Texas-side firefighters to undergo special training
Four Texarkana, Texas, firefighters will take part in three days of intense wilderness training this week, part of a state program to help them help other communities.
Led by Deputy Fire Marshal Capt. Chuck Weerts, the crew will demonstrate it can be self-sufficient outdoors for 72 hours as it battles a prescribed burn of several hundred acres near Gilmer in Wood County.
The exercise will help qualify Weerts, Capt. Lance Cheatham, Driver-Engineer Nick Smith and Firefighter Dustin Newman for wildfire deployments through the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System.
Monday through Wednesday, the TTFD crew—alongside others
from Paris, Mount Pleasant, Longview, Kilgore and other Northeast Texas communities—will work and sleep at the site of the test fire, learning best practices from experts and gaining valuable experience as they go.
Participants will wear special lightergear and carry the water and equipment they might need for long-term excursions. Equipment can include hand tools, hose, radios and emergency fire shelters, foil-like tents used as a last resort for protection when a wildfire overwhelms firefighting crews.
“Anything that you may need for a long duration. It may be 12 hours before you’re able to get back to your truck,” Weerts said.
TIFMAS makes trained Texas firefighters available to help anywhere in the state they may be needed, and the state picks up the tab for their deployment.
“No jurisdiction, ourselves included, is capable of handling every possible thing. Everybody needs help sometimes, and the state of Texas has answered that with this program,” TTFD Chief Eric Schlotter said.
Before any firefighter can deploy through TIFMAS, they must earn certifications through training such as next week’s exercise. The training prepares firefighters for potential local threats, as well.
“Wildland is not our primary deal here. We don’t have a whole lot of big grass fires inside the city, so we’re kind of limited in our exposure to that. So this gives us the opportunity to expose them to what fires are more on the outside of the city and in the rural areas,” Weerts said.
That could prove to be important this summer, which the Texas A&M Forest Service has predicted to be especially risky for wildfires, Weerts said. A wet summer and winter last year promoted vegetation growth, and that means a lot more fuel to burn once it dries.
“Especially coming out of winter, when you have a lot of dead fuel, you can get it as wet as you want, but once the wind starts blowing, it dries out again really quick and you can have a fire running on top of water,” Schlotter said.
Already this year, wildfires have burned thousands of acres of grassland in the Texas Panhandle.