just another guy said...
i saw the kens 5 show. it looked like the trucks are in better shape anda better station. i know those guys ( county ) put alot of time and moneys into geting those trucks fixed from where you guys bluntly toar them up. give it up already you guys are done. how can you keep voting on new members with no trucks and no station. if in three years the county guys cant hack it you will have your dept. back.
March 11, 2008 8:13 PM
BVFD said...
Oh, you're a riot "just another guy." The county is putting a lot of time and money in the trucks. BVFD would have done the same if the county and the city had seen fit to give us the money they'd budgeted for us.
Bluntly tore them up? Yeah, that happens on fires, you should know that if you're a fire fighter at KCFR. According to your fire reports with TFS, you've already "bluntly torn up" your "new" trucks. That's just part of fire fighting.
We keep voting in new members because BVFD is incorporated and as long as we keep training, we're still eligible for grant money for yet more training and more equipment. And as some of our guys are 3rd generation BVFD, we are not ready to give up. Fighting fires, as you know, gets in your blood. You almost have to do it. We're not ready to quit training, and we're certainly not ready to quit BVFD. We still have a department, what we don't have is trucks.
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Correction: Actually I am mistaken. KCFR's fire reports don't reflect any truck damage aside from one blown tire. It is from an eye witnesses account at one of their fires that I know one of KCFR's "new" trucks had a malfunction which I don't believe was caused by damage, it just malfunctioned. Regardless of my mistake, brush trucks take a tremendous beating in the field and unless someone is coughing up the bucks for repairs on those trucks, they remain beat up. We've been trying for a very long time to get repairs done on our trucks but the City and County haven't been interested in supporting their VFD for some time.
I would also like to point out that we still have a station. No one has contacted us to tell us otherwise. If they are planning to take our station from us too, I hope they are more considerate about consulting us on the matter than they were in giving away our trucks without so much as a memo for notification.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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3 comments:
just so you know im not a kcfr firefighter, but i am a firefighter with another dept for over 8 years. i have been to many fires and are trucks never came back trashed. tires blow in this rough country but tearing off doors and lights and backing into trees where you destroy every light on the back of a truck is just careless. and while we are on the trucks subject do any of your firefighters have tx class b drivers licence witch is required to drive a fire truck in the state of texas. have they taken evoc class are any of them a sffma certifide drive/engin opperator? like i siad i have been a firefighter for many years and if someone came in a shut my dept down i'd be upset but if they offerd me a better dept to go to with better gear, training money for truck repairs and able to get grants for new trucks gear ect. i would join up. if you guys are true firefighters in your hearts and in your blood you would quit being a baby making asses of yourself and start fighting fire again.
I don't know what kind of fires you are accustomed to fighting at your department. 90% of our fires are wildfires and many of them are at night. Trucks get beat up on wildfires. That's just the way of it. Some of the damage on those trucks of ours was several years old. Again, if no one pays for the repairs, repairs don't get made.
As far as having a door ripped off, I have no idea what you're talking about. The doors on our trucks were intact the last time I saw them at our station. I'll have to ask the rest of the guys if they know what you're talking about.
VFD's get to operate according to different rules than a paid department. This is so that rural communities can afford fire protection. We don't have to meet the same requirements as FD's. BVFD members have broken no laws or statutes regarding fire suppression in Texas. I've been working on compiling a compendium of BVFD members' training and certs. It will be awhile before I have it put together, but once it's up some of your more specific questions will be answered.
Speaking of questions, no one has yet answered the question of under what statute KCFR's department has been established. To the best of our knowledge and our understanding of the law, the only way a fire department run by a governmental entity can have volunteers is if the department is fully staffed by trained and paid firefighters, the volunteers are then allowable in addition to the fully paid staff (see Chapter 419: http://www.tcfp.state.tx.us/standards/419-2007.pdf). We have quoted this law time and time again on this blog and have presented this law to the powers that be, but no one ever acknowledges our legal concerns. We've also asked how it is that KCFR's interim fire chief can be fire chief at KCFR since, according to section § 419.032, the current interim fire chief does not qualify to serve. Is the law secondary to KCFR getting trucks and fire fighters? Or has KCFR been established under statutes that we are not aware of?
If you expect a 55 year old VFD to just roll over and play dead when their trucks are taken from them, think again. VFD members might have been interested in supporting KCFR if it was legally formed and if anyone at the City, County, or at KCFR had bothered to include us in the plans for the new department. Instead, we were pointedly ignored.
just another guy......The reason BVFD has not given up on this is because our Department is made up of people who have principles and character. We will all fight for something that is worth fighting for. You can not take the long history that this department has had and disgrace it by illegally taking equipment that does not belong to you(City of Brackettville) in the first place and leasing it to someone else (Kinney County). You can not disgrace this department by leasing this equipment under the table while BVFD was protecting their community from fire at two different locations. The truth is with the exception of Nat Terrazas our elected officials are cowards. They would have been better off to just spit in our face....at least we would have seen it coming. The truth is the men and women of BVFD should be admired for having the courage to fight on for what they know is right. They should be admired for putting their lives on the line to fight fires for free because they love this community so much. They are all honorable people that have been disgraced by their elected officials.
Next time you decide to question BVFD's spirit of being true Firefighter's you should make sure you know the whole story.
"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country!"
J.F.K
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