CITY FOCUS: Save Seagrave engine

Councilman Kelly Boyd is seeking a sanctuary in Laguna Beach for the fire department’s iconic 1931 Seagrave Suburbanite pumper engine.

The “Little Engine That Could” and did for years, could be shipped out of town on loan to an inland museum, if no local enclosed storage area can be found here.

Boyd fears that once it is out of town, it will become too inconvenient to get it back for those special occasions where it historically appeared.

“I want to find a place in Laguna for it, and I am sure all the children who grew up, as I did, watching it in parades and on Hospitality Night, share the same feeling,” Boyd said.

He plans to raise the issue at Tuesday’s meeting during Council Communications, which comes second on the agenda.

“I encourage anyone who is interested in saving the Seagrave to come to the meeting early,” Boyd said.

Suggestions will be welcomed.

“It is being left out in the open and is deteriorating,” Boyd said.

The Seagrave was the fire department’s first factory-built piece of equipment, according to retired Fire Capt. Eugene D’Isabella’s biography in the 2007 Patriots Day Parade when he served as Grand Marshal.

D’Isabella had the task for maintaining the Seagrave almost from the time he joined the department as a volunteer firefighter, while working for the Laguna Beach Unified School District, starting in 1956 after he was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps.

The engine cost $7,500, which probably wouldn’t be enough to buy a hose for newer engines that cost about $300,000 each.

D’Isabella mastered the Seagrave mechanical brakes and a non-synchronized transmission, that required skill to maneuver it in Laguna’s hilly, twisting streets.

He continued to drive the engine in parades and other special events long after it was retired from active service in 1962 and even after he retired in 1962.

For more information about the Save the Seagrave campaign, call Boyd at (949) 494-3027 or (949) 463-8089.