HFD to get flood rescue equipment

Council to spend $2 million so HFD will be ready for next high-water crisis

The Houston Fire Department’s lack of high-water rescue equipment — exposed during Hurricane Harvey — gets a $2 million infusion from City Council for dozens of new boats, trucks and other equipment.

The Houston Fire Department’s lack of high-water rescue equipment — exposed during Hurricane Harvey — got a $2 million infusion Wednesday from the City Council for dozens of new boats, high-water rescue trucks and other equipment.

The council funding comes six months after Harvey's flooding revealed glaring inadequacies in the department, which a Houston Chronicle investigation found had pressed for years unsuccessfully for additional resources and training to handle flooding.

“We’ve taken a major step in the right direction,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “We’ll be much better prepared. … When you combine what was donated with what the appropriation did today, we are certainly in a much better position six months after Harvey than we were then.”

Among the items the city plans to purchase: six high-water rescue vehicles, four swiftwater rescue boats, 10 evacuation boats, 10 trucks to haul the boats, three rescue boat trailers, four Jetskis, a drone, specialized equipment for the water strike

team, replacement equipment for the technical rescue team, and 100 personal flotation devices.

The city has already received donations of three high-water rescue trucks, several boats and other equipment. And in December, the city approved spending $300,000 for swift-water rescue training.

Assistant Fire Chief Ruy Lozano said the vote marked a “good day” for Houston, which is all-but-assured to endure future flooding.

"We need to have the assets ready and our members trained,” he said.

Rank-and-file firefighters also cheered the proposal to bulk up HFD's rescue fleet.

“On your worst day, you want to know someone’s coming,” said Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association. “And that the men and women who do this every day have the equipment they need to do their jobs.”

The Chronicle investigation found that the fire department had just one high-water rescue vehicle, decrepit rescue boats and decades-old evacuation boats when Harvey hit Houston in August.

Firefighters rescued residents using city dump trucks or their fire engines, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, or their own personal boats.

At the time, the department's high-water rescue fleet included 10 shallowwater evacuation boats, six swift-water Zodiac rescue boats, several inflatable dinghies, four functional wave runners.

In the aftermath of the flooding, Fire Chief Samuel Peña said Harvey had shown how anemic the department's flood rescue resources were.

"No municipality is ever going to have the number of resources to be able to respond to a catastrophic incident the size of Harvey," he told the Chronicle in an interview soon after the storm. "But ... we don't have the adequate resources to address even the expected risk in this community."

Firefighters excoriated city leaders for ignoring warnings about the need for better equipment and training, particularly after recommendations following the Memorial Day Flood of 2015 and the 2016 Tax Day Floods.

The new equipment should arrive within 90 to 120 days, city officials said.

“Our goal is to have this before the start of hurricane season,” Lozano said. “The last thing we want is to be stuck in purchasing when a storm hits.”