Lake County firefighter Charlie Diener takes Engine 3 with him into retirement

A few nights before his retirement dinner, veteran Lake County firefighter Charlie Diener got a disturbing phone call.

Everyone in the Lake County Fire Protection District knew that Diener, who was closing out a 38-year career, wanted to buy Engine 3 — a 1986 wildland firefighting vehicle that had been declared surplus. His hope was to use it to protect the 200-acre grape and walnut ranch that has been in the Diener family since 1885.

The caller was Kyle Shields, a firefighter and mechanic, who said the district had received an offer it couldn't refuse and the big red GMC 7000 was bound for refurbishing in Georgia.

Shields was so convincing, sounding as if he were close to tears, that Diener, 56, a lifelong Lower Lake resident, began consoling his younger colleague even as he hurt inside.

'Kyle deserves an Academy Award,' Diener said. 'I was pretty bummed.'

It was, however, a hoax staged by Shields and Diener's older brother, Bill, in keeping with the well-established firehouse tradition of practical jokes.

What Shields actually did was cover the fire district logo on the engine's doors with large gold letters — 'Diener Ranch Fire Brigade' — bracketing the numeral 3.

And Charlie Diener, whose retirement was feted earlier this month, is now making room for the four-wheel drive engine in a large metal shop building on the ranch off Highway 29 north of Lower Lake.

The purchase price? It was $3,500, Diener said. The odometer reads only 17,400 miles, however Diener noted that fire engines 'get a lot of use, but not a lot of miles.'

'You could fight a fire with it right now,' he said. 'That's the whole idea.'

The horrific Valley fire of 2015 — which took four lives, destroyed nearly 1,300 homes and scorched 120 square miles in southern Lake County — burned to the edge of Diener Ranch. Had the wind not stopped, it could have run all the way to Mt. Konocti and Clear Lake.

But few of today's firefighters could drive Engine 3, powered by a 427-cubic-inch motor with a five-speed manual transmission and a two-speed rear axle, controlled by a red knob, that effectively gives the truck 10 gears. Modern fire engines have automatic transmissions.

The vintage engine has a single bench seat in the cab, and two facing jump seats on the back, with a buzzer to tell the driver when the occupants are buckled in and ready to go. At the time, it was a step up from the rear tailboard, where firefighters stood and held on tight.

Today, fire personnel ride in enclosed cabs.

Diener, a fire chief's son, had already driven heavy trucks when he signed on as a volunteer with the Lower Lake district at 18 and still in high school. He took the wheel of Engine 3 immediately and drove it to countless fires and other emergencies.

One call he remembers clearly was to a fire near Hidden Valley Lake about 20 years ago, when Diener and his crew were outside the engine, surrounded by flames and fighting 'to save our own butts,' he said.

Their deliverance came from an air tanker that dropped a load of gooey pink retardant squarely on the men and the engine, pouring through the open cab.

'It saved our bacon,' Diener said, and despite a thorough cleaning he thinks there might still be traces of retardant in Engine 3's small spaces.

In 1995, Diener and the engine rescued 30 people from a flood in Lower Lake's Copsey Creek subdivision.

Charlie and his brother Bill, 58, were 'firehouse brats,' whose father, Bill Diener, Sr., served as Lower Lake fire chief from 1963-74. 'We grew up with that stuff,' including rides around town in their father's 1944 Navy surplus Jeep, which is now in the shop building.

The elder Diener volunteered with the district after he came home from World War II and the boys remember him fondly, while respecting his tendency to lay down rigid rules, including a dictum not to touch a special telephone on the wall of their house 75 yards from the Lower Lake fire station.

The phone with no dial rang only when someone called the fire department for help, and a button next to the phone activated a siren that could be heard for miles.

The huge siren, now lying on the ground at the ranch, will be mounted again, Diener said, as sirens have again found favor as emergency warning devices in Lake County since the Valley fire.

Diener was chief of the Lower Lake fire district when it merged in 2001 with the Lakeshore district forming the Lake County Fire Protection District, which serves a 165-square-mile area and handles more than 5,000 calls a year. In 2005, he was promoted to battalion chief and fire marshal.

Willie Sapeta, chief of the Lake County district, is a day older than Diener and has known and served with him since the 1980s.

'There's not much we haven't seen together,' Sapeta said, including the Valley, Rocky and Jerusalem fires of 2015, Clayton fire in 2016, Sulphur Fire in 2017 and the combined Mendocino Complex inferno, California's largest wildland blaze, in 2018.

Diener, who received the Star of Lake County award for public service last year, has an 'amazing work ethic,' Sapeta said. 'He was my right-hand man all the way until his retirement.'

He officially retired on his birthday Dec. 30 and intends to log two years as a volunteer to round out his career at 40 years.

Diener is by no means slowing down, as he and Bill, who served as a fire volunteer for 18 years, are committed to renovating the ranch, originally homesteaded by their great-grandparents, German immigrants Gottlieb and Marie Diener.

They tend 30 acres of zinfandel and petite sirah grapes and a 25-acre organic walnut grove. They also want to transform the ranch into a wedding venue and an old house into a general store, with wine tasting, gifts and antiques for sale.

The ranch is on Diener Drive, originally a wagon road from Lower Lake to Lakeport in the 1800s when Lower Lake was the county hub.

His father's profession has served him well, Charlie Diener said.

'I gotta tell you it's been an absolutely fantastic career,' he said. 'Firefighting has been good to me.'

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.