The Texas Forest Service is part of a university — Texas A&M University. Many emergency responders think it is an odd structure for an emergency services organization. While the state of Colorado recognized the problems with having their state Forest Service under Colorado State University following the escaped Lower North Fork prescribed fire in which three residents were killed at their homes, Texans have doubled down on keeping their Forest Service under the control of a university.
The Texas Forest Service has changed their name to “Texas A&M Forest Service”. The change was proposed earlier this year by Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp as “a way to better align marketing and branding efforts”, according to the university’s web site. The university’s announcement did not say how much it would cost to change the name and their logos.
The governor of Colorado went a different direction after the Lower North Fork Fire, and decided to have all state emergency services agencies under one umbrella, the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Governor Hickenlooper said “We want to have it in one place, with an agency that is used to dealing with situations where minutes matter”. His objective was to streamline the decision making as well as the dispatching and managing of firefighters.
Thanks go out to Dick
@BMorgan
Consolidation of the suppression effort under DPS was a good idea. Perhaps the USFS should consider passing the suppression mission to another agency.
Now if Colorado would consider getting some more air tankers [the state only contracts for 3 or 4 SEATS] the state would have some initial air attack capability. As it is, Colorado depends on Federal air tanker assets.
@Tom Stout
That is entirely incorrect. The Texas Forest Service has initial attack crews and task forces all throughout the state. They have highly trained wildland firefighters that spend countless hours and days fighting wildland fires. While TFS doesn’t have it’s own aircraft they have contracts to use SEAT’s and heavy air tankers. The Forest Service works with the VFD’s on all fires and heavily supports them through a variety of aid programs that provides equipment, training and supplies. In addition to actually fighting the fires side-by-side with them. TFS is the leading wildland firefighting agency in Texas and is also a an all-hazard incident management agency.
Thanks for the enlightenment. I really don’t understand how you have an initial attack without aircraft. Do they have airborne crews standing by? The first 20 to 30 minutes is what is critical, getting water, tankers, and helitack crews where they can be effective. It’s all private land. Why should they depend on the Forest Service for assistance, except maybe expertise. I’m not trying to be a wise guy, I’d really like to know. I live in Ok and fly fires in AK, Cal, et.al. and I know Ok doesn’t have any visible quick aviation response.
Texas does not come close to having a cohesive initial attack strategy for fires state wide. By cohesive I mean a state wide communication plan, ICS understood and used by cooperators, NWCG or similar statewide guidelines for qualifications, IA assets such as air tankers and helicopters with helitack crews, physical fitness standards, interoperability with other departments, standardized PPE requirements, and assets placed within reasonable response times to emerging incidents.
The initial attack is going to be ground crews, mostly engines and dozers with a hand crew if needed. The contracted aircraft will go in, but will take up to 3 or 4 hours to get there. So IA in Texas is all boots-on-the-ground type stuff. There are some aircraft available sooner, depending on the location of the fire. However in your earlier statement, you were correct that they do use the National Guard/Military aircraft at times. TFS will be called because of the additional resources available to them, if it does turn into a major fire. That’s in addition to the expertise of the firefighters. No problem! Any questions you’ve got feel free to ask! I work in structural and wildland firefighting, and interact with the Texas Forest Service a lot.
@BeckS….. give me some info on this large airtanker contract that the state of Texas has….. Never heard of such a thang.
This seems to follow the completely baffling policies of Texas and Oklahoma who categorically refuse to establish any type of wild fire initial attack or trained wild land fire fighters. Over and over you see response by structural companies and volunteer fire fighters. They are out in 100+ degree heat in bunker gear and can’t figure out why they have so many heat related injuries. They depend on the national guard to provide helicopters and that takes hours or days. There’s no air attack, no initial attack and no crews so the fires get out of control very fast. Hundreds of homes and structures burned in the past two years. It could have been prevented, but there seems to be a collective apathy among the citizenry. Can anyone shed any light one this because it puzzles me.
Colorado has the right idea. So much has changed over the years and Universities are not designed to manage fires. They may be able to teach about them, but not run a fire service. The state has done its citizens a great favor by combining wildfire under emergency managment.