By Kevin Howe
Monterey County Herald
MONTERAY, Calif. — Fort Ord was a basic training post that fed troops into the Vietnam War when Jack Riso, fresh out of the Marine Corps was hired by the Army as a firefighter.
Today, 40 years later, he is hanging up his fire helmet after watching Fort Ord evolve from a troop training installation to the 7th Light Infantry Division’s home base and finally to a state university and housing area serving the Presidio of Monterey and the Naval Postgraduate School.
In that time, he rose from firefighter to engineer, fire captain to assistant chief, and finally, chief of the Presidio of Monterey Fire Department.
Riso, 60, said he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a firefighter. He got the job “at a time when people didn’t want to hire veterans,” and he had no firefighting experience.
Then he went on a call involving an infant who had stopped breathing. Riso used the on-the-job training he got in cardiopulmonary resuscitation to save the child’s life.
“I thought then that saving lives, especially after coming back from Vietnam, was better than taking lives,” he said.
Over the years, he completed a series of certifications eventually qualifying him for command.
The Fire Department has gone from the Army to an interservice organization in 1994 after Fort Ord closed, merging with the Naval Postgraduate School Fire Department, then back to the Army to serve Ord Military Community in 2001, when Riso became chief.
His department had a staff of 13 people then. It has grown to 31 firefighters. Old and obsolete engines and equipment have been replaced with modern gear.
Riso and his crews have responded to every situation a big-city fire department might roll on, and then some, he says.
The World War II-era wooden barracks were susceptible to fires. Basic trainees intent on getting that perfect spit-shine look to their boots would heat their shoe polish by igniting it, “and sometimes they’d spill it,” he said.
“We had a lot of structure fires,” Riso said.
Not every fire was accidental.
The court-martial of Army Pfc. Billy Dean Smith in 1972 at Fort Ord for allegedly murdering an officer with a hand grenade in Vietnam ignited riots on the post. Smith was acquitted at trial.
“The stockade was full and they fenced off the 2500 area” of wooden buildings around it to handle the overflow, Riso recalled. Troops in the stockade would set fire to their barracks, mess halls and other buildings, then pelt firefighters with rocks when they responded.
“That’s when we changed to the gladiator helmets” from the traditional fire hat, he said, to protect their ears from thrown objects.
Firefighters converged on helicopter crashes, brushfires ignited by troops training with live ammunition and plane crashes at Fritzsche Army Airfield, now known as Marina Municipal Airport.
Riso’s throat and lungs bear scar tissue from inhaling superheated air while rescuing occupants of a burning barracks “We didn’t always put on breathing apparatus back then,” he said and Fort Ord had “one of the busiest departments in the county.”
Not all the news got out.
“The Army never let a lot of stuff out. They kept a close hold on it. People didn’t realize everything that was going on here,” Riso said.
Riso doesn’t have specific plans for retirement.
“I’ll miss this, especially the family atmosphere” of the fire station, he said.
His last duty day is today and “I’ll be on call until 0800 Friday.”
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