Little red engine that could - did.

Maintenance unit keeps fire trucks performing at their peak of efficiency

The nights of rioting in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 brought out more than 200 City of Los Angeles fire trucks, 60 ladder trucks, 99 rescue ambulances and the better part of 2,800 firefighters. Hundreds of fires were extinguished, and the city was saved from flame.

Drawing plaudits were the doughty firefighters, who battled not only cinders, but bullets and flying bricks.

Rarely mentioned, if ever, was the equipment upon which they relied -- and which performed up to snuff in its biggest test ever.

"Only one truck broke down that night," proudly states Ed Rischel, supervisor with the Los Angeles Fire Department. "The firemen put out the fires because they know how to do it -- and because they had the equipment to do it."

The pumps pumped, the engines roared and the ladders extended smoothly because of the efforts of 138 men and women at the LAFD Supply & Maintenance Division in East Los Angeles.

Here at the six-acre yard on 19th Street, dozens of fire trucks are under repair, tended to by master mechanics, carpenters, sheet-metal workers and others.

At times, as many as 15 fire trucks are raised by twin hydraulic lifts in the yard's truck stalls, so that mechanics can rebuild engines and work on brakes.

"That's what we repair the most, brakes," says Rischel. "They stop fire trucks as hard they run 'em."

Trucks dating back to the Eisenhower administration are kept on the road, with rebuilt engines and pumps and, of course, re-lined brakes. "It may sound odd to have a 32-year-old truck in the force. But with a rebuilt engine it's OK -- besides, we are under severe budget constraints," explains Glenn Robison, management analyst for the LAFD at the yard.

Some of the big red trucks have more than 150,000 miles on the odometers. With a lack of recent fleet replacements, even the newest trucks have 40,000 miles on the road.

The biggest truck in the yard on a recent June morning was not red, however, but yellow -- part of the city's fleet stationed at the Los Angeles International Airport. As large as a dump truck, the yellow "crash vehicle" -- so called because it is designed to respond to airplane crashes -- rolls about on wheels that are five feet high. A water cannon is bolted to the roof, roughly fifteen feet off the ground. Like all fire trucks, its pump is being checked.

But Supply & Maintenance -- called the S&M Division without the slightest blush -- is far more than a repair shop.

Whole parts are manufactured in the yard's wood shops or metal shops, by craftsmen such as John Alvarez, a welder, or Steve Shen, a sheet-metal worker. The shops boast of lathes, table saws, drill presses and other equipment, most of it evidently dating back to the 1960s.

Recently, operating a huge, Cincinnati-brand press, Shen was busy bending sheet metal into boxes about the size of lunch-pails, only narrower. "They probably will be used to house radios," says Robison, talking over the din of the metal shop.

Carpenters' work includes making wooden ladders, heavily varnished and, reputedly, better than the aluminum ladders other department have had to resort to, says Robison.

The S&M Division even operates its own paint spray booth, coating trucks the traditional fire-engine red, save, of course, for the airport trucks, which must be yellow to comply with federal flight regulations. "We don't care about the yellow paint, because the airport supplies it," laughs Rischel. "If they want to pay for it, we'll paint it any color they want."

The yard itself was built in 1964, and interior offices have the blond wood walls and linoleum floors favored in that period. Much as one might expect from a fire department, everything appears well-maintained and orderly.

The entrance to the yard's office, manned by a lively receptionist named Ryeko Butler, features a large motor, designed in the 1920s and built through the 1950s, used to haul fire trucks around.

"We still have some of these in service," says Dan Cyr, LAFD machinist supervisor, looking at the motor, which is about the size of a large refrigerator. "We scrounge the country looking for parts. Those parts we can't find, we make ourselves in the shops."

The biggest job ever tackled by the S&M Division: fixing a truck that rolled completely over, in 1985. "It costs $225,000 to $250,000 to buy a new truck, and this truck was totaled," recalls Rischel. "It took us months to get it back on its feet, but it cost only $69,000. It was worth it." Pictures of the truck, metamorphosing from hulk to fit fire-fighting form, bedeck the cafeteria walls at the yard.

On site too is a warehouse, where stored are fire-fighting uniforms, helmets, boots, hoses and nearly 5,000 other items routinely ordered by the city's 102 fire stations -- making up the nation's second-largest municipal fire department.

Still, even in the heart of the fire department, flames can sometimes lick at unhappy occupants -- as happened one day to management analyst Robison. "I thought I smelled gas one day, so I went to the oven in the kitchen. When I opened the door, it ignited and singed my hair, my arms, everything."

The episode made Robison into the butt of jokes for days, culminating in the booby-trapping of his office and the gift of a fire-fighting helmet, to be used for future forays into the kitchen.

"These guys here, they just love pranks," says Robison. "But they seem pretty good at their jobs."