Can a brother get a red card?!

Ok, so I'm wondering about the ever-elusive red card, I've just got to have one. I say elusive because I live in Texas, and we seem to be kind of a joke to the rest of the nation in the wildland arena, given that we've got a state full of clowns riding on grill guards of their type 6's, non compliant tenders, etc. having been a structure guy for 6 years, I'm admittedly late to the WUI party, but I'm trying to catch up. By the end of the month I should have S-212, L-280, and FFT-1. We have a certifying organization for statewide assignments I can go into later, but I'm sticking to NWCG curriculum because I'd REALLY love to get red carded. Every person I talk to, I get the old "it's impossible" answer, but the thing they all have in common is they've all got a red card. I see the glass ceiling here, and I'm not complaining about it, I just want to know how to get in the club. Any fish and wildlife people in here? Who's yard to I have to show up and mow?? I've heard from some forest service people that the infrastructure existed at one time in Texas, but they were not getting the commitment they needed from their carded staff, and scaled it down. My dept. is very gracious when it comes to honoring out of state or mutual aid type assignments, so I feel that every day is a wasted opportunity to gain invaluable experience and bring back to my home region. Any wildland gurus out there ever been in my shoes??

Go talk to the local fish and wildlife/texas forest service/ and usfs -also any tribes near you. Tell them you would be glad to help teach the structural aspect of wui type situations in exchange for them sponsoring you. And before you do that , take down your post about your state being a "joke". And make sure your own step is swept off.

I'm definitely not trash talking the great state of Texas my friend. I dont think we're a joke, but thats been the assesment of more full time, well traveled wildland guys than i can count. I'm ok with getting made fun of if we're going to be taught the right way to do things, which is something we're seeing much more of these days.

Your first stop should be the Texas Forest Service, they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Texas is kind of light in Federal Land Management agencies, but I do know there is some representation from the US Fish & Wildlife, National Park Service, and US Forest Service (I think in that order).

If the TFS can't help you the Feds would be your next stop, but training and certification of Texas fire departments is a big part of the TFS' mission so I can't imagine they won't be able to take care of you.

I've had some really great news on this in the past few days. I've been attending the Capital Area Wildfire Incident management academy in bastrop, Texas this week and it's been really great. After a couple days of talking to my instructor (who's a freaking l33t helicopter manager, and usfs full time FF), she called her FMO and got a verbal 'ok' for me and a few of my buddies that are FFT2 and S212 qualified from neighboring stations to help the U.S. Forest Service with RX burning on about 160K acres. Apparently they use helo mounted plastic sphere dispensers and the whole shebang. I'm pumped! Should be pretty helpful for the taskbook, not to mention the experience gain. I have not broached the subject of being sponsored by the agency. They've never had 'volunteers' so to speak, so I don't want to give them the wrong impression. I figure I'll show up and bust my butt for a while before I let them know I'm interested. All in all very exciting.

The Feds don't really have volunteers in fire, typically even if we are using volunteer firefighters from a local department we will pay them as an AD (on call) employee.

Good luck, RX fires are a great place to learn a lot about fire behavior, because you are lighting fire and letting it do its thing, herding it around and slowing it down here and there, but not aggressively putting it out.