By John MacCormack
The San Antonio Express-News
COTULLA, Texas — It was just a few years back when the Eagle Ford oil boom was rolling like a tidal wave across unprepared, rural South Texas that LaSalle County Judge Joel Rodriguez realized local volunteer fire fighters and contract ambulance crews were being overwhelmed.
“We’d have groups of people come into commissioners court wanting better ambulance service. The volume of calls was so high that they weren’t keeping up,” Rodriguez recalled.
The judge saw it with his own eyes when he caught a ride with a state trooper responding to a terrible accident on heavily traveled Interstate 35 which cuts through the county. When firemen arrived at the scene they were already worse for the wear.
“Their eyes were all puffy. They had been a couple of days without sleep, taking calls back to back. I realized we couldn’t keep going at that pace,” he recalled.
The county moved swiftly to deal with the problem and now budgets about $2.5 million a year for fire and ambulance service, almost ten times what it spent before.
It hired its first paid professional firefighter in late 2013. There are now 20 full-timers, who commute from San Antonio, Austin, Laredo and elsewhere, backed by 25 on-call part-timers. All are certified in both fire-fighting and emergency medical service.
“The Texas Department of Health helped us tremendously with our ambulance service,” said David Nickell, assistant fire chief, a veteran of the volunteer force.
The department also has a new $825,000 rescue truck, two new brush trucks and five ambulances, with various energy companies having donated funds for the equipment purchases.
On Monday, a new $2 million fire and EMS station was officially dedicated before a clutch of local dignitaries. The four-bay, nicely appointed facility, built next to a new natatorium and baseball complex, is expected to open in a month or two.
Michelle Joseph, a principal in Dallas-based Soteria Solutions which has been working with the county since 2013 to establish its new fire and EMS service, bragged that LaSalle County’s response time for calls now beats the national average.
“In many ways, LaSalle County is a test case for the rest of the state. They need to upgrade and restruture their fire and EMS to meet response demands and compliance guidelines,” she said in a press release.
“This is something all of our clients take very seriously in the aftermath of the West chemical explosion, which decimated that small town,” she added in the release.
Fifteen people — most of them first responders — died in the April 17, 2013 explosion at the West Fertlizer Plant, north of Waco, which stored large quantities of amonium nitrate. More than 200 people were injured and more than 300 homes damaged by the blast.
The cause of the fire that triggered the explosion — estimated to have equaled 10 tons of TNT — was never established.
And while nothing of that tragic dimension has occurred across the two dozen counties that have been transformed by the Eagle Ford Shale boom, there has been no shortage of deadly fires and explosions, as well as fatal vehicle accidents.
For example, in 2010, the year before the boom started taking off, there were 89 crashes in LaSalle County, including four with fatalities. Two years later, there were 253 crashes, with nine involving fatalities, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
Far more serious have been the oil field accidents, and LaSalle fire fighters are quick to offer cell phone photos of some of the worst. The deadliest came in 2014 when five people died at a Pioneer Natural Resources well site on the eastern side of the county.
A spectacular gas line explosion in Encinal last October sent a 100-foot pillar of fire into the sky. Another big tank battery explosion occurred in Encinal three months ago, but neither took any lives.
“This is my philosophy: If you didn’t get killed in the initial explosion, you’re OK,” said Nickell.
And even though the boom has subsided with the steep drop in crude prices, there are still many more serious calls than before it hit.
“I think we have over 4,000 well sites in the county. We’re still vulnerable. We’re getting calls from almost 1,500 square miles,” he added.
Nickell is still affiliated with Cotulla’s volunteer department but said that even before the boom arrived, it was clear the force did not have the manpower or equipment to handle big emergencies.
“In 2007, a brush fire burned through Cotulla. It burned for three days, and we used every firefighter we could find plus anyone who wanted to help. One of the firefighters lost his house in the fire,” he recalled.
The dramatic surge in calls that came with the oil boom only confirmed the need for change, he said.
“We were lucky if we got three people to respond to a call. Normally it was one. Sometimes it was me, and sometimes it was Johnny Gomez or E. T. Page. The change has been from night to day,” said Nickell of becoming a professional fire department.
Now there are seven fire-fighter/paramedics on duty at all times, including two in a sub-station in Encinal, 30 miles away. The three crews each work two days followed by four days off.
For the out-of-town urban professionals who commute to Cotulla, 90 miles south of San Antonio, the small-town experience is both challenging and rewarding.
Their duties range from dealing with the dramatic — raging oilfield fires and gruesome wrecks on I-35 — to the mundane, making house checks on chronically ill residents and unlocking motorist’s cars.
There was even a kitten stuck in the dryer duct call, with a cell phone video as proof.
“It’s a completely different ball game down here. It’s literally like the wild west of EMS. And the hats you wear here are many compared to the bigger systems,” said Jimmy Smith, 46, a senior paramedic, who had worked for University Hospital EMS.
“In San Antonio you’ve always got a hospital five minutes away. Here, the closest one is 20 miles away,” said Smith.
Another veteran of urban service, Acting Lt. Joshua Vorheier, 26, said, “In Bexar County, we don’t see near as many trauma and bad calls as we do here.”
And unlike San Antonio, where different fire stations respond to different kinds of calls, he said, “Down here, we’re the Swiss Army Knife. We do all the calls.”
And now that the county’s fire and medical system is up and running, with a new station soon to open, plans are underway to establish an EMS and fire training facility to serve area cities and counties.
“We’ll be submitting our application for the EMS grant by the end of next week. It will be an EMT basic course covering 140 hours,” said Smith, who will be an instructor.
A person who successfully completes both the EMS course and the fire course, would be qualified to take tests to get a job with a fire station, EMS unit or a hospital.
The program will be especially helpful to the many volunteer firefighters across South Texas who remain the first line of defense against dangerous emergencies, he said.
“You can live and die by your volunteers. They are not getting paid. They get little or no accolades for it, and they often don’t get formal training. We’re trying to bridge that gap,” he added.
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