A fire truck is rescued

An old friend of the fire department is back in town after a few decades in Los Angeles and ready for a face-lift.

With luck, it will be a guest of honor for the Fourth of July Parade in 2009, just in time for the city’s 100th anniversary.

The Huntington Beach Firefighters Assn. is restoring Huntington Beach’s very first fire engine, purchased by the fire department back in the mid-1920s.

Firefighters hope to have it finished by 2009 so they can drive it down Main Street in a year that also marks the department’s centennial.

It’s going to take a lot of careful research and work to get the ancient engine back into shape, especially because it has a 1920s-era motor, said Randy Babbitt, an engineer with the department active in the association.

And previous restorations haven’t stuck to the details of the original, he added.

“Right now it’s the wrong color red,” he said. “We know that for a fact. We almost have to act like forensic CSI people, having to look at these old pictures trying to figure out what exactly was on it, what exactly was painted there.”

When the department bought the engine in 1926, it was a volunteer organization with only a single full-time employee.

But the engine was busy — it responded to about 400 alarms a year, according to historical materials gathered by the association.

By the time the city gave its first engine up to Los Angeles’ Travel Town Museum in the ’60s, Huntington Beach had boomed and was a far different place.

While some of the historically minded wished the engine had never left, the city only got the truck back in 2005 when it traded a forklift to the museum for the privilege; while initially the plan was for the city to fund the restoration, it gave the truck to the association this year after tight city budgets made such a project less feasible.

Restoring the 1923 Seagrave fire engine will take $120,000 in donations and a lot of sweat and expertise, according to the association’s estimates.

Those who end up working on the vintage machine will do everything from rebuild the engine, switch out old valves and gauges, polish up the brass and chrome, and bring back original-style pin-striping and gold leaf decorations.

The engine has a few legends attached to it, not a rarity for a machine that had such a long career. The best-known one says the engine was pulled off a train in the middle of shipping to Huntington Beach to stop a raging wildfire that threatened San Bernardino.

Afterward, the story goes, it was put right back on the train and finally made it to Huntington Beach after an errant delivery to Los Angeles.

“We hear this from contacts in Long Beach and L.A. city,” he said. “Everybody’s familiar with this story, but nobody has documents to prove it. There’s nobody around these days that served on it then.”

What happens to the truck after its big day in 2009? Hopefully it stays on display, and firefighters are looking for a place to show it off.

“Eighty years ago our forefathers of the fire department drove around and risked their lives on this,” Babbitt said. “We want it to be a true community project. Hopefully we can be able to be on display somewhere in the city where anyone in the city wants to see it.”

Information about donating to the restoration is expected to be available at www.hbfa.org soon. For more information, e-mail cgraveproject@hbfa.org.