Fire Tests Rookie Firefighters
By Bobbi Zane

Alan Marvin Julian Journal file Photo

The Angel Fire tested the skills of 10 new Julian firefighters who had completed their training program a couple of hours before the blaze ignited at Camp Stevens.

The rookies were among the many Julian firefighters who saved houses that might have burned otherwise.

This is Alan Marvin's story, but he says each graduate has a personal story of fighting a brush fire on graduation day.

It was a blazing initiation into the corps, according to Marvin, 64, who says his pager went off minutes after he left the fire station following the noon conclusion of the last class at the high school.

However, he had to go home to Pine Hills to get the appropriate brush gear before he joined up with a team from Cuyamaca that was heading for Whispering Pines.

"The fire was all over the hillside," he recalls, "and the house was in danger" of going up in flames as his engine pulled up to the residence, the first home on Whispering Pines Road.

He began to lay out hoses and fill them with water. "At first we were the only crew there."

But the four-member crew worked the hillside and tamed the flames, eventually saving the house.

Marvin's experience with fire dates back to 2003 when the Cedar Fire consumed his home and business in Pine Hills, the Julian White House Bed and Breakfast. "Having gone through the Cedar Fire changed my outlook," he says.

It took a while for Marvin to decide what to do. After all, he said: "This is a job for a young person. It's physically demanding."

Through the years, he had thought about joining the volunteers, but finally committed a couple of months ago when Jennifer Roberts (a longtime firefighter) invited him to a meeting where he "finally decided to go for it."

A six-week training program, which meets Saturday mornings at the high school, guides the volunteers through the rudiments of their new jobs.

So how did it go the first time out? "Once I caught my breath it was good. I worked with a tremendous bunch of people and everyone worked together well," he says.