After I got off my probationary period, I was assigned to a 110-foot seagoing tug that the fire department had converted to a Fireboat. I was on that for four months and was really fun because you were out on the water 24 hours a day and you couldn’t leave the boat. That thing had two pumps on it. One was a 3,000 gallon-per-minute pump, and the other one was about a 10,000 gallon-per-minute pump. The size of the fire determined which of the pumps we fired off. A couple of times, we had the opportunity to go out escort a Navy ship coming back from some kind of activities. We would get in front of that thing and fire off all of our water cannons. That was really pretty seeing all those nozzles going. That was a lot of fun, and it was a good experience where I learned a little bit about boat firefighting.

Then I went into the training station, and I was there for five years. We had a lot of rescue equipment on our fire engine at that station, and we also trained probationary Firefighters and other companies on ladder, pump and mask evolutions, and how to draft water out of ponds if the hydrants were out of service. 

From there, I went downtown where I was close to being made an Engineer. Normally, you had to have several years on in a rank before you got a steady house. For some reason, I started driving a pump out of downtown OCA (out of class). I was a Firefighter driving as an Engineer. The Captain was also actually an Engineer out of class, acting as Captain. We were down there for about four or five months, and when we would go on a day off they would bring in a regular crew with rated people to take our position. But when we came back from our day off, we would be the OCA Engineer and Captain. That was really interesting because it was so unusual for things to happen like that.

After that, I drove pumps and trucks for about nine years. Then I made Captain and was assigned to more training stations. I was also assigned to an aerial ladder for several years. 

For the last few years on the job, I went into a station in an outlying area with a lot of brush. We had a brush company, and a structure company with a pump. We would decide which rig to take depending on the type of fire. There were only four of us stationed there. The brush rig could go anywhere, and we had companies go up to the Yellowstone fire. I didn’t go to that, but about 15 companies did. A few times we went out on brush fire runs and stayed for up to a week. That was fun duty. 

My career in fire service has been diverse, and my son (Jim) is also now on the department. He drove ambulances, worked on a lot of medical aid areas, and now he is in the second-busiest station in the City of San Diego where they get approximately 15 runs a day. So they don’t get much sleep, but he is enjoying it. We will see how he progresses with it all. If he makes it to 32-33 years, our family will have 100 years of total firefighting experience.

Editors note: This recording was made in 1998. Since then Jim’s son (also named Jim...referred to as Jimmy) did pass the 32 years needed before he retired, giving the family 100 years of total experience with the San Diego Fire Department.