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November / December 2011
Volume 23, Number 6

Burned Out

Year of wildfires leads to scorched land but bolunteerism, innovations still strong

It was Labor Day Weekend and TAC Geographic Information Systems Analyst Bruce Barr was worried about his home, and rightfully so: a large wildfire was burning nearby, threatening hundreds of homes. His subdivision was being evacuated. As president of his neighborhood’s homeowner’s association and as a GIS expert for the county’s Emergency Operations Center working to develop daily fire maps, Barr was in the middle of a major crisis.

Barr’s home is in Bastrop County, and right nearby the Union Chapel fire was raging. But the fire wasn’t the county’s only major crisis, or even the major crisis of the moment: the Bastrop Complex fire was also burning bright, on its way to growing to more than 34,000 acres.

In the end, the Union Chapel fire would destroy 24 homes and two commercial buildings and the Bastrop County Complex fire, which began Sept. 4, would destroy 1,645 homes and 38 commercial buildings, according to the Texas Forest Service.

Barr’s home was thankfully spared, but some of his neighbors weren’t so fortunate. Still, Barr said he was mostly impressed with the overall response he saw to the wildfires, both as a resident and as a professional.

The only problem, Barr said, is that communications tended to break down outside of the county’s Emergency Operations Center, just because there were so many agencies involved in the recovery and re-entry plans.

“We had DPS officers, we had sheriff’s deputies, we had constables, we had the Austin Police Department come from a whole other Year of wildfires leads to scorched land but volunteerism, innovations still strong Burned Out county,” he said, adding that how to handle transitions between different shifts may be an issue that emergency managers look into in the future. “I was at the EOC working on a re-entry plan for our subdivision and had been working with DPS for half a day. We had everything in order. ... There was a shift change and there was a breakdown in communication between the shift change.”

It’s old news that the 2011 wildfire season was the worst in Texas history. The state saw more fires that burned more acres and lasted longer on average. According to data collected by the Texas Forest Service, the average fire in Texas lasted longer than a day in every month from April through October. The multi-day events drew firefighters from every state, including Alaska and Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Texas fires accounted for more than one-third of all wildfires in the United States; nearly half of the total acreage that burned throughout the country in 2011 burned in Texas.

Despite the significant help, the fires put heavy strains on volunteer fire departments and responders across the state, especially in cases where homes had to be evacuated and re-entry plans were necessary. “I’ve never seen this many wildfires with what they call ‘urban handling.”

It’s not just the firefighters that deplete their energy reserves during the large multi-day wildfire episodes seen during the last year. Running machines around the clock depletes equipment and resources, said Leon County Judge Byron Ryder, who saw one major wildfire hit his county during the past year.

“A lot of equipment was in bad disarray and in bad working order once the fire was over because they had been working them day and night. The equipment was overused, so it had to be repaired and that took a lot of money,” Ryder said.

But now it’s time to take a breath, hopefully, and prepare for coming years, especially since the state is still in the midst of the longest drought in its recorded history. According to Texas State Climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon, the drought could last until 2020.

The scary impacts of that possibility are still being studied, but wildfires, water shortages and agricultural damages are obvious. In October, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst assigned Senate committees their interim charges, several of which dealt with wildfires and water resources. The Senate Transportation & Homeland Security Committee was instructed to review fire preparations and responses and urban forest management best practices; the Senate Natural Resources Committee will be studying water conservation and how to ease the impact of the ongoing drought; the Senate Economic Development Committee will study the impact of the drought and wildfires on the Texas economy; and the Senate Subcommittee on Flooding and Evacuation will look into communications options during evacuations.

Counties can’t do anything about Mother Nature, but they can and are being innovative in the ways in which they respond to emergencies, and especially in the ways they communicate to residents during and after emergencies.

During an active wildfire period in Houston County in September, the county shared emergency updates on its Facebook page. The updates received a lot of positive responses from residents and gave residents a forum for asking questions and getting answers. Interest in the updates grew as the wildfire grew. “

The fire on CR 4505 is worsening. More homes being evacuated. The fire has crossed 4505 and is advancing toward US 287. The Houston County Senior Citizens Center in the Crockett City Park is being opened as a staging center for food. Spaghetti, salad, bread, snacks, water, Powerade or Gatorade are all needed. Items can be brought to the Senior Center,” stated one Houston County update on Sept. 5.

The county continued to give updates throughout the day, discussing evacuations, shelters, and supplies. An update that the county needed “large ice coolers. We have plenty of ice, but could use more coolers to store it in. If you have a large ice chest we can use, please drop it off at the Senior Citizens Center. Thank you!” was so successful that the county was able to post again 48 minutes later. “We now have plenty of ice chests. Thank you to everyone who responded.” The county found the same success when asking for ATVs.

Volunteerism continued to be so successful that on Sept. 7, the county stated that the “Crockett Fire Department has received so many donated supplies that they are sharing them with victims of the fire and other fire departments in the county. They really do not need additional items at this time. If you would like to help any of our fire departments in Houston County, a cash contribution would be the best thing you could do. That way they have the funds to purchase what they really need when they need it.”

Other counties also experienced a tremendous amount of volunteerism, even without the use of social networking.

In Leon County, Judge Ryder said he was inspired by the response he saw during one wildfire, which burned approximately 5,000 acres, 31 homes and 57 barns and outbuildings, including two churches, Ryder said. “We had a fuel company come and give fuel. We had donations of water, 1,500 to 1,600 cases of water donated. We had food to feed the firefighters on a roundthe- clock basis,” he said, adding that, although the fire was small compared to other fires that got more attention around the state, that particular fire it was the largest he had ever seen in his county.

“Had our county not been so sparsely populated, it probably would have gotten more homes than it did.” Ryder said the wildfires increased residents’ knowledge and awareness of the volunteer fire departments’ resources and funding.

Many residents stepped up after the fire, either by making monetary donations or by becoming a volunteer fire fighter.

“We have a tremendous outcrying of people now giving money to the fire departments because they realized they need the money for good equipment,” Ryder said, adding that it was the first multi-day wildfire for many of the volunteers, many of whom took off work for several days to keep fighting the fire.

“They now know better how to respond to a fire like this, and we are much more prepared now than we were.”

Now that the 2012 wildfire season has officially begun, officials are continuing to do everything they can to remind residents of the destruction wildfires have already caused, in the hopes that continued awareness will lead to fewer man-made disasters.

In Bastrop County, officials used Facebook to collect videos and photos of the September wildfires with the hopes of compiling the submissions into a memorial video. Officials also created a Community Recovery Committee and hosted a series of conversational open houses for residents still recovering from the wildfires.

“I’m worried about my home now,” said Judge Ryder, in Leon County. “Every tree around my house is burned up, dead. I live fairly close to the highway, so if someone flicks a cigarette on the highway, those woods around my house would catch fire and my house could catch fire. Everybody’s got to be aware that they can’t do that.”