Firefighters flock to TEEX’s 93rd annual municipal fire school

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Fire and smoke blew through the hot Texas air Tuesday morning as firefighters from throughout the country gathered at the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service’s headquarters in College Station.

It marked the second day of TEEX’s 93rd annual weeklong municipal training school, where firefighters are taught by professionals in hands-on, live-fire exercises ranging from simulated oil tanker wrecks to gas and chemical disasters. With nearly 1,000 students, 300 guest instructors and the TEEX staff, the annual training had around 1,500 participants, according to the TEEX Emergency Services Training Institute Division Director Gordon Lohmeyer.

The municipal school will put on a public demonstration Wednesday so that community members can see what the live-fire exercises look like. The event will take place at the TEEX Brayton Fire Training Field, with gates opening at 6:30 p.m. and the event starting at 7:30.

Lohmeyer, who joined TEEX in 2004, said safety is always their top priority, especially with temperatures reaching well over 100 degrees for the past several weeks.

“We have a flag system correlated to the actual temperature and relative humidity that our medics watch,” Lohmeyer said. “We could go from a green flag to a yellow flag to a red flag condition and that dictates our work-rest cycles and water intake.”

The recent heatwave also has led to Lohmeyer and the on-site paramedics implementing new safety measures this year, including cooling tents and shelters that each have four air conditioning units.

On Tuesday, some of the local instructors also practiced their memorial ceremony, which takes place annually every Wednesday morning during the municipal school. The ceremony honors guest instructors who had served more than 10 years at the school before dying, Lohmeyer said.

“We’re anticipating over 100 family members that will come in to participate in that service,” he said. “It’s our chance to recognize their unique contribution that they’ve made to our students.”

Large amounts of water are used throughout the live-fire exercises, and because Brazos County is currently in a drought condition, Lohmeyer said TEEX uses a closed loop system that filters and recycles all the water they use.

“We are a closed loop system, but we do have the opportunity, through a state permit, to outfall,” Lohmeyer said. “During drought conditions like this, we try to stay totally contained where we’re making up minimal water … we can flow up to 2 million gallons per day.”

Terry Stanford, a guest instructor for 10 years, said he always enjoys coming to TEEX to teach.

“[It’s] amazing, I love coming here every year,” Stanford said. “It’s really nice to get to meet new firefighters and those who have years of experience … I look forward to seeing new things every year.”

Stanford, who is also a driver for a heavy rescue, hazardous materials and spec-ops team in Frisco, was at a training site Tuesday that simulated a crashed train oil tanker that had caught on fire.

“Things tend to get a lot worse really fast,” Stanford said. “So it’s really important to keep the cars cool so you don’t have a tank rupture and make the fire bigger or [cause] a bigger release of hazardous material in the city.”

Dealing with the heat while wearing all of their fire equipment can be a challenge, Stanford said, and it has caused them to have to shorten their burn time during training to keep everyone hydrated.

Sophia Rivera, a firefighter from Bexar County, said it was her first time attending the TEEX municipal school after joining the profession nearly two years ago. Rivera and her practice team ran drills on an oil tank and pipe work that simulates a fire at an industrial site.

Even though Rivera’s department in Bexar County mostly deals with residential fires, she said it’s important to have training in all types of situations in case they ever have to help another department in a worst-case scenario.

“For my department we have a little bit of everything,” Rivera said. “It’s good to know how to go about fires that happen in this type of setting. That way, if we were to do mutual aid we wouldn’t just be walking into it not having a general idea of what to do, or how to go about it.”