The Private Firefighters On Call for the Californians Who Can Afford Them

On Tuesday, January 7th, the first day of the Los Angeles Fires, Andrew Sarvis captained his nine firetrucks toward the homes in the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Brentwood. There was one bar of cell phone service that fleeing residents and approaching firefighters were competing for. By the time he arrived at 2 p.m., Sarvis had lost reception.

Before his phone went out, Sarvis tells me he received about 700 calls from panicked homeowners. Each caller was desperate and money was no object. But his private firefighting crew could only safeguard the homes of his 27 clients. “We were prepped on our end, but nobody wanted to bring us in [before the fires started],” he says. “So when it all hit the fan, then we’re racing in there, and it was first come, first served.” 

Sarvis and his crew split up, navigating streets crowded with other fire crews. They went from house to house “like a strike team,” removing lawn furniture, vegetation, and anything else along the exterior that could serve as kindling. The wind gusts reached 100 miles per hour and the smoke was thick and rancid. Sarvis watched electric cars explode and garbage bins tip over, fill with flames, and blow down the streets like missiles. At one home, a window had blown open and the drapes had caught. He called the homeowners, got the access code, and he and his crew put out the fire and moved a piece of furniture to secure the window against the wind. 

In the middle of the first night, he and two of his firefighters arrived at a sprawling estate that sits on a mountainside above the Temescal Ridge Trail, the apparent point of origin. Sarvis filmed for the homeowner as they walked the perimeter: “The house is all intact. It’s 200 hour. 2 a.m. We’re doing a walkaround. This is our second time back up here.” In the video, the soot-flecked Santa Anas whip so hard it looks like they’ll pull the palm trees out from the roots. Over the crest, the $10-million view is a nightmare: a night sky dyed ashen orange and speckled with bright bursts where houses burn. 

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For 96 hours, Sarvis’ men fought alongside the city and county firefighting crews in the heart of the worst wildfire in L.A. history. Those public firefighters worked to save what they could while containing the spread across the city. “A good analogy would be a one-on-one defense versus zone defense,” LAFD Captain Brock Larue explains. “You assess everything you can to do the greatest good.” Sarvis’ private firefighting crew, West Coast Water Tenders, was more focused: guard the homes they were paid to protect. 

The private firefighting industry first came out of the shadows in 2018, during the Woolsey Fire, when TMZ reported that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had hired a team to protect their $60 million Hidden Hills estate. A few days after the L.A. Fires sparked, a private firefighting association’s director told The New York Times that about 45 percent of all firefighters in the States are private. Most work as government contractors to aid rural communities during wildfires. Others are contracted by insurance companies. But the severity of the Los Angeles Fires and the wealth of those affected has led to an increased public awareness of private crews protecting homes. 

The evening of January 7th, real estate investor Keith Wasserman sent a tweet that went viral: “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.” Sarvis says he saw it and it didn’t surprise him.

“I had people calling me, ‘If I write you a check right now for a million dollars will you come to my house?’” Sarvis says. Even in Malibu and the Palisades, where the fanciest homes sell for eight figures, the offer shocked Sarvis. He could never dream of having that much money to spend. But he declined. “Like, no, you’re not understanding. I have commitments to people, and my word is my bond, and I ain’t breaking it for nobody.”

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I ask Sarvis if he understands why so many people were pissed off at Wasserman and at the idea of millionaires hiring their own private firefighters. “Yes,” Sarvis says. “And I’m sure somebody went there and told him, ‘Give me a million bucks.’ But I’m not that guy.”

IT’S LATE IN THE MORNING ON Wednesday, a little more than a week after the start of the L.A. Fires, which have become one of the worst natural disasters in American history. I’ve driven up to Santa Clarita, a mountain range and a world from tony Brentwood and Beverly Hills, to try to understand the world of private firefighting from the inside. 

Sarvis, 57, is stocky, with massive hands, a goatee and soul patch, and tattoos up his forearms. He wears a beanie over his bald head and a wallet chain that hangs from his baggy green pants. He could play a firefighter on TV, but not the leading man. After a week without sleep, running on catnaps and Red Bull, he looks weathered. Still, his teeth and facial hair are pristine.

I ask the question I’ve been wondering since learning that private crews were fighting the L.A. Fires: what’s it cost to hire one? “Anywhere from $6,500 all the way up to $15 to $20,000 for a 12-hour shift,” Sarvis says. He won’t let me share West Coast Water Tenders’ rate, but he says that’s the range of prices for private firefighting services that he knows firsthand. In this desperate moment, with massive demand, he’d bet some of the private crews are charging even more. “I’ve had people yell at me, ‘You’re capitalizing on misery.’ No, I’m here filling a gap in the system and trying to be helpful,” he says. “And yeah, we have to make money to do this, because it costs money to operate, and people don’t work for free.”

