Santa Monica Mountains Fire Engine Retires to a Malibu Fire Safety Alliance

After 16 years of service, the Type 3 fire engine of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California has been donated to the Corral Canyon Fire Safety Alliance in Malibu. A new Type 3 engine has taken its place at the park.

Corral Canyon Fire Safety Alliance firefighters and the park’s fire management staff on the day of the transfer, at Paramount Ranch. NPS.

A well-traveled engine

In service, the engine went on fire assignments across most of the western states, logging more than 130,000 miles, often in rural country and over rough dirt roads. At home it answered numerous fires, among them the 2018 Woolsey Fire, the largest recorded fire in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Staying on the front line

The engine has moved only down the road, and it will stay on the front line of wildland firefighting, crewed by trained firefighters from the Corral Canyon community. The alliance, a nonprofit founded in May 2009, can now staff a wildland engine in its own neighborhood when fire weather is elevated — extending a long working relationship with local fire departments and fire safety alliances. It will also use the engine as a centerpiece at community events on fire safety, education and prevention.

How it was possible

The donation came about through good relationships among local fire departments, fire safety alliances and Park Service administrative staff, and through a Department of the Interior policy that lets the Park Service transfer surplus wildfire equipment and supplies no longer needed by the department’s wildland fire management program.

Sources

Based on "NPS donates fire engine to local Fire Safety Alliance," Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.