I have lived in Fort Worth, TX, just over six years, having lived in St. Paul, MN, for about nine years prior. With the Twin Cities in my rearview mirror as I left the day after Thanksgiving, I was leaving behind almost two feet of accumulated snow on the ground.
My first winter in Fort Worth was mild, except for a two-day winter storm that dropped barely two inches of snow and brought temperatures in the teens and 20s. What caught me by surprise was the ice. The roads, including elevated roads and bridges, were covered with one or two inches of ice. It resulted in hundreds of crashes and water leak runs around the area.
Fast forward six years to Feb. 11, 2021. At about 6:30 a.m., I heard multiple companies dispatched to Interstate 35W just north of downtown Fort Worth for a serious crash. As time went on, it became evident that crash was of epic proportions; it ended up being a 130-vehicle pileup, with six dead and dozens injured. The incident required a large amount of resources and hours to mitigate. The story was national news for days, until Winter Storm Uri rolled into Texas.
With advanced warning of the severe storm, the fire department, police department and office of emergency management of Fort Worth put many plans into place. Once the storm hit and stalled, those plans were enacted, but the severity of the weather brought even more challenges.
“We had to think outside the norm,” Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis shared with me the week after.
On the average day, the Fort Worth Fire Department makes 300–350 runs. The first three days of Uri, it made more than 2,000 runs daily, including multiple working fires, crashes, welfare checks and EMS runs. Broken domestic water pipes and water mains resulted in many fire-alarm activations.
At fires, hoselines, pumps and tanks froze. Hydrants froze, which forced crews to do things differently.
Fort Worth stood up crews to staff nine newly created salvage units that investigated water leaks, to limit damage by shutting off water mains. The units ran around the clock for days and helped to save the belongings of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. In the same vein, the department used academy recruits who had previous fire service experience to help overwhelmed dispatchers. They contacted 9-1-1 callers who had water leaks and walked them through the steps to shut off water service to their structure, which Davis said was successful more than 200 times and freed up crews.
Water main breaks created low water pressure in many neighborhoods, which resulted in extra companies on fires to ensure water supply but also to rotate out crews from subfreezing temperatures. They moved tankers from areas without disruption to water service to places where water main breaks or plant outages left areas without a source of water from hydrants.
Recruits also were taken to fire scenes to help with overhaul and cleanup, giving the cold and exhausted firefighters a break.
Davis added that the storm created a community problem that required a community solution. That solution came from meeting business owners long before, who helped with providing water, food and other essentials to people in the community. As the weather improved, recruits were then assigned to help at water distribution sites.
Davis shared three key takeaways: trust in the department’s personnel, building community relations before it’s needed and taking care of your personnel. The department made sure assistance was available for firefighters and their families after one of the most challenging weeks in their career. “If I ask them to take care of the public, we need to set up things to take care of them,” he said.
What happened in Fort Worth is just one of thousands of stories from the storm that affected all of Texas and moved east.
I checked in with San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood, who sits on the Firehouse Editorial Advisory Board. He shared several efforts that his department enacted, including: deployment of oxygen refill units to help residents who lost power to keep their life-saving oxygen supplies flowing; and creation of rehabilitation units to keep firefighters warm at fire scenes but also to offer residents shelter from the elements as fire took their homes. Fire cadets were placed into service in special units to allow firefighters to staff frontline units, and clinical dispatchers were increased to eliminate responses where possible.
If there’s one thing that the fire service learned from the pandemic, it’s that things change faster than ever. From Feb. 11–18, the Texas fire service took on even more roles and continued to be the shining stars of their respective communities because of ongoing training and preparedness.
Peter Matthews | Editor-in-Chief/Conference Director
Peter Matthews is the conference director and editor-in-chief of Firehouse. He has worked at Firehouse since 1999, serving in various roles on both Firehouse Magazine and Firehouse.com staffs. He completed an internship with the Rochester, NY, Fire Department and served with fire departments in Rush, NY, and Laurel, MD, and was a lieutenant with the Glenwood Fire Company in Glenwood, NY. Matthews served as photographer for the St. Paul, MN, Fire Department.
