OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Firefighters Prove to Be a Force That Does Oklahoma City Proud : Public servants: Most have labored in quiet anonymity in the search for survivors, but their efforts and courage have not gone unnoticed.

OKLAHOMA CITY —  It took a terrorist’s bomb to introduce America to the Oklahoma City Fire Department, an unsung force that has galvanized the nation with unflinching courage and down-home charm.

But here in Oklahoma’s capital, where a special sales tax generates $20 million a year for fire services, nobody is surprised that the men and women of the OCFD have emerged from the rubble as heroic figures in the public eye.

Despite its image as a dusty, somnambulant backwater, Oklahoma City has been a bastion of firefighting acumen for more than a century, a culture spawned by the wood-framed towns that sprouted overnight during the great land rush of 1889. The ever-present threat of tornadoes, coupled with frequent floods and oil-field blowouts, long ago convinced Oklahomans that they should never meet their disasters unprepared.

“I wasn’t the least bit doubtful that our department would be able to handle this,” said Betty Marrs, whose son, a third-generation Oklahoma City firefighter, is Chief Gary Marrs. “Of course, we’ve known all our lives they were pretty special.”

Before Oklahoma had even been admitted to the Union, there was an Oklahoma firemen’s association--the second-oldest organization in the state, just behind the league of real estate agents.

From the ranks of that alliance grew the International Fire Service Training Assn., based at Oklahoma State University, which has become the country’s leading publisher of fire safety manuals--the venerable “Red Books” now used by departments in all 50 states.

When three of their firefighters perished in a 1989 house blaze, the citizens of Oklahoma City responded by authorizing the one municipal function they consistently loathe--new taxes. Since then, the Fire Department’s flush budget has been an anomaly both here and nationwide, allowing officials to purchase millions of dollars of new equipment and hire hundreds of additional firefighters.

“We’ve learned from our tragedies that you need to give them the best they can have,” said Gus Shannon, 70, Oklahoma City’s best-known fire maven, who has spent most of his life photographing the department in action. “Now the whole world can see the true character of us Okies, that we’re not the people Steinbeck wrote about but the ones who stayed behind--a proud family that still cares about helping its neighbors.”

On newsstands and TV screens across the country, Oklahoma City’s 975-member fire force has defined this rescue effort, their bulky tan-and-yellow protective gear a familiar sight as they have combed the tons of crumbled concrete and twisted metal for survivors.

Since the April 19 blast, a few of them have become instant celebrities. Nobody will soon forget the snapshot of Chris Fields, symbol of this city’s grief, as he bows his head over tiny Baylee Almon, her limp body cradled in his arms. Then there is the department’s unfailingly affable spokesman, Jon Hansen, who happens to be married to a popular TV anchorwoman here, which may help explain why he has been so gracious to the swarms of reporters circling him like sharks.

“The state of Oklahoma would do well with a Gov. Hansen!” gushed one Louisiana woman in a letter to the Sunday Oklahoman.

But most of the city’s firefighters have labored in quiet anonymity, filing in and out of the ravaged Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with little fanfare. Some have risked their lives, probing crevices so narrow they can only enter on their backs with helmets doffed. Others, even farther from the limelight, have grappled with the challenges posed by logistics and communications--the mundane elements of a rescue operation by which fire officials assess their own performance.

“They’ve made an investment in their Fire Department that has now paid dividends in a very significant way,” said Gary Briese, executive director of the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs, which has given Oklahoma City high marks for its handling of the disaster. “They’re just real people, very unpretentious, quietly doing the job instead of talking about it, sort of what you’d expect from mid-America.”

Inside the cinder-block walls of Station No. 18, where mounds of home-baked food and stacks of children’s thank-yous are piled high, no one appears larger than life.

As he waited to be sent back to the bomb site, Mark Cochell worked out his kinks by roping a lariat around the head of a plastic steer. Ron Jarrett rubbed his stockinged feet while watching the 46-inch color TV he and his station mates purchased on credit. With sophomoric glee, Terry Harvey shook up a can of soda before offering it to Doug Poston, who unsuspectingly drenched his lap with foam.

