By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-985000.mp3
Dallas, TX – Beginning this morning, an elite federal fire team takes command of the Bastrop wildfire, the worst blaze in Texas history. A Federal grant will now pay for most of it, as requested by the Texas Forest Service. Recent state wildfires have killed at least four people, consumed hundreds of homes, thousands of acres and blackened most of Bastrop State Park. KERA's Bill Zeeble has more.
Texas Forest Service: Active Fire Map
First responders are always local fire departments, says Melissa Yunas, with the Texas Forest Service. And she says most of them are volunteers.
Yunas: They try to handle them themselves and then if they're unable to and they require assistance then they call out the Texas Forest Service.
Yunas says the state service has access to elite Texas fire-fighting teams, the National Guard, and heavy equipment like helicopters, plows and bull dozers.
Yunas: Here in Texas you fight fires with a dozer and a plow, basically farm equipment. The local fire departments use water to get rid of the heat. The Texas Forest Service uses a dozer to remove the fuel element which is the vegetation. And what they do is they take a dozer, go around the fire, encircle it, and that's how you get a containment percentage.
If more help is needed - and Yunas says that's been the case in Texas for months - the call goes out to other states and the federal government. Well, more help is needed. Melissa Yunas? She's actually helping Texas on loan from her day job in Florida.
After requests this past weekend, FEMA approved fire management assistance grant dollars that will cover 75 percent of state and local firefighting costs in seven different counties. That includes Bastrop. Funding also brings in a group of elite fire fighters from Texas and a dozen other states. They make up the Red team and Rudy Evenson is the spokesperson. He's on loan from a Park Service job in Atlanta.
Evenson: So we have people on the team who are experts in finance, logistics, aircraft operations, structure protection, all kinds of different fire fighting expertise.
Evenson says the Red Team leader is Tony Wilder, from his Department of the Interior job in Mississippi. Wilder officially takes over today, as the growing crew of local, state and federal firefighters battle to save lives and property in the face of the Bastrop blaze.