Apparatus Operator – Fire Station 93
Deceased:
September 14, 2022
Appointed:
02/03/1958
Pensioned:
02/16/1982 – FS93
Services:
PRIVATE
Donations:
IN LIEU OF FLOWERS, PLEASE SEND DONATIONS TO:
Widows, Orphans & Disabled Firefighter’s Fund
PO BOX 41903
Los Angeles, CA 90041
I worked with Kenny at Paramount pictures fire department. He was the essence of cool and calm. He would take over as acting Chief whenever Ed Delaney was gone everything always ran smooth. When he was in his eighties he built a huge garden in his backyard and you can’t believe the amount of effort and work that it took and he got it all done. Rest in peace Kenny.
Kenny was a good man. I never worked with him on the LAFD but we worked together on the Paramount Studios Fire Dept. He was a pleasure be around. A lot of knowledge on fire prevention and always ready to do anything to make the job at Paramount better.. I will miss him. Rest in peace my friend.
Buzz Gunnarson
I worked with Kenny at FS 93-C. Bill Hayes was the C-II and I was the Captain on the Engine. Kenny was a great A/O and was a wealth of knowledge on a number of subjects. I never got more out of a drill on railroad incidents as I did while sitting through a drill on that subject that Kenny put on. Rest in peace, my friend.
Cap, Kenny told us he worked for the Santa Fe RR as a locomotive engineer before joining the LAFD. I think he started working for them while he was still in high school. I joked with him that the only thing he couldn’t do was fly a plane, that prompted him to tell us about the 1976 DC-6 crash on the golf course in Van Nuys! He was there! Apparently he was inside the fuselage working when a member outside stumbled thru the foam blanket outside the plane and sparks from a rotary saw ignited the leaking fuel. His words exactly: “all the sudden there was a bunch of yelling and screaming outside and it was a**holes and elbows! I sure as hell didn’t wanna go out there and find out what was going on!”
I can’t make this stuff up. That dude was the real deal.
Grumpy, Stubborn, His Way, or the Highway.
Smart, Fair, Knowledgeable,Great Old School Humor. and Pleasure to be around.
My Captain at Cal-Fire #73 Temecula , Ca.
I think of you now and again . Thanks for the privilege.of working with you.
FFII Borges
Well said Gorgeous Borges
Ken Thomson had a lot of different hats.
Kenny went to work for CDF as an open list Captain after he retired as an Auto Fireman at 93-C. He caught up with me in the Riverside Unit of CDF around 30 years ago. He was at FS-19’s in Highgrove, which was a 2-man engine house. Quite a big change from working at a full Task Force house on Ventura Blvd! Haha. Later he transferred from 19’s that we’ll call “Dogpatch” and went to 71’s in Palm Desert, which no surprise was the complete opposite of 19’s, One of our busiest companies, 71’s, on a Tele-Squrt. Well, Kenny had a lot of fun at 71’s with all the affluent clientele and the RA medics stationed there but he ended up having to take a bump back a rank to Engineer and got moved to FS-73 in Temecula, specifically T73-A. On CDF engineers drive engines and trucks. He was one of the best AO’s we had ever seen on the giant rear mount quint platform we had there. It was easy for him, he was a already a helluva wheel man, and he had already fought more fires than we’d ate hot meals. He spent around a year driving the truck then got his rank back and bumped up in-house to Captain on the Engine. There he did exceptional work as an engine skipper running ALL the calls like an engine is supposed to. A couple years later he finally moved back across the floor to Truck 73 as Captain. He remained there until he retired from CDF / CAL FIRE. He had the respect and admiration from his crew, station, and Battalion 15. We should note that he was a Green Hornet with Donald Manning. He was on the Mountain Patrol for the Bel Air Fire. He received the Medal of Valor for his actions on the 1971 Sylmar construction tunnel collapse. He could serve a tennis ball that if it hit you you’d be knocked unconscious, and nobody would ever try him on the handball court. Far from politically correct, he had the admiration of every fireman at 73’s that worked around him. He will be missed.
Matt “Skippy” Colvin
CAL FIRE Captain (retired)
I enjoyed every minute working with Kenny. He was my Captain on Engine 73 in Temecula before I promoted. I enjoyed hearing the stories about the Bel Air fire, the tunnel collapse, Van Nuys airplane crash, and many more. It makes them even better when you hear it from someone who was there and lived it. Watching training videos at the station and have narration from Kenny about all the people in the video was always extremely entertaining and surreal. I went to one of Christmas parties and found that the egg nogg had just enough egg nogg to look like egg nogg, I just couldn’t taste anything but the rum! Made for great stories early in the evening! In one of those weird moments, I ran into a retired LAFD member in an elevator while at a training class in Reno, NV. In a few floors I learned that Kenny had earned the nickname “Squeaky” while he was Acting Captain one shift. Great story and Kenny’s reaction, when asked about it, was even better! Definitely a legend, and I am proud to have known and worked with him. Rest In Peace