GROOM, Texas (KVII) \u2014 The Texas A&M Forest Service has awarded $164 million to volunteer fire departments across the state to help them purchase and upgrade essential firefighting equipment. <\/p>\n
Of that total, more than $5 million was distributed to 31 departments in the Texas Panhandle\u2014making this year\u2019s grants the largest since the program began.<\/p>\n
The Groom Volunteer Fire Department (VFD) received $45,000 to upgrade one of its trucks. Mason Miller with the Groom VFD explained that the new equipment will be especially useful for responding to grass and semi-truck fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cMainly it\u2019ll be used for grass fires. We also have a large portion of the interstate, and semi fires are a big thing for us,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to make this a 750-gallon slip-on unit, while this truck behind me\u2014what we normally use to put out a semi fire\u2014only carries 500 gallons of water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juan Rodriguez with the Texas A&M Forest Service emphasized the importance of properly equipping volunteer departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they are going to be the first ones to get called to any of these incidents,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how small some of these fire departments are; they respond to some of the more important calls that are in their areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
On average, the Groom VFD responds to about 100 calls per year and operates on a $30,000 annual budget. <\/p>\n
Miller said the grant provides crucial financial relief and helps the department stay ready for increasing call volumes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we can get these grants, it sure makes it a lot easier for departments to grow,\u201d Miller said. \u201cAll our older trucks are going out of date and breaking a lot, and the call volume is higher than we\u2019ve ever seen. With all the rain we\u2019ve gotten this year, I think the call volume will go up during grass fire season. So, being able to have newer trucks that can get where we need to go makes a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GROOM, Texas (KVII) \u2014 The Texas A&M Forest Service has awarded $164 million to volunteer fire departments across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8708,8704,8705,8707,8706,27,1887,29,28,1959,6596],"class_list":["post-9308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-fire-truck-upgrades","tag-firefighting-equipment","tag-grants","tag-grass-fires","tag-groom-volunteer-fire-department","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-forest-service","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-panhandle","tag-volunteer-fire-departments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}