because the firefighters are on campus doesn’t mean Pepperdine is in immediate danger of fire damage.
According to Reed, Pepperdine is the safest place in Malibu if fires were in the area because of the way the university has plants and brush arranged. But if ever a disaster did occur, the firefighters in C18 are trained and ready to protect the campus.
01-20-2005