Texas emergency director calls for firefighting air force after historic Panhandle fires

Texas’ top emergency manager told a panel of lawmakers Tuesday that the state should establish its own firefighting aircraft division after a series of wildfires, including the largest in state history, scorched the Panhandle region earlier this year.

Pampa is a town of about16,000 in Gray County; it is closer to Oklahoma than the Texas Capitol. Lawmakers decided to hold the hearings in the town an hour northeast of Amarillo, making it easier for victims of the fire to attend.“This is not a Panhandle problem. This will have statewide effects,” King, the committee's chair, told the mixed crowd of suits and cowboy hats. “We must do what we can to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Without its own fleet of aircraft to fight fires, Texas relies on a series of contractors. Many of the planes were being serviced at the time the fires started in late February. “It won’t be an easy venture to start with, and we will have to continue with contracts while this is built up and people are trained. It will take some time,"Kidd said, adding that the state would still need to utilize a mixture of private contracts and other options in the meantime.

Local fire chiefs told the panel they need help keeping their equipment up-to-date. Many counties in the Panhandle have a declining population and the taxes raised rarely reach the emergency departments. Hemphill County’s volunteer firefighters, for examples, use decades-old vehicles. Its oldest was made in 1969, its newest is from the 1980s.

Multiple volunteer fire chiefs told the committee they were called off fires because the Texas A&M Forest Service told them their services were no longer needed — even as fires burned in front of them.

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