Sarvis doesn’t sign contracts with his clients; he works on handshake agreements. He tells me he never considered hiking prices as the Palisades burned. “I’ve watched some people’s business practices by what they’re charging, and I’m not going to name names, but they know who they are, and I don’t agree with it,” he says. “Taking advantage of people in their time of need is not the way to do business. I sleep good at night.” 

We’re having breakfast at The Halfway House Cafe, a roadside diner down the highway from Sarvis’ home that you’d never guess was in L.A. A sign above the toilet lists the “Top Ten Reasons Why Men Prefer Guns Over Women.” Sarvis, who picked the place, fits perfectly here. And yet, L.A. being L.A., his is also a Hollywood story. 

Growing up in Ohio obsessed with Wild West tales, Sarvis says he always felt pulled to the coast. “I knew there was something more out there for me,” he says. “I met a girl and moved to California, and that’s how I ended up in the film business.”

For the last 25 years, he’s worked as a stunt man — in Sears Craftsman commercials, in a handful of films, and in music videos — and as a Teamster on sets. When directors need rain or a wet road, he arrives with a massive water truck; when productions are filming on-location or when there’s a dangerous stunt, he’s hired to have a firefighting rig standing by. 

In the 1990s, Sarvis bought his first truck and started his own company, Stunts One, to do the studio work. A few years in, a film industry client called him in a panic and asked him to protect his home in Box Canyon, north of Malibu. The houses to the left and right burned, but the one he’d gone to save stayed standing. “I was a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest all night, fighting fire by myself with a truck,” Sarvis says. “And I just loved it. I was hooked.” In 2000, he changed his company’s name to West Coast Water Tenders to make it clear he did more than just studio work. He began snapping up old fire trucks at auction and renovating them at his family’s 20-acre property. 

These days, Sarvis has a fleet of 45 trucks, engines, water tenders, and brush-clearing equipment. Private firefighting makes up about 40 percent of his business. He has 10 guys he hires regularly, who he’s proud to tell me all have their S-130/S-190, the fire training certificates required to be on wildfire lines. Most of them work in the movies, like him, but some are retired firefighters. Usually, his crew supports small rural fire stations. During an emergency like the L.A. Fires, his crew, which he pays $50 an hour, can balloon up to 60. 

Having worked wildfires, Sarvis says he recognized the warning signs this time. Forty-eight hours before the first spark caught in the Palisades, he started calling clients who’d hired him in the past. He told them they should have a firetruck on site, but everyone responded, “Oh, it’s just wind; it’ll be fine.” It wasn’t until Tuesday morning, when smoke rose from the mountains in Topanga State Park, that they called for help.

“We’re not a fire department, and once the shit hits the fan, you’ve got all these people trying to get out of there, and we’re trying to mobilize and get in,” Sarvis says. Traffic was horrible and the private crews can’t turn on a siren, ignore traffic laws, and drive on the wrong side of the road like public firefighters. They had one firefighting rig already in the Palisades, but it took hours to get the rest into position. 

“The biggest thing you saw in there, there was not enough — I mean, the country would go broke trying to have enough equipment. That’s where the private sector comes in,” Sarvis says. “We’re not trying to replace fire departments by any means. We’re just trying to fill that gap in between.” 

Sarvis tells me only two of the 27 homes West Coast Water Tenders protected were destroyed. “When you’ve lost homes for 10 blocks around you, and that’s the last one standing, there’s only so much you can do,” Sarvis says. Still, he says there are streets where everything burned except the home they were hired to save. 

I ask Sarvis if that feels equitable to him. “It might sound harsh when I say this, but life isn’t about equitability,” Sarvis says. “These people are fortunate. Because that guy lost his house, should this guy lose his house? I’m not one to judge.”

WE FINISH BREAKFAST AND DRIVE up the Sierra Highway to the home Sarvis shares with his wife, Lia. His is a different kind of compound than the ones he protects. We follow a dirt road past a couple horses and some piles of rusted Old West gear. Up against a hill that Sarvis clear-cuts for fire safety, there are five fire vehicles parked: a boxy, vintage yellow truck, three water tankers, and a red-and-white ladder track that says “Austin FD” on the side (it’d once been used on a 9-1-1: Lone Star shoot). There are a few more around the corner. Some are fire-ready; others are only for work on sets. 

There are sheds filled with BlazeTamer, a fire retardant alternative, and others filled with tools and gear. In a large garage, there’s West Coast Water Tenders’ main office, where Lia often mans the phones. The walls are covered with photos and clippings from his stunt days, his crash-test driving for Tesla, and Lia’s once-famous custom powerboat business. A Trump flag hangs behind the desk. 

Sarvis gets a call. It’s a private wealth manager from a family office asking about booking West Coast Water Tenders for her client’s home ahead of the rumored return of the Santa Ana winds. The Los Angeles Times mentioned West Coast Water Tenders in an article about billionaire real-estate mogul Rick Caruso hiring private crews during the first days of the fires to protect his Brentwood mansion and his mall, Palisades Village. Sarvis says his cell phone has been buzzing ever since.

