Fire fighting comes home to your own backyard
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DECEMBER 1997 -- This is the same area today.
Los Angeles County Fire Department officials have decided not to forcibly evacuate residents in the way of fires who have water and a viable means of protecting themselves.
Tom Gardner, owner of the Brushfire Hydrant Co., believes the hydrants he sells are part of the reason, citing one homeowner whose house was the only one left standing after a firestorm leveled virtually every other home in his neighborhood.
"It is a cautious change in policy," he said. "They aren't rushing out to endorse the hydrants, but they won't force people with them to evacuate as they have in years past."
Gardner will have production models of his firefighting hydrants on display at the Home and Garden Show, along with information about the systems.
Information and pictures are also available on his new web page, www.brushfire.com.
He said the fires of 1996 in Tuolumne County -- the Tuolumne Complex, Ackerson and Rogge fires in particular -- are examples of how dry lightning can overwhelm firefighting capabilities, and that's when his systems can save homes.
"Tuolumne County really dodged the bullet then," he said, "and it's bound to happen again.
The systems he invented work with standing water supplies such as ponds, lakes, swimming pools or storage tanks.
He has been interested in using swimming pool water to fight fires since, as a seventh-grader in 1961, he saw pictures in the Oakland Tribune of the Bel Aire Fire.
He saw picture after picture of elegant homes of movie stars reduced to rubble. Swimming pools filled with water were in most of the pictures.
The incongruity of all those ashes and bare chimneys next to all that water stuck with him through his student days in engineering school, where he designed a fire pump for swimming pools, and through a stint in the Navy, where he received firefighting training.
He was struck again by the idea when his parents started building their home in Pine Mountain Lake in 1977. He thought they should be able to pull water out of the lake in case of fire.
His full-time commitment to the project came in 1985. On a business trip to Florida, he saw television footage of the Baldwin Hills Fire in Los Angeles. Again, homes were gone, but the swimming pools remained.
He quit his job, moved to Walnut Creek and applied for a patent on his water pump, opening his office there in 1987.
In the meantime, at a wildfire symposium in Montana, he learned about using biodegradable foam in minute amounts to boost the effectiveness of water.
The Class A foam concentrate he uses is also used by the U.S. Forest Service, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and many regional fire departments.
Brushfire Hydrant Co.
1818-B Mt. Diablo Blvd., Walnut Creek
510-932-5080.