During his 30-year career as a second-generation Key West firefighter, Alex Vega battled blazes at spots including Key West’s Cuban Club, the Marine barracks, the Copa nightclub and even a shrimp boat where a below-deck explosion could have been fatal.
But the one that sticks in his mind most vividly is a small fire at the Green Parrot Bar in the early 1990s. With no apparent origin, it was burning under the wooden floor in the bar’s bathroom hallway. What made it so memorable, he said, was the attitude of the Parrot’s clientele.
“We go in, and I noticed that people weren’t excited — they were sitting at the bar drinking, or dancing, and the place was full of smoke,” he recalled. “We come through the crowd dragging our hose line saying, ‘Excuse me, we’ve got a fire going on here. We’ve got to move.’
“The people were at the bar still drinking like nothing was happening,” he marveled. “They didn’t skip a beat.”
Well before that, during a Key West childhood surrounded by family, Vega experienced other unforgettable moments — even some that made history. When he was 3, Fidel Castro appeared at his house during a door-to-door campaign seeking support for his overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Several years later, he watched President John F. Kennedy travel down Duval Street in an open convertible.
His grandparents, descended from early Cuban emigres, instilled in him the passion for history that eventually shaped much of his life.
“My grandfather told me stories from the turn of the century when he was growing up in Key West, and my grandmother told me how she worked in the cigar factories,” Vega said. “These stories drew my interest and love of history.”
After graduating from Key West High School, Vega explored several jobs and married in 1974 before joining the fire department in late 1975. Despite then-low pay that required a part-time job to supplement his income, he committed himself to the work — while tales from retired firefighters fed his enthusiasm for history.
“A lot of the old-timers used to come in and tell their stories about firefighting in the 1920s and ’30s, and some of them even before that when they had horses, and I would listen,” said Vega, who eventually achieved the rank of captain.
Driven to preserve those tales, he became the fire department’s historian. In the 1990s, he began spearheading efforts to save the then-threatened firehouse at 1024 Grinnell St., where he had been stationed early in his career, and turn it into a firefighting museum.
After 15 years of fundraising and restoration, with support from a dedicated team, that goal was achieved. Today Vega is president of the nonprofit Old Firehouse Preservation Inc., operating entity for the museum that showcases local firefighting history. The 1907 building — one of the oldest firehouses in Florida and the southernmost in the continental United States — contains some of the country’s rarest firefighting artifacts.
Notable items include a 1929 American La France fire engine, a bell dating back to 1906, an early alarm system that communicated a fire’s location, and one of the only remaining coal pits in America — a relic of the days when fire engines were horse-drawn steamers.
There’s also an area devoted to flamboyant former Key West fire chief Joseph “Bum” Farto, a now-legendary character who disappeared in 1976 after being convicted of drug dealing.
Historic photographs, vintage fire gear and helmets, century-old badges and items belonging to men once stationed at the firehouse are displayed as well. An archive room contains logbooks, handwritten reports, scores of historic photos and records from former fire chiefs that Vega hopes to organize and digitize.
He also intends to write a book on the Key West Fire Department’s 150-year history — a comprehensive companion piece to his 2011 volume on the history of the firehouse.
“I owe it to a lot of the guys who put many, many years in the fire department and really didn’t get recognition,” Vega said. “I figured I would do that for them and have them acknowledged for what they did.”
Finding time to write isn’t easy for him. Despite much-appreciated assistance from volunteers, he stays busy handling the daily demands of the museum that now bears his name — from a broken air conditioner to an alarm shrilling unexpectedly.
In addition, he often greets and chats with museum visitors. Some are firefighters from other U.S. or international locales, and he’s eager to share his deep interest in history.
“When people come to the museum, I want them to experience something they’ve never experienced before,” explained Vega. “I want to give them that feeling of history, that we should all preserve our history, and inspire them to do something similar.”
