Sleuth tracks down history of county fire department
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

The varnished cherry wood and glass display cases stretch across the lobby's two facing walls. Their recessed lights illuminate the hundred or so artifacts on display that, thanks to one man, have been saved from certain demise.

The floor-to-ceiling cases welcome visitors and firefighters alike to the Ventura County Fire Department's headquarters-a remodeled two-story building on the east side of Camarillo Airport.

The collection, which ranges from pictures of recent wildfires to a water tank used in the late 1920s, tells the story of a fire department that grew from a handful of volunteers to one of the largest such departments in Southern California.

Retired assistant fire chief Richard Wilson, a 70-year-old Newbury Park resident, said he began gathering items for the collection around 2000, when Chief Bob Roper asked him to write a brief history of the department for its 75th birthday in 2003.

Roper said much of the department's history was missing, which is why he assigned Wilson the job of putting together an account of the department's past.

"One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure that we had a good central collection of the important papers, and when we started looking into that, we started finding more and more . . . important relics of history."

The task, Wilson said, was a real challenge because so many of the department's artifacts had been thrown out as fire stations grew and the department's headquarters moved from its longtime home in Santa Paula to Camarillo about 30 years ago.

"Over the years, (the department's history) didn't have much importance to it," Wilson said. "I don't know why. It just seemed like we had all these other things going."

Regardless, Wilson asked his fellow firefighters, working and retired, for items to be added to the exhibit. Although donations came in sporadically, Wilson said the collection continues to grow. As a matter of fact, earlier this month, Wilson was given a very rare photograph of the first fire station in Thousand Oaks.

The station was located at Jungleland, an exotic animal park that once sat across the street from the present-day Thousand Oaks Civic Center on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

Wilson said he even rummaged through his own garage, a search that yielded a pine box phone from the 1930s used by early stations to keep in contact with one another.

While gathering the exhibit's pieces between 2000 and 2003, Wilson said, he wasn't quite sure where department officials planned to show the collection. He originally thought it might be displayed at Camarillo's Fire Station 50, which was under renovation at the time, but said he was delighted to learn from Chief Roper of his plan to place the exhibit in the headquarters lobby.

Wilson continues to spend seven to 10 hours of his time each week piecing together the department's rich past, and, with the ease of a history professor giving a class lecture, he recounts the events that led to its modest birth in 1928

Wilson said the department's first chief, Walter Emerick, an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, was hired by the county to act as the fish and game warden. According to Wilson, the previous warden had been shot and killed while on the job.

Emerick accepted the position but soon learned from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, which hired him, that his job also entailed working as the county's fire warden.

Emerick agreed, but quickly came to butt heads with the Ventura County district attorney, who blocked the newly appointed fire warden from using county money to purchase tools to be stockpiled and used by volunteer firefighters during a largescale forest fire.

Emerick realized that if he was going to get the funds he needed to build a countywide fire department, he would have to form a district within the county-much like a school district-in order to receive tax money.

Wilson said Emerick secured enough votes-277 county residents gave the okay-to officially create the Ventura County Fire Protection District in the spring of 1928.

Emerick was given an initial budget of $20,000 and a staff that included one other employee.

Today, with more than 500 employees and 31 stations spread out from Ojai to Thousand Oaks, the fire department continues to grow.

Wilson founded and is board chair of the Ventura County Fire Department Historical Foundation.

He's writing a history of the department and intends for it to become part of the county's firefighters' training manual.

Wilson said he hopes his work will help ensure the department's history is not forgotten.

"I think it helps the people coming aboard to know that they're part of something that's been building for 75 years, and it didn't just come overnight," Wilson said. "Maybe it'll help them appreciate the job."