For subscribers: An unlikely journey from the Eastern European …

When Bent Koch was a teenager, he liked to listen to the radio. Sometimes there would be jazz. Maybe some soccer scores.

But on certain days he’d hear a voice announcing that a government building was in danger of being taken over by communists. Then he was out the door. As Southern California heads toward another fire season, the region will be counting on one leader, Koch, who ended up in his position because of an improbable sequence of decisions that began decades ago in a place thousands of miles away.

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We offer subscribers exclusive access to our best journalism.Thank you for your support. The nation of Estonia juts out of Northern Europe, into the Baltic Sea. At different points in history, it has fought with people to the west: Danes, Swedes, Germans.

More recently, the country has lived under the shadow of a neighbor to the east. Russia took over in 1940, near the start of the second World War, and more than 60,000 people were reportedly[1] killed or deported just in the occupation’s first year. Koch was born in the city of Tartu in 1974.

He compared growing up in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic — with the threat of the KGB, a lack of phones or cars — to Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” There were bright spots. He lived in a condominium with his mother and several relatives, including his younger brother, Paavo Koch, who recently recalled competing with Bent in local track and field events.

By the late 1980s, independence movements were spreading throughout the Soviet Union. Advertisement Koch went to high school in Tallinn, the capital, where supporters of Soviet rule would sometimes try to maintain the status quo by seizing government buildings.

When Estonian journalists would announce a takeover through the radio waves, Koch and other citizens would rush to form a “human wall” to protect the structures, he said. Or they would patrol the area, unarmed. A report[2] by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict said that when the Estonian parliament was once occupied by pro-Soviet Russians, tens of thousands of Estonians had the place surrounded within hours.

Koch didn’t feel scared. It just felt like the thing to do. Looking ahead, he figured his future would somehow involve rebuilding his homeland.

It was around this time that a family friend threw out a suggestion: Would Koch like to study in the United States? The friend offered to cover the cost. Sometime after that conversation, in a home on a different continent, a phone rang.

Harry Seifert picked up. Advertisement Seifert was a firefighter living with his wife and three kids in Julian, Calif.

On the other end was a voice with a thick Eastern European accent. The man said he was part of a program called World Experience and asked if Seifert was ready to choose which foreign exchange student would be moving in. Here’s the thing: Seifert has no memory of agreeing to host an exchange student.

He wondered if someone signed him up as a prank. His wife, Leslie, does remember discussing the program and thinks they must have at least shared their number. Nonetheless, in that moment, Harry Seifert thought: What the hell.

Two people brought a folder to the Seifert home filled with black-and-white photos of potential students. Seifert spotted one handwritten name that read, “Bent Julian Koch.” The couple thought, The kid’s middle name is the same as our town?

We gotta go with him. Advertisement They were wrong.

Koch’s middle name is “Juhan.” The handwriting was just hard to read. But the misread name that came from a left-field call was enough to get Koch a Pan Am ticket for the United States. Things immediately went awry.

First, there was the attempted coup. Koch was supposed to get on a plane in August 1991. That was around the time hard-liners in the Soviet Union, upset over reforms eroding communist control, seized President Mikhail Gorbachev in Crimea and tried to take over the government.

The plot soon collapsed, but it appeared to successfully delay Koch’s flight by several weeks. Advertisement When he finally landed in New York, his 90-minute layover stretched to two hours, then three.

Koch’s pretty sure a catering truck had backed into the plane, punching a hole in the aircraft. They finally took off after eight hours — but San Diego’s airport had closed for the night and Koch was diverted to Los Angeles. By the time he finally shook hands with his host family, Koch was wiped.

In Estonia, pointing your TV antenna toward Finland could pick up episodes of “Dallas,” so Koch had some exposure to American media. But the biggest shock of his arrival wasn’t so much cultural as geographic. Estonia’s highest point is just 318 meters, shorter than the peaks in Mission Trails, and one of Koch’s first memories is the awe he felt driving toward East County’s Cuyamaca Mountains.

Bent Koch was an Estonian exchange student living in Julian, California.

Bent Koch as a young man in Julian, California.

(Brad Romaine) The plan was for him to stay only a short period. Advertisement

He spent a year at Julian Union High School, graduated in 1992 and then headed back to Estonia. It was just in time to enjoy its newfound independence. The country had formally broken away the previous year in what’s sometimes called “The Singing Revolution.”

Paavo Koch, the younger brother, remembered the crowds that would gather to belt out patriotic songs in defiance of dictatorship. One punk tune[3] from that era, “Hello Perestroika,” included the lyric:

Miilits ja punkar sobralikult nae

Ulatavad teineteisele nuud kae This roughly translates to, “Look, the militia and punks are friendly now, lending a hand to each other.”

