What could a 102-year-old Huntington Beach fire engine and a Fountain Valley woman have in common? They were both born in the same year.
Lois Rufus was taken on a short ride aboard the Seagrave, the Huntington Beach Fire Department’s refurbished original motorized fire engine, on Thursday afternoon, July 17.
The 102-year-old woman — Rufus is 102.5 years old to be exact, because it’s important to count the months, she said — remembered reading about the vintage fire engine in an Orange County Register article. She mentioned it to her family, and her son Dan reached out to the department to arrange a meeting between the two.
“They wanted to know if I’d be able to ride in it, and I said, ‘I thought I’d be driving it,’” Rufus joked.
Though she’s not licensed to drive a fire truck, she did still have a valid driver’s license at her previous birthday. She was still elated to occupy one of the engine’s two seats, ringing the bell and using the hand-crank horn as it circled the parking lot of the Central Net Training Facility.
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Lois Rufus, 102 years old, sits in Huntington Beach’s first motorized fire engine, built in 1922, in Huntington Beach on Thursday, July 17, 2025. Rufus took a ride, rang the bell and hand-cranked the siren of the restored vintage Seagrave fire engine, during her visit. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Lois Rufus, 102 years old, sits in Huntington Beach’s first motorized fire engine, built in 1922, in Huntington Beach on Thursday, July 17, 2025. Rufus took a ride, rang the bell and hand-cranked the siren of the restored vintage Seagrave fire engine, during her visit. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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The Seagrave was purchased for $14,500 in 1922, Captain Rex Rysewyk said. Though that was a steep price back then, it still pales in comparison to modern fire engines that cost upwards of a million dollars, according to city spokesman Corbin Carson.
“It’s the first non-horse-driven fire apparatus that the city purchased,” Rysewyk said.
The Seagrave was in service from 1923 to 1966 at Huntington Beach’s original firehouse on 5th and Main streets, before being handed over to Los Angeles’ Travel Town Museum. It remained there until 2002, when former Fire Chief Michael Dolder brought it home in exchange for a forklift. The Huntington Beach Firefighters’ Association then purchased it in 2007 and began a 15-year-long restoration project.
The engine was initially stored in a garage at the Boeing Co. complex before being moved to a Huntington Beach fire station to continue restoration.
Built with a single purpose — to get a pump to the scene — the 1922 Seagrave had just two seats: one for the driver and one for a passenger. The rest of the volunteer crew, which included six or more firefighters, rode on the tailboard or gripped the side rails. Today’s engines carry four to six crew members in an enclosed cab and weigh nearly 40,000 pounds — more than three times the estimated 12,000 pounds of the original. The Seagrave runs on a six-cylinder gasoline engine with a 1,020-cubic-inch displacement and a 120-horsepower centrifugal pump rated at 750 gallons per minute.
While sanding the hood, they uncovered the “crown jewel” of the engine — the original hand-painted murals of a ship and a lighthouse decorating the sides of the Seagrave.
They wondered if, beneath a sticker of the department logo and layers upon layers of primer, there was something special, Rysewyk said. They decided to pull the sticker and start sanding the hood.
“We saw a little bit of color finally, and at that point, we knew we had a gem of original artwork on the hood,” Rysewyk said. “That was probably one of the most monumental things of this whole project.”
As part of the restoration, the name “The Hib” was added to the side of the engine in honor of Harry Hibler Sr., who served as chief of the city’s volunteer fire department in the 1920s.
The restoration ultimately cost more than $100,000, funded entirely through donations and community contributions, Carson said. The Seagrave can now be visited by appointment at the Huntington Beach Firefighters’ Association office.
“Seeing (Rufus) elated and having these two historians with each other is pretty satisfying for me — probably more so than the actual restoration process,” Rysewyk said. “Someone appreciating this, that’s as old as this… You don’t get that opportunity ever.”
