Taking the gauntlet

When others were just getting into work bleary-eyed Wednesday morning, Justin Traver set his eyes on a buoy hundreds of feet off Newport Beach.

In a few minutes, Traver was going to have to jump into the cool water and swim around it on his way back to shore.

He said it was the last thing he wanted to do.

“I’d rather do [an obstacle course] than this swim,” Traver said. “I’ve never been a strong swimmer.”

But there he was, along with 174 other men and women, taking a pass-or-fail swim test at the Newport Pier to hopefully make it through the next round of cuts on his way to becoming a Newport Beach firefighter.

The hopefuls jumped into the water just below the pier and swam parallel to the shore for a short distance before turning around a buoy and heading to land.

Candidates had to complete the swim in less than nine minutes to qualify.

“We just want to make sure they are comfortable enough in the water that if they fell in, they would be safe,” said Jennifer Schulz, fire department spokeswoman. “We aren’t looking for lifeguards, just competent swimmers.”

For candidates like Frankie Alvidres, a former lifeguard from Ventura County, Wednesday’s test was the easy part.

Alvidres is concerned about how his written-exam score ranks against the other candidates, and rightly so.

Only about 100 candidates will make it to the next round of the hiring process, said Training Division Chief Paul Matheis.

Applicants who passed the swim test and last weekend’s Biddle Test, an 11-part firefighter obstacle course testing all-around fitness, will be ranked according to their written-exam scores.

The top 100 will move on to oral interviews with department leaders, Matheis said.

Making it this far is an accomplishment already, he added.

In the two-week window in May when the city was accepting applications for firefighters, 875 people filled out applications online, Matheis said.

Only 454 followed through with turning in paper applications, and they were invited to the written exam.

Only 348 showed up for that, and after the Biddle Test, only 175 were left for Wednesday’s swim.

From here, it’s whittled down to 100, and from there to 50 hopefuls whom the chief will interview.

Only about 30%, or 15 of those men and women, will make it through all of the processes, including a background check, medical exam and polygraph, Matheis said.

“The point is, at the end of the day, when someone dials 9-1-1 and we’re expected to be there in 60, 90 seconds, it doesn’t just happen,” Matheis said. “This is all a part of accomplishing that goal.”

The department has a dozen vacancies it expects to be filled by the first of next year, Matheis said.

For the next two years, as firefighters retire or transfer out, the 50 people on the chief’s list will be tapped to be potential replacements.

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JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].