But Russian troops hadn’t yet left and local universities were in tumult over what Koch called a “Soviet-era hangover.” Advertisement He applied to schools in the United States, got into one in Arizona and got back on a plane.

Things immediately went awry. This time, funding didn’t come through, so he moved back in with the Seiferts and got a job as a ranch hand. Harry Seifert assumed Koch would eventually go to medical school.

He could have certainly cared for a range of patients: In addition to English, Koch speaks Estonian, Finnish, Russian and a healthy amount of Swedish. But Koch was thinking about his host dad’s career. He first volunteered for the Julian Cuyamaca Fire Protection District, which gave him a pager.

Advertisement Whenever it would go off, emitting a series of Morse code-like beeps, he knew a building was likely in danger. Then he was out the door.

It didn’t occur to him that carrying the pager was a different version of what he’d done as a teenager, listening to a radio for calls for help. He just knew he liked it.

Bent Koch working as a firefighter before he became chief of the Heartland Fire and Rescue Department.

Bent Koch working as a firefighter before he became chief of the Heartland Fire and Rescue Department. (Tom Brown)

The final hook came during a training exercise. Koch stood inside a burning shed while an instructor named Steve Swaney, who would later become fire chief for much of East County, narrated the blaze’s behavior. How it moved.

Why it moved. The conversation helped transform how Koch thought about the job. Chasing fire wasn’t just an adrenaline rush.

It was intellectually engaging. He signed up for the academy. One of the first people he met was Todd Nelson, a fellow student and reserve firefighter.

Nelson was struck by how carefully Koch spoke. While Nelson was used to, in his words, asking the “irritating question,” Koch seemed prone to asking the “smarter question.” Even today, Koch’s speech isn’t defined by an accent so much as careful deliberation. When Nelson later got a job at the California Department of Forestry, or CalFire, supervisors asked if there were others from the academy they should hire.

Nelson said he knew a guy. Advertisement By 1998, Koch was working for the fire department in La Mesa.

That city later joined El Cajon and Lemon Grove to form the Heartland Fire and Rescue department, which now serves all three. The job has changed over the years. Medical emergencies are up.

Blazes are bigger. Nelson recalled driving around with Koch in Northern California in 2017, after the North Bay fire, when the scale of what they were facing hit home. In neighborhood after neighborhood, all they could see were chimneys.

Koch became a U.S. citizen in 2000. The experience of moving to a new country was on his mind while earning a master’s degree in emergency services administration from California State University in Long Beach. In a 2016 thesis, he zeroed in on El Cajon’s Chaldean community.

Refugees were not being given enough information about how the 911 system works and first responders were ineffectively trained on the specific needs of new arrivals, he found. Advertisement “These communication gaps are exemplified by several on-scene misunderstandings,” Koch wrote, “which often required police assistance to maintain emergency scene control.”

When his old instructor Steve Swaney retired as Heartland’s chief[4] last year, the three city managers chose Koch as the successor. He was sworn in Jan.

10, a little before his 49th birthday. Koch’s home country has similarly redefined its role in the world.

Estonia joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, one of only three former Soviet states to join both organizations, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service[5]. It held its most recent parliamentary elections last month.

Both Koch and his homeland were deeply affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have poured into Estonia, which has accepted a larger share of refugees than any other European Union country, an International Monetary Fund analysis found[6]. Koch said he’s been supporting several organizations helping the region, including the World Kitchen.

Advertisement “Estonians, for the most part, have never felt fully safe,” Koch said. The threat had never really gone away.

Years ago, when Koch was serving as a firefighter for both La Mesa and Julian, a blaze almost destroyed his home. He was married at the time, living in Julian with three children, when flames swept through his neighborhood. Koch was one of dozens to rush in.

He grabbed his chainsaw and began cutting down a fence at risk of igniting. Others sprayed the ground with hoses. They threw drywall up against windows to keep glass from shattering.

Time seemed to warp. The whole experience felt like 15 minutes, but it could have taken much longer. Advertisement

Koch lost part of the fence. The neighbor’s house took some scorching. But the two homes, and his family, were safe.

Then they got word that the fire had shifted, and another area was at risk.

The crew took off.

References

  1. ^ were reportedly (www.britannica.com)
  2. ^ report (www.nonviolent-conflict.org)
  3. ^ punk tune (www.youtube.com)
  4. ^ retired as Heartland’s chief (www.sandiegouniontribune.com)
  5. ^ according to the U.S.

    Congressional Research Service (crsreports.congress.gov)

  6. ^ an International Monetary Fund analysis found (www.imf.org)