By Scott Meeker
smeeker@joplinglobe.com
Were a fire to break out on the back section of his property, Eugene Mahoney knows that because of how the land is situated, it would be the Joplin Fire Department that would respond.
But since the front part of the property sits squarely in the village of Leawood, a fire there would mean a call to the Redings Mill Fire Department.
Press him for more details and Mahoney could offer up strategies for fighting that hypothetical fire, information about the fire apparatus and equipment that would be needed, and the hydraulics that would be required to suppress the blaze. And if any of those firefighters responding happened to be due for a promotion, he could even offer them some tips on what they should brush up on before their exam.
A veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Mahoney has spent nearly three decades authoring training manuals and study guides used by firefighters around the country.
Now 86 years old, Mahoney has just published his final textbook — “Mathematics and Problem Solving for Fire Personnel” — and is ready to finally extinguish a career that has burned strong for more than 60 years.
Mahoney grew up the son of a fireman. However, it wasn’t a career that he had ever seriously considered for himself.
“When (my dad) was on the fire department they didn’t have any radios on the apparatus and they had to stay in the fire station,” he said. “Most of the guys in the station, they would consume quite a bit of alcohol. The firemen would go spend the day in the beer hall. One firefighter would stay in the station and if they got a call, he would run down to get the rest and they’d all go back and respond to the call.
“It didn’t look like a career I wanted.”
In 1946, Mahoney had been released from active duty as a pilot in the Navy and was looking for a job.
After some encouragement from his mother, he took the fire-department exam and landed a job as a firefighter for the Los Angeles Fire Department the following year. His career there would span 22 years, including a number of years as battalion chief.
“That fire department is one of the busiest in the nation, and the battalion I was in charge of was the busiest in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” Mahoney said. “Today, that battalion of the fire department is noted as ‘The Battalion that Never Sleeps.’”
His battalion was one of those that responded when racial tensions boiled over in August 1965 in the Watts neighborhood, resulting in six days of rioting and fires that consumed hundreds of buildings and businesses.
“I happened to be on vacation at the time it started,” Mahoney said. “I called and offered to come in, but I was told the department had it under control.
“But then it got out of control and they called me back in. The National Guard had to be called in because there weren’t enough police to protect the fire department.”
Before retiring from the department in 1969, Mahoney spent several years teaching and developing a fire-science curriculum as well as doing public relations for the LAFD.
Chief concerns
After leaving the department in Los Angeles, Mahoney became fire chief for the city of Garden Grove, Calif.
With a population of about 130,000, Mahoney said that the city was primarily a “bedroom community.”
“Disneyland wanted to be in Garden Grove because of the name, but they wound up going next door to Anaheim,” he said.
He was fire chief for about a year and a half before he was tapped by the city manager to head up the newly formed public safety department. The position put Mahoney in charge of the fire department, the police department and the communications system. It was not, however, a position that made him very popular.
“It was a constant fight,” he said. “The police didn’t like a fireman being in charge of the department. I started looking for something else.”
From there he went on to serve as chief of the fire department in Arcadia, Calif.
Arcadia was a quiet community of about 40,000, said Mahoney. But just because the communities he served became smaller, fighting fires was no less dangerous.
“One of my captains got killed (in Arcadia),” he said. “He was in charge of the truck company, which is generally involved in ventilating the roof. He fell through the roof and burned to death. It was his first fire as captain.
“The big factor in Los Angeles when you have a fire is that you have lots of companies that respond. In cities like Garden Grove and Arcadia, you get the same size fire and you only get about a tenth the amount of people.”
By the book
While a member of the LAFD, Mahoney attended the University of Southern California.
He received a bachelor’s degree in public administration and a minor in fire administration in 1956. Three years later he earned his master’s in education.
He helped establish the first fire-science curriculum for junior colleges in California and served as an instructor at Harbor College for 12 years, then a fire-administration instructor for two years at Long Beach State College. He later taught fire science at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, Calif., retiring from there in 1988.
“I liked being a teacher,” he said.
Mahoney — who moved to Joplin with his wife, Ethel, in 1990 — also found that he liked to write about what he knew, even penning the drill guides that were used by the firefighters in Los Angeles.
In 1978, he tried his hand at fiction writing. His novel, “Anatomy of an Arsonist,” was published by Condor Press.
“The book came out and then two weeks later the company went bankrupt,” he said. “I got the first half of what they were going to give me for publishing the book. I never got the second half.
“But that book was out there. A friend of mine saw a copy of it overseas and we saw it in Hawaii.”
Since 1980, he has published more than a dozen textbooks and study guides in the field of fire science, from “Fire Suppression Practices and Procedures” to “Firefighter Promotional Examinations, Practice and Review.”
Though he’s been retired from teaching at fire academies for more than 20 years and there have been a number of technological improvements and changes in how departments function in that time, the basics of fire science are constant.
“There are three primary things a fireman has to know,” Mahoney said. “You have to know how to fight fire, of course, but you also have to learn hydraulics and you have to learn about the equipment and how the apparatus works.”
For some of his later works, Mahoney has used co-authors for the textbooks he has written for Pearson Education Inc., the New Jersey publisher of his books.
“This was for two purposes. One is that they are still in the fire service and are more up to date,” he said. “The second is that this company likes to revise its books every five years. I’m 86. In five years I’m not going to be in a position to revise them, so I got some people to help me and they will be able to pick it up when I’m gone.”
He knew that his latest book on mathematics and problem solving would be his final published work. He started work on it two years ago, but progress was slower than with his previous books.
About three years ago, he lost his left eye due to complications from cataract surgery.
“I developed this last book with only one eye,” he said. “It slows me down a bit.”
Mahoney said he’ll miss writing, “primarily because it keeps me busy.”
But it’s obvious that he takes pride in the fact that his years of research and writing have left a mark on the field of fire science and the training of firemen around the country.
“One of the books that I wrote about 25 years ago is still being sold,” he said. “I’m still getting royalties off of it.”
