Here's a story about the Tricounty Fire
in
Montgomery, Grimes, and Waller Counties in Texas
during the week of Patriot Day (9-11 Memorial) 2011.
My neighbor across the road has a sister named Kenna. September 11 (Patriot Day), when she saw the huge column of smoke over our homes, she left a
birthday party at my neighbor’s house to meet with her friend Tara at the
Baseball complex in Magnolia. She called the owner of the complex and got
permission to use the warehouse there as a staging area for donations for the
fire fighting effort.
They put a notice out on Facebook that they were going to be taking donations
on their Facebook pages. That night as they were setting up tables and
organizing, News 2 Houston came by and saw the activity, investigated and left
with the phone numbers and a list of suggested donations.
The Facebook notice propagated faster than the fire. By dawn they had 20
volunteers, bins, forklifts, and donations were pouring in. I stopped by
with my pitiful little bags of nasal wash and eye wash, and was amazed.
There must have been 20 trucks in the lot, offloading cases of water, pallets
of Gatorade , and people lined up out the door with sacks of beef jerky, baby
wipes, underwear, socks, and you name it. School buses and trailers from
many counties around were there offloading supplies, students forming living
chains to pass stuff into the bins for transport to the command center and
staging areas. If the firefighters had requested it, it was there.
What do you give the guy out there fighting the fire that might engulf your
home? Anything he or she wants - including chewing tobacco and
cigarettes.
Kenna moved on to the Unified Command Post at Magnolia West High School.
She looked at what the fire fighters needed, and she made calls and set it up.
Mattress Mac donated 150 beds. Two class rooms turned into barracks kept
quiet and dark for rest. The CEO of HEB donated 2 semi trailers
full of supplies, and sent a mobile commercial kitchen at no charge to feed all
the workers, but especially our firefighters, 3 hot meals a day. An impromptu
commissary was set up, anything the firefighters had requested available at no
charge.
As exhausted firefighters (most of them from local VFDs with no training or
experience battling wildfires) and workers came into the school after long hours
of hard labor, dehydrated, hungry, covered with soot and ash, they got what
they needed. They were directed through the commissary, where they got
soap, eye wash and nasal spray, candy, clean socks and underwear, and then were
sent off to the school locker rooms for a shower. HEB then fed them a hot
meal and they got 8 hours sleep in a barracks, then another hot meal, another
pass through the commissary for supplies to carry with them out to lines,
including gloves, safety glasses, dust masks and snacks, and back they went.
One of the imported crew from California came into Unified Command and asked
where the FEMA Powerbars and water were. As one was escorted to the
commissary and started through the system, he was flabbergasted. He
said FEMA never did it like this. Kenna replied, ”Well, this is the way
we do it in Texas.”
Fire fighting equipment needed repair? The auto shop at the High School
ran 24/7 with local mechanics volunteering, students, and the firefighters
fixing the equipment.
Down one side of the school, the water tankers lined up at the fire hydrants
and filled with water. Down the other side there was a steady parade of
gasoline tankers filling trucks, dozers, tankers, cans, chain saws, and
vehicles.
Mind you, all of this was set up by 2 Moms, Kenna and Tara, with a staff
of 20 simple volunteers (most were women who had sons, daughters,
husbands, and friends on the fire lines.) Someone always knew someone who
could get what they needed- beds, mechanics, food, space. Local people
using local connections to mobilize local resources made this happen. No
government aid. No Trained Expert.
At one point the fire was less than a mile from the school, and everyone but
hose volunteers were evacuated. The fire was turned.
The Red Cross came in, looked at what they were doing, and quietly went away to
set up a fire victim relief center nearby. They said they couldn’t do it
any better.
FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA
was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not
them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized
everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and
doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go,
that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They
stayed. FEMA threw a wall-eyed fit about chewing tobacco and cigarettes being
available in the commissary area. Kenna told them the firefighters had
requested it, and it was staying. It stayed. FEMA got very nasty
and kept asking what organization these volunteers belonged to and all the
volunteers told them “Our community”. FEMA didn’t like that and demanded
they make up a name for themselves. One mother remarked “They got me at
my boiling point!” and suddenly the group was “212 Degrees”. FEMA’s
contribution? They came in the next day with red shirts embroidered with
“212 Degrees”, insisting the volunteers had to be identified,
never realizing it was a slap in their face. Your tax dollars at work -
labeling volunteers with useless shirts and getting in the way.
The upshot? A fire that the experts from California (for whom we are so
grateful, there are no words) said would take 2-3 weeks to get under control
was 100% contained in 8 days. There was so much equipment and supplies
donated, 3 container trucks are loaded with the excess to go and set up a
similar relief center for the fire fighters in Bastrop. The local relief
agencies have asked people to stop bringing in donations of clothing, food,
household items, and pretty much everything else because they only have 60
displaced households to care for, and there is enough to supply hundreds.
Again, excess is going to be shipped to Bastrop, where there are 1500 displaced
households.
God bless Texas!
