The Los Alamos Auxiliary Fire Brigade was organized 12/12/52 and incorporated 6/1/61. Our initial purpose and charter was as an auxiliary fire fighting force, trained to the same standards as the paid force to be used as a sort of “mutual aid” asset. There really wasn’t much chance of acquiring a reasonable response from any surrounding communities due to our location.
In ’64 the primary focus was changed to search and rescue with fire fighting taking a “back seat”. From there, the primary fire fighting efforts were directed toward wildland fires. The forest service being grossly undermanned for quick, efficient responses and the structural fire fighters being untrained. We did put in over a thousand man-hours on the Lamesa fire in ’77 and several smaller fire before and since but our main thrust has been SAR for over 50 years.
We are a charter member of the New Mexico Emergency Services Council, (formed in ’73, I understand, with one of the initial meetings for the formation being held at Civil Defense Headquarters, CD-1 also known as the “Barn”). Our original home was a tin shack on D.P. Road. From there, we moved to our present location in CD-1 at 4017 Arkansas. The building was built around the time of the brigade’s founding and was supplanted by a new fire station (station 4, across from the golf course) around ’58 (I believe). Albro Rile, being our founder, and the fire marshal, convinced the “powers that be” that the abandoned fire station should be given to the Brigade. We moved in!
-Charlie Hosford