Carmel Valley Fire Protection District

ΞLOCALHEROSΞ

For the past 18 years, Pat Dowd has come home from one of his two paying jobs— working as a counselor at Seaside High School and as a marriage and family counselor in private practice— and spent many an evening, weekend and holiday ready for a fire alarm to sound. It didn’t matter if Dowd was sleeping, or in the middle of a family meal. Once his pager beeped, Dowd was on the road— to a fire, a rescue situation, an emergency, or the unknown— within minutes. It’s scary and chaotic and challenging work. Dowd loves it.

“I love spontaneity,” he says. “And there’s nothing more spontaneous than a fire alarm.”

Earlier this month, Dowd, who’s 62, retired from the Carmel Valley Fire Protection District, where he served as a volunteer assistant chief. He worked his way up the chain of command— from firefighter to engineer to lieutenant— before being promoted to battalion chief and then to assistant chief.

Every summer, Dowd and his fellow volunteer firefighters respond to a handful of major wildland fires that start anywhere from the Sierras to Southern California. During the 2005 Ventura County fires, Dowd led a 21-person strike team, which means he was responsible for coordinating efforts among five engines from five different departments. During his career, he’s led more than a dozen strike teams throughout the state.

It sounds like a full-time job: Dowd was on call half the month, every month, responding to everything from brush fires to traffic fatalities. Every week he attended training drills. And then there were the major disasters— summer forest fires, the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, the Pebble Beach fire of 1987 that destroyed 32 homes and forced the evacuation of more than 100 people.  

But Dowd worked as a fireman and an emergency medical services provider for free.

Dowd began volunteering for the district in 1980, shortly after moving to Carmel Valley Village. The ideals it represented— volunteerism, community service and tradition— resonated with Dowd. And, he says, “When that alarm goes off, you have no idea what it’s going to be and you have to deal with it and fix it successfully. Both with fire and EMS, you start from a point of overwhelming confusion and acute, immediate need and you have to bring order to that chaos. The alarm sparks your adrenaline, certain things more than others. With multiple reports of smoke and flames, the adrenaline is very high.”

Between 70 and 80 percent of the calls Carmel Valley firefighters respond to are medical emergencies, he says. “Fire calls are really quite rare. Auto accidents are some of the most horrific.”

Dowd says medical calls were his favorite. “You do a resuscitation, and there’s nothing better than that.”

Then, there’s the flip side. “There are bad things you have to see,” he says, “children who have been injured and horrific trauma. I have these memories I don’t care to have, but they’re in there.”

He prefers to dwell on the successful rescues. Like one man who suffered a heart attack in his Carmel Valley home. Dowd got the call and saved the man. “I’ll see him driving down the street,” Dowd says. “I’ll think, ‘I remember being in your living room when you weren’t breathing.’ I defibrillated him. It’s nothing we say or do, it’s just cool seeing him driving down the street.”