“We joke and kid a lot,” said Harvey, a 45-year-old Vietnam War veteran, “but it’s to hide the sorrow.”

Few of these guys grew up dreaming of being firefighters, let alone of being saluted as heroes by a U.S. President. Most of them are like Alphonso Kemp, a former National Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion in the 1,600-meter relay, who graduated from college during the oil bust and simply needed steady work.

But when the alarm sounds and the lights blink on, often jolting them out of their beds, they also know that lives are hanging on the swiftness and sureness of their response. Most of them know somebody who lost a loved one in the federal building.

Troy Rawls, a silver-haired ex-Marine, believes he’s done nothing his neighbors wouldn’t have done for him.

“We’re sort of on a pedestal right now that we don’t really feel we deserve,” said Rawls, 43, who doubles as the station’s cook during the three 24-hour shifts his squad works every week. “Most of us are just average-type guys with a little compassion.”

Oklahoma City’s first firefighters weren’t always held in such high regard. In the early days, according to one history of Oklahoma fire service, “it was a common remark that a pint of whiskey and a pair of red suspenders made a fireman.”

The city’s first firetruck was a hand-drawn beer wagon, donated by the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co. The first fire station featured a 65-foot lookout tower, from which a sentry would shoot his revolver to alert the bucket brigade if flames happened to flicker on the horizon.

For decades, the mark of a true OCFD hero was his capacity to swallow smoke. That view ended in the early 1970s, when a home-and-garden store went up like a torch, felling more than 100 firefighters with a cloud of burning insecticide. The toll is evident in the 1972 department yearbook kept by former Fire Chief Byron Hollander, who over the years has written “deceased” next to the black-and-white photos of dozens of his former colleagues.

“I always preached that your training will keep you alive,” said Hollander, now state fire marshal, who is credited with ushering in the department’s modern era while serving as chief from 1969 to 1981.

While many fire departments around the country have been plagued by racial friction, Oklahoma City has managed to preempt most of those battles, beginning with the decision in 1951 to voluntarily open the doors to 12 black recruits.

Carl Holmes, who was in that original class, retired 30 years later as an assistant chief. Now a management consultant, he has been hired by dozens of other agencies, including the beleaguered Los Angeles Fire Department, to help them resolve diversity and community relations issues.

“Rather than a rigid, paramilitary philosophy, we’ve tried to take the approach that fighting fires is a business--it’s about selling a service to a multicultural customer base,” said Holmes, recalling how the Oklahoma City department devised a kitchen safety course after being summoned to a rash of stove fires in an immigrant neighborhood. “You can’t provide that service if your customer base views you as the enemy.”

Judging by the number of applicants, the department has had no problem maintaining the community’s respect. Every time a new class of 30 positions is advertised, more than 2,000 people turn out. Thanks to the tax measure, average salaries have risen to $32,673--about $7,000 more than the typical Oklahoma City household income.

Once welcomed into the department’s ranks, every firefighter automatically earns a stake in the Oklahoma Firefighters Museum, the country’s only collection of antique fire memorabilia owned and operated by firefighters themselves.

Opened in 1970 and funded by the annual dues of more than 15,000 active and retired Oklahoma firefighters, the museum is home to “The Last Alarm,” the largest mural ever dedicated to the history of fire equipment.

“This place is their pride and joy, buddy,” said the museum’s curator, Sam Oruch, a retired OCFD veteran who used to run away when he was a little boy so that he could get a ride home in a shiny red fire engine.

In the gift shop, they sell a cassette of elegies, including “The Burn Center” and “Supreme Sacrifice,” composed and recorded by a former city fire captain. On a grassy slope outside, there are plans to build a memorial sculpture, which will feature a firefighter dangling from the roof of a burned-out house while a colleague tries to hoist him to safety.

Its title, selected long before the Oklahoma City Fire Department was thrust into the spotlight:

“Just Another Day.”