Results tagged “Fire” from RCNow

The Metrolink Holiday Toy Express kicks off this Saturday in Rancho Cucamonga. The Metrolink station is on Milliken and Azusa.

The train arrives at 5 p.m. but family friendly activities start at 3 p.m. There will be storytime, crafts, entertainment and cookie decorating. Bring a new, unwrapped toy for the Spark of Love Toy Drive.

You can also drop off toys at any fire station.

Information: (909) 477-2770

It's "fall back" time. A day to sleep an extra hour. A day to change your battery on your smoke alarm.

The fire department uses the end of daylight savings to remind residents to change their batteries. According to the department, three out of 10 reported household fires take place in homes with missing or dead batteries in smoke alarms.

Low-income residents and seniors are eligible for free smoke alarms. For more information, call  (909) 477-2770. 

The Jersey Fire Station is hosting an open house on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's a day full of children-friendly activities including tours and giveaways. Firefighters will demonstrate the Jaws of Life and simulate a structure fire. Young ones can dress up like firefighters and have their pictures taken.    

Station 174 is located at the corner of Jersey and Milliken.

Friday is First Responders Night at The Epicenter, where law enforcement officers, firefighters and paramedics will be honored for their services. The game will be against the Stockton Ports. "First responders of the year" will be awarded and the county's sheriff's department will conduct a helicopter flyover. The event is hosted by the offices of Sen. Bob Dutton, Assemblyman Bill Emmerson and Supervisor Paul Biane.

Game starts at 7:35; pre-game festivities start at 7 p.m. 

Tickets for the general public: (909) 481-5000

Long before Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bell was fighting fires, he was scanning the news wires and re-writing press releases. Bell was a cub reporter,  the other noble profession.

He didn't go far in journalism and instead headed for a career in the fire service. In September, Bell will be promoted to fire chief, leading a department of 125 employees.

Bell's father, Bill Bell was a career journalist and although retired, he still writes occasionally for the Whittier Daily News, a Daily Bulletin sister paper. Mike Bell wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, a chip off the old block kinda thing.

He took a journalism class in college and his first assignment was to write an obituary. (Are there any reporters out there whose first story was not an obit?) Bell, an aspiring sports reporter at the time, picked a sports figure to write about. Bell's professor told him sports is not journalism and gave him an F.

Sports is of course, journalism. Sports writers win Pulitzers. It was too bad that Bell followed his professor's advice. But his story is now inspiring.  

Maybe I can still be a fire fighter and work my way up to become Rancho's first female fire chief. When I retire, I'll run for City Council. It'll come full circle. There's hope for me yet.

 

For the last half hour or so, fire personnel have been singing the praises of Dave Berry on the scanner. The battalion chief's last day with the city's fire department is today. Berry has been with the department since 1978. Congratulations, Dave!

FYI:  This battalion chief Berry is not the Dave Barry who regularly writes to the letter to the editor or the syndicated columnist from Miami.

As reported in Sunday's paper, Fire Chief Peter Bryan is retiring.

Bryan is perhaps the most affable and press-friendly person in City Hall. He might even be the most affable, press-friendly person I've ever met. Sometimes I wonder how someone so darn nice can be another person's boss.

Councilman and former Fire Chief Dennis Michael was the one who hired Bryan. Michael called Bryan the "hardest working fire personnel" he's ever known. He said he would get to work at 7 or 8 a.m. and his inbox would already be filled with Bryan's e-mails sent at 2 or 3 a.m. So Bryan is nice and doesn't need sleep. Is Bryan a superhero?

I caught up with the chief after his coffee break today to talk about the Hellman Station and found out his secret. Bryan, who works out at the gym every day, is fueled by coffee in the a.m. and Monster energy drinks in the p.m. He's human after all, a very caffeinated human.

Will his successor, Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bell be just as affable and press-friendly, I wonder. Bell's father was a journalist, an indication that Bell will either be press-friendly or will run away from the press. 

Starting next week, workers will begin moving dirt to prepare for the construction of the Hellman fire station. From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays, trucks will move dirt from the north end of Amethyst to the basin on the south side of Hillside and Hellman. Expect to see reduced speed limit signs during these hours.

Information: (909) 477-2770, www.rcfire.org

The Alta Loma Emergency Response Team, a volunteer group under the direction of the city's fire department, is hosting a fundraiser poker ride Saturday at Heritage Park on 5556 Beryl St. The group, started in 2001 to offer an organized evacuation plan for horses and other large animals in an event of a natural disaster, is raising money for new communication equipment and other supplies.

The four-hour horseback ride starts 10 a.m. Cost is $25 and includes lunch. Prizes include a 50/50 split, power tool set and gift cards. To RSVP, call (562) 233-1265. 

