Fire Engine Display at L2881 Convention
January 7th – 11th, Local 2881 CalFire Firefighters held their 60th annual convention at the Sheraton San Diego Resort right off San Diego bay. With the event being a lot closer to home this year, we took the opportunity to bring along a few showpieces from our vintage CDF (CalFire) fleet. These three engines are part of our “working fleet” of 9 restored authentic Division of Forestry / Department of Forestry & Fire / CalFire fire apparatus. They normally are housed at various spots across the state in CalFire stations and other facilities where they can be utilized by the Department for parades, public events, open houses or other public events.
The 1939 GMC Cabover known as “Big Jimmy” had called Ramona Air Attack Base home for many years, but has been moved to Puerta La Cruz camp while the base undergoes transformation to house and accommodate the new C-130 air tankers. “Big Jimmy” works under the watchful eyes of ol’ timer Carl Murray, an original GMC crew member.
The 1963 Chevy currently calls Oak Glen home in the San Bernardino Unit and is back out on display after being dormant for about a decade. We’ve got a new bunch of local museum volunteers working to keep it running, make it shiny and get it back out on the display circuit.
The 1933 Ford Model BB cab is a throwback to the earliest years of motorized apparatus designed for rural firefighting use. Rural fire trucks needed to be lightweight and agile enough for long-distance travel to remote locations on dirt roads, yet capable enough to deliver hand tools and equipment for large crews of men to the fire scene and supply them with sparse amounts of water to make the job of wildland firefighting a little easier.
We were thrilled to get three of our big hitters together under the same roof! It was truly a unique opportunity which took some heavy lifting from our Museum staff to make it happen. Many thanks to the Sheraton San Diego for allowing us into their facility and to the L2881 Convention crew that helped us bring this idea to life.
