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Historical Archive


     August 8, 1972
     General American Transportation (GATX) Fire
     San Pedro

News Pilot, August 15, 1972

Officials take look back at San Pedro holocaust

Firemen's lives were in jeopardy
By XAVIER HERMOSSILLO

How do you fight a $3 million oil fire?
Los Angeles City firemen found that it took more than $8 million worth of equipment and some gutty individuals to finally contain the GATX blaze in San Pedro one week ago.

Even though the flaming fumes of acetone and nitromethane have been extinguished, firemen from Harbor Area companies are surveying their own damage.

Truck Company 48, had its 100-foot aerial ladder unit stationed at Sixteenth Street and Grand Avenue in San Pedro burned.

Capt. Bud Young, the Task Force commander, said the heat and flames charred the right side of the $90,000 truck, peeling paint and melting the red lights of the truck. The ladders mounted on the side also fell victim to the blaze.

Young says the firemen are still looking in every nook and cranny of the truck for chunks of mud and anything else they picked up in mire around the tank farm that was partially destroyed.

In the one week that passed since the more than 300 firefighters and 90 pieces of equipment fought the fire, Capt. Young and other fire officials have had a chance to play "Monday morning quarterback."

"The biggest problem we had was trying to cover both sides of the fire," says the veteran captain.

"We were the only ones there for a long time until the uptown companies came down."

But Young also has some individual praise for the firemen who braved the 100 foot walls of flames and the intense heat.

Clarence Ware and Bruce Norman, both assigned to the Truck Company, drew special lauds from Young.

"When we first started operating our ladder pipe (the nozzle atop the 100-foot ladder), we had one man up there, Bruce Norman, for 20 or 30 minutes," Young said.

"He was receiving more heat than he realized and when the tanks started popping their tops, I brought him down.

"Less than 10 minutes after he came down, heat exhaustion began to hit him and he got weak."

However, Young said that one fireman who wasn't affected by the intense heat was auto fireman Clarence Ware, who drives the big hook and ladder truck.

"Old Clarence stood up there and fought that fire tooth and nail -- he wouldn't give up," said Young.

"We were about 35 feet from the fire and the only way we could keep Clarence there was to keep a spray of water on him all the time.

"He was at the base of the ladder on the controls sweeping the fire with the ladder pipe. You couldn't stand on the side of the truck toward the fire any more than five seconds or it would burn you.

"That's why we had to keep a stream on Clarence," he added, pointing out that they had to soak Ware to keep him from catching on fire.

Young also said he put a fireman between the blaze and the truck as often as possible to keep the truck cool.

The melted lights have all been replaced and officials say it will just be a matter of time before the side of the truck is repaired.

But San Pedro and Wilmington firemen say they did learn a lesson from the fire at the General American Transportation Corp.-- a lesson that holds signs of future problems in case of another major fire.

"We learned that if we ever have a big fire again," said Young, "we're going to have to count on ourselves until we can get help from the downtown L.A. companies.

"The time lapse in getting help to us was the thing that hurt the most. Once we committed our companies here in San Pedro and Wilmington, we had to wait for the other companies to roll. And it took them a while to get here."

Young pointed out that if more help had arrived sooner, the blaze could have been extinguished faster.

However, he said, "We can have all the equipment in the world, but it's the manpower that puts these fires out.

"All of these firemen had themselves in spots where they could have been wiped out in an instant. But there wasn't one who backed out, they all stood in there and fought. They really proved themselves," he added.

Firemen said they learned that using the heavy streams of water to cool down the tanks affected the effectiveness of the foam units.

Young said the foam was weakened by the water used to keep the tanks from exploding.

Despite the extensive use of streams, the firemen weren't able to keep one tank from exploding and it rocketed some 300 feet in the air, crashing just behind a line of firemen.

"The men from Engines 48 and 53 were on the east side when the tank crashed," said Young. "They were completely under the smoke blanket and they didn't know the tank had blown.

"That might have saved their lives," he went on to say." "because if they had seen the tank blow, they might have run to escape it and gotten seriously hurt."

Capt Mike Riley, who commanded the operations for Engine Company 48 also drew a commendation from Young.

Riley's men were first in along with Engine 53 and Capt.Fred Croghan, and the two companies battled the flames for the entire three hours, successfully keeping the flames away from a supply house and a furniture warehouse.

The man who handled the overall firefighting operations, Battalion 6 Chief Frank Brown, is the man who many officials say should draw most of the credit.

Brown deployed the manpower for the entire fire and is credited with confining the blaze to the tank farm.

Although some of the oil did spill into the waters of Los Angeles Harbor, crews were able to boom it off and stop the spread.

However, firemen are now breathing a sigh of relief as they considered what "might" have happened.

"If all those tanks had ruptured and overflowed the dike area and gone into the harbor," Young said, "the harbor waters could have been burning. This in turn would have ignited the docks and then we would have been in real trouble."

But the "ifs" and the "might haves" didn't come about and firemen say they will be better able to handle a major fire next time.

Captains Yo Young, Riley, Croghan and Chief Brown know the manpower shortage will still exist -- but they're confident they can still count on firemen like Bruce Norman and Clarence Ware to fight tooth and nail and never give in the the fire.


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