2009 Spring Safety Conference

I had such a good time and learned so much at the TPWD 2009 Spring Safety Conference held at Parrie Haynes Ranch. The great majority of the speakers were excellent. Scott had some great photos from Hurricane Ike. Gary's presentation of mental illness was very interesting. The guy from NOAA had great information and gave us the number to be a spotter. The First Aid/CPR/AED instructor gave me an award for being the best Blower! The lady from PEC was very good as well. I met some cool people, got to know some people better and had fun partying, too.

When I got home, not sooner had I let the dogs out than we got a fire call to CR 466. So I changed clothes and headed that way and followed the trucks in. They immediately gave me a nozzle. Some lady's trash fire was out of control. The pit was really deep so somebody went and brought the big tanker truck. They put some foamer in it, ran the pump for a bit and then dumped it in the pit! That did it. This was only my 3rd fire but I was pretty certain we wouldn't be coming back to that one.

Brush Fire

A couple of weeks ago we got a call late Sunday afternoon, there was a fire on Co. road 102. I didn't know where that was. I was so proud to get dressed and out of the house and passing Kent's drive as he was headed out, too. We got to the Fire House about the same time and both got in the last truck and headed south on 80. We saw smoke and then the trucks on the side of the road just past Willie's place which is just south of my place. We parked the truck since it was a tanker and too big to get back in the brush and headed down the dirt road. Mike Turk the local DPS officer was headed out and stopped to say howdy to Kent. By then we could smell the fire and see the smoke. They put us in one of the smaller trucks with Bob and we headed out and back into my place along the south fence line looking for the fire which was supposedly crossing the fence line. We didn't see any fire so we cut the fence and headed toward the where it was crossing the fenceline. That truck had 2 hoses and we sprayed and got shovels and shoveled dirt on little fires. There wasn't much fuel to burn so it was just a bunch of little fires. A log here, a dead tree there, a piece of cow poop over there. The smoke did get a little thick at one point. We had it pretty much put out in 3 hours. We weren't entirely sure we wouldn't have to come back cause the wind kept picking up, but we didn't.