Sometime in December 2023, I approached Larry Francell, a noted grant writer for Jeff Davis County, about hopefully helping us get a grant to purchase new tires for our brush trucks. Our trucks came with top quality radial tires that are great if you never leave the paved road. Unfortunately, we fight fire mostly off road. It seemed like with almost every fire we assisted Fort Davis FD with in 2023, we had to replace or fix a tire. Almost, one fire, one tire! We started the process of him getting to know us and gathering information about us in January. During his visit to our station, Mr. Francell learned of our loss of insurance rating. The DMR went from a 9 rating to a 10 rating in 2022 because we did not have at least 2 structural firemen. The two firemen we had before had retired from our department. We worked hard all of 2023 trying to fill every other requirement but without the structural firemen, we would not be able to have our status revisited by the insurance rating company. I explained the difficulties in getting two people to volunteer, the cost of equipment, tuition, room and board and the time needed to send people to College Station for training; I did let him know that I had recently attended a Fire Chiefs conference in Midland, where I learned of possible fire schools closer to us.

The evening after coming out to tour our station, Mr. Francell called me and said that he was worried about our insurance problem and that he would help us get a grant that would cover the cost of tuition, equipment, room and board plus mileage. But, I only had the weekend to find out the cost of everything! After hours of phone calls, emails and texts I had everything he needed. I found out that there was the possibility of a fire school being held in Terlingua that would blend online course work with in person skills training. I found a company representative for bunker gear in Wall, Texas that would come here and measure our firemen for their equipment. Within the week, he had a foundation in Midland, Texas willing to help us. That foundation arranged for Midland County NE VFD to donate two sets of bunker gear, pants, coats, shrouds and helmets. All we needed to buy was the boots and gloves. By the next week we learned that we secured the grant! Then on Friday the 16th of February, MCNEVFD fire chief Jason Duran and his assistant chief, James Wolf, personally came to the DMR to deliver the gear. I have the boots and gloves on order. I am waiting for the registration to be announced. I have been in contact with the Terlingua FD/EMS chief Susan Martin and she is confident this training will take place. The training will run April – September with our firemen traveling to Terlingua one weekend a month to attend in person skills training.

This is a huge step forward for our department. I am so proud of firefighters Wendi Bates and Edward Eaton that are willing to take on this training. Our tire grant will still be pursued but for right now, this training was more important. I do hope to secure a grant for tires before the end of the year. In addition, we are now on the radar of other area foundations that might be willing to fund other projects I have in mind in my quest to modernize our department with the best equipment I can manage. A long way from being the hand me down department I joined all those years ago.
Edna Queen – Chief DMPOAVFD