Between its crackling lightening storms and isolating mudslides, dramatic cliff accidents and unforgettable wildfires, few things are as predictable as Big Sur’s unpredictability. Frank Pinney is one of the few.

After joining the Big Sur Fire Brigade in its inagural 1974 and serving as its chief for the last 17 years, this week Pinney hands over the reigns to longtime deputy chief Martha Karstens. The BSFB’s annual Barbecue and Muster fundraiser at Pfieffer State Park this Saturday will double as a send-off for the man commonly considered the de facto mayor of the unincorporated Sur.

The former Marine is famed for his steadiness, so it’s ironic that he might still be an IBM salesman if he hadn’t applied a swift twist to his existence in the fall of 1972. Riding along Highway 1 between sales calls in Los Angeles and San Francisco, he says he had “a burning bush revelation” – and a sudden need to get back to Big Sur to figure it out. He emptied out his desk and returned within a few weeks.

“My family situation and work pressures were forcing me into a life pattern I wasn’t happy with,” Pinney says. “I visualized a career path as a carpenter, lumberjack and fireman. It was all possible in Big Sur.”

An independently supported community fire brigade was perhaps a wilder possibility – let alone a local agency that would spearhead the unified command of several thousand firefighters in the face of last summer’s Basin Complex Fire.

The original BSFB, assembled because there was no local presence to respond to structure fires, was somewhat thrown together: “The whole thing was pretty fly-by-night,” former brigade captain and 30-year Sur resident Preston Sult says, “but they managed to pull it off.” But with the guidance of preceding chiefs Walter Trotter and Pat Chamberlain, and then Pinney, it has evolved to shoulder a landslide of responsibilities – vehicle accidents, medical calls, high-angle rescues, hazardous materials incidents, and management and mutual aid for major emergencies such as wildfires and road closures.

“The evolution was gradual, like a person growing up, with one view of life in childhood to being mature enough to see we could do what was needed,” Pinney says. “I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to do, and of the people who put lives on line and gave personal time without any limit.”

Key among Pinney’s contributions has been a gift for reconciling the instinctively independent locals with at-times heavy-handed regional authorities.

“What Frank has done with the Fire Brigade,” says Ken Wright, who covered the coast for 20 years as a highway patrolman based in Big Sur, “is not to tell people to do things, but to help people do things, and, regardless of whose authority it is, cross boundaries and help people work together.”

While the firefighting, fundraising and rescuing hours donated by Pinney and the brigade’s all-volunteer team can’t be counted – “[During incidents] he’s up at four, sometimes to bed at two,” Karstens says – he’s had other gigs besides facing down five-alarm fires.

He ran the last permitted logging operation Big Sur has seen. After starting off as a carpenter, he’s helped build and reinvent around 100 homes ranging from the coast to Carmel Valley as a contractor. Sult says Pinney has not only served as a mentor but “literally took care” of him when he fell ill with cancer. Every source the Weekly contacted praised Pinney’s dutifulness as a dad and granddad.

“Frank is a really devoted family man,” Wright says. “He’s just a really kind man who understands his family.”

Why and how he pulls it all off is less obvious, Wright adds. “Frank and I are of an age where we have a lot of drives,” he says. “I don’t know why, or if it’s an overcompensation for something. We can spend a lot of wine and beer and drugs trying to figure out what it was, but it’s really done from the heart – not trying to have a big ego, but done for the community.”

Pinney’s work was also always done with an eye on the horizon: “His mantra since forever,” says former brigade firefighter and boardmember Ray Sanborn, “has been stabilization of funding.” Some of the events that buttress their relentless grant writing – Bol Masque, the Big Sur Marathon and Big Sur River Run among them – have become institutions unto themselves. A once rickety fleet of firetrucks and water tenders is now respectable.

Fittingly, the easy evenness that has distinguished his tone at community fire briefings and at-times heated brigade meetings is present with his transition. He’ll continue to serve as a board member. Amid the relentless reckonings of the Basin Complex Fire he was grooming his replacement comprehensively. “We worked 18 hours a day, attended meetings, and I knew exactly what he was doing,” Karstens says. “All of last year’s lessons give me so many more tools to proceed.”

So, as Big Sur heads into a fire season and a future no one can foretell, thanks to people like Pinney, the South Coast can predict it will be equipped to face it.

BIG SUR VOLUNTEER FIRE BRIGADE’S 35TH ANNIVERSARY BARBECUE AND MUSTER takes place noon-3pm Saturday, July 18, at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park’s day-use area. $12/adult; $6/children 12 and under. 667-2113, www.bigsurfire.org.