AUSTIN (Nexstar) — As the Texas A&M Forest Service projects “extreme” or “very high” wildfire for a vast majority of the state on Tuesday, legislators met in Austin to discuss how to prepare Texas for the future of firefighting.
On Monday morning, the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs discussed a bill to create a database of the inventory of firefighting equipment that is available for use in responding to wildfires. The inventory is to be maintained by the Texas A&M Forest Service.
“This is using technology that we already own, it’s just doing a better job, more complete listing in real time of all of the things available during emergencies,” said the bill’s author Sen. Kevin Sparks, R-Midland, whose district was affected by about 90% of Texas wildfires around this time last year.
The proposal comes after a Texas House of Representatives report on the handling of the 2024 Panhandle wildfires, fires which burned over a million acres and claimed three lives. The report said “although volunteer firefighters fought valiantly to contain the wildfires, response efforts were inhibited by a lack of properly positioned, readily available, and timely dispatched air support on top of ineffective communication and coordination among agencies, local governments, and responders due in part communications equipment that lacked interoperability.”
Sparks’ proposed bill is intended to help curb that communications gap.
“The ability to do this will improve our ability to respond quickly in a coordinated and efficient manner, and that is a key part of being able to respond to these incidents and bring them under control,” Pflugerville Fire Chief Nick Perkins told the committee.
Bill Gardner, a representative from the State Firefighters’ and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas, also spoke in support of the bill. The association represents 17,000 volunteer Texas firefighters. Perkins said 85% of the state is covered by a volunteer fire department of some makeup today.
“There is a multitude of things we can do to increase our statewide coordination and this [bill] certainly adds to that,” Gardner said.
State Sen. Charles Perry, R – Lubbock, also said there’s $192 million dedicated in the Senate Finance Committee to bolster the state’s firefighting equipment.
“Sometimes it takes an event to clean-up where we should’ve been already,” Perry said.
