On-Duty Firefighters Enjoy a Calm Fourth

VAN NUYS —  In years past, Capt. Paul Gamez of the Los Angeles Fire Department could look down any street on a Fourth of July night and witness a sea of dancing lights from children playing with fireworks.

Lurking behind those celebrations, however, was the potential for tragedy, in which one minute’s fun could turn into a painful and frightening ride to a hospital emergency room.

So it is understandable that the troops at Los Angeles Fire Station 100 greeted Independence Day 1998 with trepidation borne of years of treating legions of revelers for burns and worse.

“It heats up after 5,” was a common refrain as Gamez and the seven firefighters and paramedics on holiday duty braced for the busy night ahead.

True to form, an unusually heavy volume of calls crackled over police and fire radio frequencies throughout the evening. But as Gamez maneuvered through the streets of Van Nuys and North Hollywood after dusk Saturday, he was nearly incredulous as, more often than not, he saw only darkness.

“This is the quietest night I ever saw,” Gamez said of the holiday considered the department’s busiest day of the year. “People must be getting the message.”

The Valley native attributed the calm to a number a factors--including stricter enforcement of a citywide ban on fireworks, public education and the large number of public fireworks displays.

To get the word out this year, the Fire Department held a news conference, featuring doctors from the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital, who recalled having to tell parents their son had lost a hand or their daughter would be permanently disfigured.

“Were not trying to scare people,” Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said. “We deal with the aftermath of the horrific injuries, which haunt us for the remainder of our careers.”

At the Grossman Burn Center on Saturday night, doctors and nurses stood ready to handle the usual parade of Fourth of July casualties and were pleasantly surprised to find they never materialized.

“We usually get people suffering from burns as a result of barbecues, campfires or fireworks,” said burn nurse Anne Shreckengaust. “But, fortunately it was a nice, quiet Fourth of July. It proves something’s going right out there.”

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Instead of fire, water seemed to be the element of choice for those attending a block party on Wish Street in Van Nuys. Firefighters from Station 100 were invited to the celebration where they spent time dodging high-powered squirt guns, rather than treating injuries.

It would be almost an hour before paramedics Keith Scott and Bob Johnson were called to assist on a traffic accident on Burbank Boulevard. Capt. David Wagner, Engineer Michael LaBarge and Firefighter Eric Thompson stayed behind to make sure kids climbing over their fire engine didn’t unload 5,000 gallons of water on neighborhood celebrants.

The rest of Los Angeles was quiet too. City firefighters were called out to serious brush fires in Elysian Park and Hansen Dam. But a quick response knocked down each of the blazes--caused by fireworks--to about two acres.