HERBERT J. OSUNAHerbert J. Osuna - June 31, 1980 (#142)
Battalion 2 - 109 Oak Street

July 31, 1980
First Enterprise Bank Building

Appointed April 7, 1951, age 27

Assigned to Truck Co. No.11, 1954

Appointed Operator, June 16, 1960

Assigned to District 3, 1960

Appointed Lieutenant, November 18, 1966

Assigned to Engine Co. No. 8, 1969
Assigned to Truck Co. No.1, 1970

Appointed Captain

Assigned to Engine Co. No. 1

BUILDING COLLAPSE - 260 MONTGOMERY STREET

FAMILY FAREWELL FOR FIREMAN HERO
WALNUT CREEK RESIDENT DIED BLAZE

1980 August 5

LAFAYETTE - They buried a brother Monday. Herb Osuna had been one of the family.

He’d attended their weddings, picnics and dances, he shared their triumphs and disappointments with laughter and tears.

And here he was last Wednesday, when the stone wall began to topple during a raging midnight blaze in San Francisco’s Financial District. The 56-year-old firefighter from Walnut Creek might have gotten out alive. And on Monday his family turnout to honor Battalion Chief and twenty-nine 29 year veteran firefighter Herbert M. Osuna.

They packed pews along with hundreds of citizens and relatives during the services at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, and stood in salute in long rows outside the chapel as six colleagues carried firefighters coffin to the Hearst and another tolled a fire truck’s bell.

And while a disjointed “taps” burst from a bugle during graveside services at a Lafayette cemetery, dozens of firefighters stood at respectful attention.

But the much respected and loved firefighters family extended well beyond the San Francisco Fire Department, his wife Carmen, and son Hank.

As the line of passenger cars, fire engines and other law enforcement agency vehicles, rooftop lights flashing, snaked across the Bay Bridge onto Highway 24 towards Lafayette, the procession was observed by firefighters from Orinda, Lafayette and other Bay Area cities, who parked their polished engines on overpasses and freeway turnouts, and stood, caps in hand, in a final farewell.

And at intersections and street corner, firefighters and police officers stood at attention, singing Lane and in groups, ask session wow this way through.

“He was a San Francisco style gentleman,” recalled Lt. Dan Kiely, at the graveside services.

“He was my probationary officer when I joined the force 15 years ago, then my lieutenant, and when I became a lieutenant, my captain, said Kiely.

“He knew his job as well as any firemen in the country.”

Capt. Charles Ryan said, Osuna would have been amused by the turnout for his funeral.

"He knew something was wrong” last Wednesday night and ordered his fellow firefighters out of the building, said Ryan. If they hadn’t jumped they would have died with Herb.

“We live with each other - we’re a family.

“Herb was our brother.”
Source: Contra Costa Times, August 5, 1980. By Kim Favors, Times Staff Writer.

DEAD FIREMAN: HE “LIVED (AND DIED) FOR HIS JOB”

1980 July 31

A few firefighters sat around the table, drinking coffee and talking quietly, their hands and heads swathed in bandages.
           
Outside, in the warming morning sunlight, nine hours after the Montgomery Street fire that claimed the life of Acting Battalion Chief Herbert Osuna, the men of Station One were hosing down the trucks and stringing out the lines, the normal routine of waiting for the next fire.

Osuna had been at this firehouse on Jessie Street, in the shadow of the Old Mint on Fifth Street, for as long as most there could remember.

Only the day before, upon returning from vacation, had Osuna, 56, been elevated to temporary battalion chief for Battalion Two, assigned to work out of Station 36 on Oak Street

His men from Station One were already at the blaze that began shortly after midnight when he and his men arrived. As was his habit, he quickly ran into the thick of it, taking charge.

“He was a very aggressive fireman," said Lt. Frank Cercos, 33, whose ear, stomach and wrists were burned, his eyes still red from the intense heat and smoke. “He was doing a good job last night. He was right behind the nozzle, relaying the progress by radio to the men outside."

Cercos, a six-year veteran of the department, was one of several men on the third-floor stairway in the five-story building, with Osuna at the top of the stairs on the landing when the wall started to go.

“There was a big flash of light, and heat. Capt. Osuna said get out of there. And with that, all this debris came in. Everything came down, and it was heavy — brick and wood, not lathe and plaster — with superheated air, so hot you couldn't stand it"

Cercos and firefighters Kevin Gonzalves and George Ohlson “dove down the stairs head first."

A huge wall of masonry and brick fell, pinning Osuna. "They had to use a Johnson bar (an 5 by 8, 12-foot-long timber normally used to lift streetcars) to get it off him.”

Capt. Charles Ryan, of Station One, said he and Osuna were sworn into the department the same day — April 7, 1951. “We were both raised in the Bayview area. He was three years older than me, and played with my older brothers.

I’ve been down here 21 years in this house. Herb was in this house. He was a hoseman on the engine, then lieutenant on the truck, then captain on the engine. So he was a good 28 years in this station.

“He had been studying real hard for the next battalion chief's exam. He wanted to give it one good crack before he retired. He was really active, wasn’t ready to go out yet"

Osuna had 29 years in the department. “He was always with the most active stations in the company," said Ryan, who noted that Osuna had a close scrape only two weeks before. He and his Engine One men were trapped in the basement of the Holiday Inn at Ninth and Market streets and had to be rescued.

He had received two meritorious awards, the fire department's highest, once for dragging a woman down a long hallway through smoke and flames of the Paul Hotel and handing her over to firemen on the fire escape — that was in February 1973 — and again in October of that year, in another downtown hotel, he climbed up a 35-foot ladder and calmed a woman who was thinking of suicide, then carried her down the ladder.

Shortly after 5 a.m. today, the men of Engine One, Truck One and Rescue One returned to their firehouse. By then they'd heard that Osuna had died at Mission Emergency. "Most of the guys were wired," said Gary Montague, who suffered a cut wrist tendon when he went in through a second-floor window. “We couldn't sleep. We just all stood around.

Osuna lived In Walnut Creek, had a wife, Carmen, a childhood sweetheart from the Bayvtew district, and a grown son, Hank.

He graduated from Balboa High School, served in the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II, earned a degree in education from San Francisco State University after the war.

His wife said her husband wanted originally to be a teacher, but in 1961 the fire department needed some part-time help, and he hired on.

“He just met a lot of nice people and decided that's what he wanted to do,” she said.

Osuna, she said, was a dedicated fireman. That's what he lived for and talked about ‘1 feel lucky that we had him such a long time,” she added, remembering that two years ago, someone shot at him. Four years ago, when he walked into a brick building, part of a wall fell on him, but he was able to crawl away."

Informed of her husband's death this morning, she was taken to San Francisco General Hospital where, she said, Fire Chief Andy Casper and a priest told her to go ahead and cry if that's what she felt like. But, she replied, "I can’t cry right now. 1 still remember him. He was a very happy man with a happy disposition. I’ll cry when I'm alone.”

“He was a nice guy,” Cercos said, “a gentleman from the old school. He did everything right.”

"It could have been a lot more guys killed,” Ryan said. There have been so many close calls; we're lucky we don’t lose more fireman.

“A fireman's job is the most hazardous job in the country.”
Source: By Dexter Waugh and Jon Kawamoto.  The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California), 31 Jul 1980, Thu., Page 22

Extracted from original sources with grammar and spelling as published.

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