FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - It’s the time of year when grasses dry out and winds pick up, a perfect recipe for wildfires, conditions that keep volunteer firefighters on alert.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram (https://bit.ly/2jFPTmO ) reports such was the case on a recent day in northwestern Tarrant County, when the Briar-Reno Volunteer Fire Department scrambled to work two grass fires and an animal rescue simultaneously.
One fire started with trash being burned in a barrel, the other in a wood pile. Both fires got loose and ignited dried grass.
But because 12 volunteer firefighters responded quickly, the fires did not get out of hand.
“Without those volunteers you would have had calls go unanswered and have to call mutual aid,” said Shannon Smithers, the Briar-Reno fire chief. “You can do things with 12 people. You can’t do things with two.”
Such is the dilemma facing some volunteer fire departments in communities outside urban centers in Texas, including Dallas-Fort Worth, which are finding there is strength in numbers.
“I think everybody is facing that staffing challenge around the larger cities in Texas,” said Cliff Avery, executive director of the Texas State Association of Fire and Emergency Districts. “There’s a general lack of volunteerism. There’s a sense of ‘let somebody else do it.’ “
The concerns are magnified by extremely dangerous fire conditions in the Southwest. On Wednesday, the National Interagency Fire Center placed the state of Oklahoma under a national fire advisory, which acts as a warning for residents and fire departments to prepare for potentially severe wildfires.
The Idaho-based organization also said that Texas and other neighboring states could be ripe for similar wildfires through the rest of this month.
“We’re just entering a period where things can get really dicey with the fire situation,” said Gary McManus, Oklahoma’s state climatologist. “We have set ourselves up for more of a damaging wildfire season.”
While the staffing problem for volunteer departments in urban areas is challenging, rural communities are struggling as well.
In Cross Plains, about 130 miles southwest of Fort Worth, a Dec. 27, 2005, wildfire scorched almost 8,000 acres and destroyed 85 homes, 25 mobile homes, six hotel units and the First United Methodist Church.
The town has bounced back nicely from the fire, but attracting volunteer firefighters has not been as easy.
“It’s mostly us old codgers in our 50s and 60s,” Cross Plains Fire Chief Ricky Carouth told the Star-Telegram in a Dec. 28 article. “There are about six to eight of us who usually drop what they’re doing and answer the call. We need the younger generation to step up. But we aren’t alone. It’s like this everywhere.”
Cross Plains has 21 on its fire department staff, including 14 volunteer firefighters.
“I worry if we’re going to get to the point someday where we don’t have anyone to answer the call,” Carouth said.
For suburban departments, another issue is that volunteers work in cities, some 30 miles away, and aren’t able to work fires when at their job.
“You also have commuters whose time is stressed where they cannot volunteer,” Avery said.
Some volunteer departments, such as Alvord in Wise County, have had to rely on neighboring departments for help when no firefighters are around during the workweek.
And other rural and suburban areas have formed emergency service districts, in which rural fire departments band together with voter approval and can levy a tax of up to 10 cents per $100 valuation to fund their operations. One such emergency service district, Wise County Emergency Service District No.1, serves Boyd and parts of southern Wise County.
Almost all of the fire departments in Johnson and Parker counties are part of emergency service districts. There’s also Tarrant County ESD No. 1 that covers all of unincorporated Tarrant County. It contracts with 17 fire departments for fire coverage and with 10 of those departments for ambulance service.
Currently, there are 318 ESDs in 93 counties across Texas.
Others volunteer departments - including Briar-Reno - have merged.
A year ago, the two departments came together and also took over service for Pelican Bay, where the volunteer department disbanded. The merged departments are also part of Tarrant County’s ESD 1, and are paid to cover a portion of unincorporated Tarrant County.
The combined Briar-Reno department has led to an increase in calls and staffing. At the time of the merger, Reno was down to five firefighters and only one from Pelican Bay joined up. There are now a total of 40 volunteers on the roster, but a dozen or so answer most of the calls.
