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Volunteers douse a fire Wednesday morning at the Texas Engineering Extension Service´s fire fields for the spring training convention. Attendance for the convention includes 330 volunteer firefighters who will learn methods for extinguishing fires. (Photo by Sharon Aesbach / The Battalion)

Volunteer firefighters learn the ropes at A&M

By: Kyle Ross

Posted: 3/4/04

With the sound of a beeping pager, suddenly their lives change. They are volunteer firefighters, ordinary individuals who race into burning infernos to save people they may have never even met. This week, many of these volunteer firefighters, as well as their full-time counterparts, are on the Texas A&M campus for the 16th annual spring fire training school.

All week, men and women from Texas, to the United Kingdom are reporting to the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) training fields, all trying to learn to save lives.
Deloss Edwards, a training instructor, said he has seen the fire training school grow over the years to what it is today.

"I've been training guys here for 28 years, but I'm just a rookie," Edwards said. "There's a couple guys that have been here a year or two more than me."

Edwards said in the early years he would arrive a few days before classes and help paint the shelters, mow the grass and set out the hoses. He said the school has changed drastically since then.

The 120-acre training site now boasts 132 life-size training props, various covered outdoor classrooms and a $70 million "disaster city" complex.

From a derailed gas tanker to a crashed helicopter and a burning chemical plant, the students are given hands-on training.

"Coming to this school has been an asset to me," said Donny Williams, a volunteer firefighter from Navasota. "We do some amount of training in my hometown, but we can't actually go out and practice first hand in the field like over here. It's given me great confidence in what I do."
Vernon Rerich, a volunteer firefighter from Weimar, Texas, said the world is consistently changing and one must be prepared.

"We just put out an enormous fire on this building," Rerich said, "and I think after lunch there's a pretty big chemical fire we are going to get after. With the world changing like it is, you just never know what might happen, and I can't get this kind of training anywhere else."

Casey Flinn, from the Texas Forest Service, said financial obstacles stood in the way of volunteers until 2001, when the Texas Forest Service formed a partnership with TEEX that would provide tuition grants to people like Williams and Rerich.

"Volunteers were a bit frowned upon in the past (by the paid municipal firefighters) because of their lack of training," Flinn said. "But now with these grants they're all being trained together. We're getting more of an equality among the fighters."

This spring, through the Rural Volunteer Fire Department Assistance Program, 130 firefighters were given full tuition grants. Last summer 500 trainees were given paid tuitions, and the number of grants is estimated to rise for the upcoming summer sessions.

In addition to training, the Texas Forest Service has also supplied almost $25 million worth of equipment to volunteer fire departments, Flinn said.

"The most important thing is making sure that the volunteers are trained to use the equipment," Flinn said. "We can supply all the equipment in the world, but if they don't know how to use it then it's worthless."

The trainees take part in various demonstrations on the correct ways of handling gear such as hoses, nozzles and air packs. They learn different pump operations, how to climb an assortment of ladders and are even given lectures on the chemical makeup of fire itself, said Jason Cook, communications director for TEEX.

"Tomorrow my group is going to be doing some hands-on work with putting out fires," Williams said. "That's the fun stuff."