AUSTIN — Austin firefighters headed out of Central Texas Wednesday morning to help crews in West Texas deal with wildfires burning out of control.
The Austin Fire Department sent a strike team leader, seven firefighters and two firetrucks to the Davis Mountains in the Fort Davis area. In total, Texas is sending seven strike teams to help control the wildfires.
There are currently six different wildfires burning, with each one ranging from a couple hundred acres to a few thousand. Battalion Chief Josh Portie said the weather from the past few days has caused a lot of issues.
"Over the past couple days, the storm that we got here, they got over there. But it didn't come with the rain we were fortunate enough to receive," Portie said. "They got a lot of lightning -- a lot of dry lightning. That started a whole bunch of small fires."
Crews over in West Texas have been working around the clock to put out the flames but need some help. The fire has already burned more than 8,000 acres.
"When fires get to the magnitude that they're at now, we tend to send people across the state to support those efforts," Portie said.
That type of support is a part of the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System -- which AFD is a part of. Portie's men plan on being out in West Texas somewhere between 7 and 14 days. This is the fifth time this year that AFD has supported this type of response.
"This is not something that's new to us," Portie said. "We've done it for a while. It is something that every time, we may have new people that come and don't really know what to expect. But it's an excellent opportunity for our firefighters to go to these sorts of incidents across the state and gain that experience by testing our equipment and theories. Then when incidents happen here in our backyard, we're ready."
Portie said AFD has ramped up their training for these types of situations the past few years, and currently, every Austin firefighter is basically wildland firefighter certified. What that means is everyone who is a part of AFD could hypothetically head out to provide wildfire help if it's needed.
"We're prepared to go out there and literally sleep in the dirt for up to two weeks," Portie said. "Everybody that's here volunteers to do this. No one is forced to do this. They're volunteering to leave their families here in Central Texas to go out to West Texas and live in the dirt for a week or two in the Texas sun. "We're really proud of Austin being able to support fellow Texans across the state to be able to do this."
The firefighters heading out to West Texas will be prepared to work 16-hour shifts each day if needed. Portie said he believes this summer will be one of the busier wildfire seasons for Texas.
"We're absolutely ready to stand up and step up to the challenge for sure," Portie said. "We are gaining a tremendous amount of experience. The next time that we have those big fires, we'll have seen this type of fire behavior, practiced these tactics and used this equipment that we've learned about in training."
This program is already set up and funding is already in place from the state -- meaning AFD nor the city of Austin will have to pay for this trip.