Fire Station 35 in Los Feliz is whole again.

Firefighters, city officials and members of the community announced that the LAFD has boosted resources at Fire Station 35. (photo by Jonathan Van Dyke)

Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge, 4th District, and numerous fire officials and community members gathered last Friday to rededicate the fire station at 1601 Hillhurst Ave. as a full task force.

“It’s a great day in Los Angeles because this fire house now has its complete task force together,” LaBonge said. “I want to thank Mayor [Eric] Garcetti, but we have to do even more.”

The Los Angeles Fire Department has been forced to scale back its numbers significantly in the years since the recession. In 2011, Fire Station 35 cut a fire engine and four firefighters, which turned it into a light force — a station that only operates a truck and a pump engine.

Thanks to an interim budget request and the support of the mayor and city council, LAFD Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas said, the department was able to restore Fire Station 35 to a full task force with 14 firefighters on each platoon, allowing them to perform engine operations and truck operations simultaneously.

“Just earlier this morning there was a structure fire a few blocks away,” he said. “And because Engine 35 was active, we were able to respond as a full task force and it made a big difference in the outcome of the fire. So that’s a quick indicator of how successful its return has been.”

Terrazas added that Fire Station 35 was not chosen lightly as the recipient of restored operations. There are now 31 complete task forces in Los Angeles.

“It was a difficult process, but we are all about metrics now and we evaluate call loads and community risk assessment,” Terrazas said.

The fire station, in part, was chosen because of its proximity to Griffith Park, several major hospitals and an extensive nightclub population on the weekends, he added.

Frank Lima, president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles Local 112, said the engine restoration was a good start, but he noted the LAFD receives 410,000 calls for service each year.

“This is good to begin the process of restoration, but we can’t fully restore without staffing,” he said. “We are a department in crisis mode. We’ve lost hundreds of firefighters over the years. We need to begin big time hiring.”

Terrazas said there is a lot of overtime work taking place at the city’s 106 fire stations, but added that help is on the way. There is a projected class of 68 new firefighters coming in June, and he said the department has requested five new academy classes for the next fiscal year.

The fire chief also said it is important for the LAFD to create innovative solutions to its budget problems. He said the department installed a new captain at its dispatch center to monitor a new system that has been saving the department 20 seconds, on average, per call. He also said the city council has approved $250,000 to fund a nurse practitioner response unit, which should help respond to the department’s most frequent callers — the top 20 callers last year accounted for 2,100 calls to 911.

“This new unit will go out and address the needs of those patients,” Terrazas added.

Kaiser Permanente, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center are all serviced by Fire Station 35.

“The relationship we have with our fire department is tremendous,” said Santiago Chambers, manager of safety and security at CHLA. “What really matters is the babies, the children and the precious lives inside our hospital. Every time a fire alarm, smoke alarm or heat detector goes off, Fire Station 35 comes roaring over.”

“They are an essential link to providing care to some of our sickest patients including stroke victims, people with heart attacks and also trauma victims,” added Dr. Marco Hernandez, medical director of the emergency department at Hollywood Presbyterian.

Members of the nearby community also applauded the engine restoration.

“We would like to honor and thank the fire department for all their hard work,” said Joel Rochlin, fire and safety committee member of the Los Feliz Improvement Association.