Fire fighters in Texas forced to pay for own gear to fight fires

[bigdarryl]

And from what I've heard these dickheads still support PArry http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/rick-perry-fire-department-cuts-texas-wild-fires_n_956307.html

[Bozita]

1. Small gubmint can't put out big fires.

[sweetapogee]

2. go ahead, throw rocks at me

I've been a member of the Pennsylvania forestry crew for about 8 years now, since 2003. As for training, I already had quite a bit of FF certs for the traditional fire service so I only had to take (2) 16 hour classes, one of them on fire behavior and the other on actually fighting wildfires. Those classes (the tuition) were paid for by the state but I had to pay for my transportation, food and of course give up almost 40 hours of my leisure time. Every year, if I want to be deployed out of state, I have to do a pack out test which eats up another day of my free time.

During the training, I was given a list of gear items that I would have to have on the firegrounds. Forestry gave me a pair of nomex pants, a hard hat and goggles. I provided myself with acceptable boots, socks, gloves, nomex shirt, back pack, water bottle and so on, I have several hundred dollars of gear that I use only for wildfires. While my local volunteer fire co supplies me with brush fire PPE, I cannot use that for forestry. I have assumed that this is the same throughout the country and nothing I have heard would indicate a contrary situation. When I go to the various fire fighter conventions and talk to those who sell wildfire PPE, they seem to be dealing mainly with individuals not departments. I do believe that the US forestry supplies gear at least during training. But it would not surprise me if states do not, mine doesn't supply even half of the gear needed. My nomex shirt cost over $100.00 and the state does not want us to put patches on our own shirts! Of course no one payes attention to that but that is what they want.

I'm amazed that those who have little or nothing to do with the fire service have an actual understanding of how things work. No one on this board was complaining when Gov Rendell cut out air drops for wildfires in PA a few years ago. Pukes suck, the gov of tx sucks more but the threads on this fire in TX are based on a lot of inaccurate information. So go ahead and throw rocks at me but what I'm saying is true.