10/02/2026
Another true statement.
Most of the fire departments in this state are staffed by people who were at their regular jobs twenty minutes earlier. đźš’
Texas runs on volunteer fire departments. Out past the city limits, the truck that comes is crewed by a welder, a teacher, somebody who farms, somebody who drives a route all day. They carry a pager or a phone alert, they leave in the middle of dinner, and a fair amount of their gear they paid for themselves. Plenty of these departments fund their operations with barbecue plate sales and a fish fry, which is a strange way to pay for fire protection and is exactly how a lot of rural Texas does it.
Grass fires are the part outsiders never picture. A brush truck is usually a flatbed pickup with a tank bolted on the back, and the work is driving out into pasture where there is no road, in wind, chasing a line of fire that moves faster than you can. When it gets bad in a dry year, departments from three counties over will turn up, because they know they will be needing that favour returned come August.
These people are not paid and they are not strangers to the folks they are helping. 🙏 In a town of eight hundred, the house that is burning belongs to somebody whose name they already know.
If your family has somebody on a volunteer department, what do they get called out for most?