When I call and visit LAFD stations to ask what they think about the private crews, everyone tells me they can’t say much and direct me to the Public Information Officers (PIO). One firefighter does share that he doesn’t mind them because “help is help”; another says the private crews are better than just calling a buddy to fight the fire, but unless their gear and training are up to standard, he isn’t sure by how much. Overall, the firefighters seem somewhere between indifferent and dismissive.

But John Clingingsmith Jr., a fire captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and the PIO on the Palisades Fire, explains that there are risks during the initial emergency response: “The concerns that we have, especially in the initial phases of the fire, is we don’t know how many there are and where they’re at.” He asks me to picture the roads into Mandeville Canyon, which are winding and narrow, with one way up and one way down. “We are moving 25 or 30 engines out there as the fire comes into the neighborhood, and all of a sudden our resources are coming up on equipment that we don’t know is there,” he says. “And let’s say we have a wind shift and the fire now is running at us, and we need to pull out of the area, that can be a problem for extricating people out.” 

The LAFD does community outreach to educate the public on steps to secure your home before evacuating, but it takes a back seat to the daily task of fighting fires. LAFD Captain Larue tells me that, if nothing else, the prep work the private crews do is valuable for containing the spread. And Sarvis believes this fire will be the one that wakes people up to the need for preventative measures. Sarvis envisions West Coast Water Tenders training estate staff in tactics to safeguard a home until help can arrive. The gardeners and housekeepers could move lawn furniture, secure windows and air ducts, clear vegetation, and have a hose on site that they’d install before the crew could take over. He hopes some of his clients might even buy a fire engine to park on their property year-round, which Sarvis and his team would maintain.

But even as we speak, just a week after the fire began, his crews have been pulled off of all but five of the properties. “We’re like gunfighters,” Sarvis tells me. “When there’s a bad guy in town, they want the gunfighter, but as soon as the bad guy is gone, they can’t get rid of us fast enough.”

I HOP INTO SARVIS’ WHITE GMC Yukon XL with his 10-month-old dog Gypsy. Most of the side streets in Brentwood are blocked off and the National Guard patrols the evacuated neighborhood. Sarvis rolls down his window and two guards wave us through a checkpoint. One of West Coast Water Tenders’ trucks is still parked at the ready outside a massive home and we stop to check if they need anything. The two young guys are bored, whiplashed from the rush of fighting fire to the tedium of sitting for days in front of an empty house. I ask how long they’ll be there, and one answers through a wry grin, “Until some bald asshole tells me it’s time to go home.” 

They all rib each other for a while, but then Sarvis turns to me and gets serious. “We’re family, basically. You get real tight with your crew. You know you’ve got each other’s back,” he says. “What the three of us went through together, that’s a bond that’ll be with us the rest of our life. We shared the firefight together.”

Back in his truck, Sarvis won’t tell me the names of his current and former clients, but mentions doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, and film industry types. He does confirm that West Coast Water Tenders was one of a handful of private firefighting teams hired by Caruso to protect his mansion this month. Sarvis had nothing but good things to say about the failed mayoral candidate, who he says told the private firefighters to spare no expense and protect his whole neighborhood, not just his home. 

Sarvis starts to explain to me that, if you really think about it, hiring a private crew inevitably helps your neighbor, too. “Because if we can stop their house from burning, it’s not going to take their neighbor’s, and we’re going to preemptively help the neighbor, because if we can stop theirs, it’s not going to take our clients out,” he says. “So it’s benefiting not just that person. It is benefiting other people.”

And yet, that help is still contingent on the wealth of one’s neighbor. Congresswoman Judy Chu represents California’s 28th District, which includes Altadena and was ravaged by the Eaton Fire. “My constituents are really suffering and devastated,” she tells me. The diverse area north of Pasadena has a large community of Black homeowners; 17 people died and thousands lost their homes and businesses in the fire. She says she doesn’t know of a single private firefighting crew that was hired in her district — though she stresses that every request for federal aid in fighting the fire in that area was met. “The devastation that we witnessed wasn’t the result of lack of resources,” she says. Still, she believes “our tax dollars should go to protecting everybody” and that the priority now should be a pay raise for wildland firefighters so the departments can fill vacancies and be fully staffed for the next blaze.

The drive through the Palisades moves the whole ethical question of privatized public safety from the theoretical to the starkly tangible. Rolling up West Sunset Blvd., we pass entire blocks turned to powder, abandoned cars gutted and deformed. And what survives is most haunting. A basketball hoop in a driveway to nowhere. A brick fireplace standing atop a pile of ash. A spiral staircase twisting crooked toward a still-smoky sky.

The bulldozers on either side of the road clear the remains of homes most Angelenos could only dream of owning. To see a neighborhood this affluent leveled feels, for a moment, like proof that a storm or quake or fire does not care about frivolities like net worth. 

But then we reach Caruso’s mall. The stores before it and after it are singed or completely gone. Half of the Gelson’s grocery store across the street looks melted. But the Erewhon at Palisades Village appears good as new. The private crews had done their job.