The Meglens were active in the early days, and more.
Jim Norrbom, his son Bob, and grandson Bobbie Norrbom, Jr.
The Derickson family on Sonoma Mountain has a station on their property where a fire truck is housed for a fast response to a Sonoma Mountain burn. Several Glen Ellen families have been part of the fire service for generations. The third place is the current firehouse built in 1968 on the curve where Arnold swings to the right on its way up to Highway 12. Then, a property just north of the Garden Court Cafe on Glen Ellen Avenue (now Arnold Drive) was the firehouse. The first place the early trucks were kept was a garage behind the Poppe store. Now there are professional firefighters on duty 24 hours a day at the firehouse, and nearly two years after the 2017 wildfires, Glen Ellen is grateful. Later, pagers and, more recently, cell phones mustered volunteers from their beds. Years later, volunteers were summoned from home by the cry of the powerful siren mounted on the roof of the current firehouse. Until the 1970s, when county dispatchers were organized, according to Chief Peter van Fleet, housewives would have “fire phones” at home to call in volunteers. Volunteers back then were called by phone or word of mouth. It was paid for with donations from the local Women’s Club, donation jars, bingo games at Mayflower Hall, dances held in the Chauvet Hotel and Forty-niner Day celebrations.
Image bucket brigade how to#
Automobiles were so scarce on Glen Ellen’s dirt streets in the 1920s that former Glen Ellen fire chief Bill Meglen, in “Childhood Memories of Glen Ellen,” recalls his mother had to teach some firefighters how to drive the new truck and, at times, drove the firetruck to fires herself. A century ago, the Glen Ellen Volunteer Fire Department was simply a bucket brigade.
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