The fire district will hold a neighborhood meeting on the planned Hellman fire station at 6 p.m. March 5. The public meeting will be held in the Cucamonga/Etiwanda rooms in Central Park.

The city is preparing to build the new station on the west side of Hellman, north of Wilson and south of Hillside. The site is part of the County's surplus flood control property. To build the station, a portion of the basin will be filled with dirt from the county.

Residents who live near the project are encouraged to attend the meeting. This is the second such neighborhood meeting about the station.

The Hellman Station is one of two fire stations planned for the city's future. Another station is expected to arrive in the southwest corner of Central Park.

Originally, the Hellman Station was set for the southeast part of Heritage Park. But after hearing disapproval from the equestrian community and after a draft environmental impact report suggested an alternate site, the city voted in 2006 to build the station on Hellman.

If you can't make the meeting, you can visit the fire district's Web site one week after the meeting to read the questions and answers brought up at the meeting. You can also call the district at (909) 477-2770 ext. 3030 if you have questions or concerns about the project. To be included in future e-mail updates, send an e-mail to Gina Molina.

The Ontario Fire Department will play a charity game against the Fire Department of New York this Saturday at the Citizen's Bank Arena. The 16 New York firefighters will be staying in this city at the Aloft Hotel, which was lauded by our mayor in his State of the City speech yesterday. They're scheduled to arrive at noon today, in case men in uniforms are your thing.

The Saturday match benefiting the Muscular Dystrophy Fund starts at 3 p.m., as reported in Ontario Now. There will be a special fire truck display in the arena parking lot.

You might have noticed a large plume of smoke near Foothill and Baker this afternoon.

Rancho firefighters put out a vegetation fire around 1 p.m. this afternoon in the drainage channel north of Foothill and east of Baker. The blaze was near a homeless encampment, the site of another fire last Friday. There were no injuries in either fires.

Nearly 20 firefighters responded to the one-acre fire this afternoon.

Thanks to reader Jennifer Lynn Nguyen for sending the pic.

The city has decided to start contract talks with ConFire (Consolidated Fire Agencies of the East Valley) to provide communication and emergency medical dispatch services for the city. That means, the city will let its current contract with the city of Ontario's dispatch center run out.

At the special meeting this afternoon, Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bell put it this way: "This is a huge move for our organization. ... I've likened this to when Brooklyn Dodgers left to L.A. It's got that kind of emotional bent to it," Bell said.

The City Council voted 4-0 ,with Councilman Rex Gutierrez absent, to hire ConFire.

 

Fire station 174 will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow for an open house filled with children's activities. The young ones will get a chance to dress up in firefighter gear, have their pics taken near a fire engine and see several live demonstrations. For lunch, there will be hot dogs. Sounds like every 7-year-old's idea of a perfect day.

Station 174 is on the corner of Jersey Boulevard and Milliken Avenue.

You might have seen the fire this afternoon in the southern part of the city.

Around 2 p.m., Brownwood Furniture on the 9800 block of Sixth Street caught fire. The blaze engulfed the roof and rear loading dock. About 40 firefighters from Rancho and Ontario fire departments got the fire under control in 30 minutes. The 80 employees who were inside evacuated safely.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

A charity softball game between the city's fire fighters and sheriff's deputies on Saturday resulted in a lopsided victory at the doughnut stand. Law enforcement beat out fire 23-11. And no, they were not playing football.

Rumor had it that the fire fighters were aggressive on the trash talking front, promising three runs per every run by the sheriff's. But they didn't bring that aggression to The Epicenter. No word yet on a rematch.

Proceeds from the game will go to the Loma Linda University Children's Hospital and the Rancho Cucamonga Community Foundation.

On a side note, did Ty Harris from the fire department really get injured during the game?  

Remember in sixth grade when you got a chance to play softball with a bunch of middle age teachers as a rite of passage for middle school? I waited six years for that opportunity to trash talk my mentors.

Rancho's police officers and firefighters will be doing something similar -- playing each other in what Fire Chief Peter Bryan stressed as a "non-professional softball game" at The Epicenter Saturday. Gates open at 6 p.m.; game starts at 7 p.m. Bryan and Police Chief Joe Cusimano brought their bats to the City Council meeting last night to announce the game but disappointingly did not engage in an ounce of trash talk.

The game is free but donations are welcomed. Proceeds will benefit the Loma Linda University Children's Hospital and the Rancho Cucamonga Community Foundation.

Councilman Dennis Michael, a former fire chief, encouraged the public to watch, "fine professional officers beat up on fine professional officers."