The merger also lessened the impact of small-town politics.
In 2003-2004, Briar garnered attention when its then-chief, Larry Reed, allowed the volunteer fire department’s name to be used for a video slot gaming club. Over the past year, the Reno City Council has been involved in heated battles that included an investigation of the mayor and the censuring of two council members, according to the Azle News.
“There were some problems, and the mergers helped a lot of the political issues with small-city councils and things like that,” Smithers said. “Now your funding is not limited to one source. Now our board is able to say ‘This is the path we’re going to go’ without somebody coming in and getting mad or it being some type of popularity contest.”
To staff during the day, the department pays a small stipend for firefighters to stick around the fire station. First preference goes to those with medical certification to respond to medical emergencies, which make up about 70 percent of the call load.
“It is a balancing act,” Smithers said. “You want to get quick response times but you also want to make sure your volunteers can contribute.”
Besides paying volunteers, the department has embraced training to keep the firefighters engaged. That includes training with the nearby Azle Fire Department or traveling to College Station for weeklong classes at the Texas A&M Forest Service.
While volunteers aren’t needed for most ambulance calls, they are needed for fires.
“Other departments have two people show up on a fire, then you gotta call three or four other stations to get their people and you’ve just drained the entire county,” Smithers said. “That’s one of the things we want not to have happen. It creates an illusion that you have more firefighters than you actually have.”
That happened recently in Parker County.
On Dec. 12, it took several departments to respond to a house fire, said George Teague, Parker County’s emergency management coordinator chief of the county’s ESD No. 6.
“You want three firetrucks and 12 firefighters to respond to a residential fire,” Teague said. “We had a fire on Tintop Road south of the interstate and we had to call four departments to get up to that number. All of those except Weatherford were part-time employees.”
By far, Parker County has the most emergency service districts in North Texas, with five scattered across the county. Johnson County, like Tarrant County, has one emergency service district to cover the unincorporated parts of the county. But Johnson County’s district also includes every city in the county except Cleburne and Burleson.
Parts of Wise County are still purely volunteers.
Sam Hahn, chief of the Alvord Volunteer Fire Department, said finding volunteers during a weekday can be almost impossible.
“We have that issue that nobody works in town anymore,” Hahn said. “We don’t have the businesses in town. Nobody is available to run calls.”
That sometimes forces Decatur to respond.
In such situations, Decatur firefighters often travel 10 to 12 miles as the first responding agency.
“Most often, they’ll be able to generate a volunteer or two while we’re traveling up there but we still have to back them up,” said Decatur Fire Chief Mike Richardson.
While more departments may merge or create emergency service districts, the challenges of attracting volunteers will likely continue until there are more incentives, said Chris Barron, executive director of the State Firefighters’ and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas.
There have been efforts to increase the 10 cent per $100 valuation cap on emergency service districts, but legislators have shown no support for raising it.
In some states, volunteer firefighters receive a tax credit but that hasn’t gained traction in Texas.
“In Texas, I don’t see anything changing until the Legislature realizes how good they’ve got it with all of this free help,” Barron said. “There’s no reward for volunteering, no statewide workers’ compensation. I really think there needs to be some type of recognition or credit to a volunteer firefighter to help recruit or retain them.”
At the Briar-Reno department, officials estimate it would cost about $750,000 for a fully paid department vs. the current volunteer model, which works on an annual budget of about $200,000.
Since 2002, Briar-Reno has also received $407,729.71 from the Texas A&M Forest Service for training and equipment. It has also applied for a FEMA SAFER grant (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grants) that would allow it to pay stipends for more shifts.
“We’ve got a lot of employers that let our volunteers leave to answer a call,” Smithers said. “We want to build up the compensated primarily in the daytime because we’re taking away a lot from the daytime employers. But we have to find a way to keep all of our volunteers involved so they’ll show up when we need them.”
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Information from: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, https://www.star-telegram.com
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