By Jennifer Rios
The San Angelo Standard-Times
QUAIL VALLEY, Texas — Garrett Crimm, 16, crouched over his desk late last week and caught up on algebra homework after missing class for several days.
But the Grape Creek High School sophomore hadn’t played hooky. In fact, he had one of the best excuses ever: he had spent four days fighting perhaps the biggest fire this area has seen.
Garrett’s mother, Shelly Crimm, said she usually doesn’t let her children skip school, but nine days ago, when the Wildcat Fire threatened her family’s Quail Valley home, her son joined the hundreds of men and women who battled the blaze.
“It was a hard call to make,” she said, but this was no ordinary fire, and it required an extraordinary response.
Every night she would call or text, reminding Garrett to brush his teeth, making sure he slept or just checking on his safety.
Garrett, one of the youngest Wildcat firefighters, received no special treatment; like everyone else, he caught sleep on fire trucks, went without bathing and took orders from those higher in command, including his father, Shane Crimm, San Angelo’s regional fire coordinator with the Texas Forest Service.
“He hasn’t really been my dad for about a week,” Garrett said. “He’s been my boss.”
After taking on one of the largest and least manageable wildfires the area has ever experienced, they were relieved from the Wildcat on Tuesday night. Butch Crimm, fire chief for the Quail Valley Volunteer Fire Department and Garrett’s grandfather, said that when the fires aren’t burning, his volunteers work in the oil fields and as truck drivers and repairmen. For Garrett, the end of firefighting meant returning to roughhousing with his younger sisters and playing video games with his best friend.
For others, the order to go home, sleep and enjoy their normal lives meant returning to their day jobs. Jason Hill and his wife, Dawn, left their children with friends so they could join the members of their other “family” in the Quail Valley Volunteer Fire Department.
The couple had an arrangement that one of them would stay at home when a call for help came, but like the Crimms, they knew the department would need everyone it could get for this fire. Local departments had just returned from three days at the Encino Fire, which earlier in the week had sizzled across about 13,000 acres in northwest Tom Green County. They took a one-day break, then were dispatched to the Wildcat. Jason Hill’s 30th birthday, which fell on Saturday a week ago, was celebrated nonetheless, Dawn’s niece made the firefighters chocolate cupcakes. Volunteer Cory Lerma joked that the department’s members spent days together marking the birthday, but that the candle, the Wildcat Fire, proved tricky to extinguish. “Next time blow it out quicker,” he told Hill.
Despite the fatigue, fear the flames would threaten their neighborhoods and the personal financial sacrifice from buying fuel for vehicles, most volunteers said they would do it again in a heartbeat. When radio traffic crackles, ears sensitive to those calls for help tune in.
“We’re ready to go at any point,” Lerma said. “As soon as that call comes in, our trucks roll. That’s just the way it is.”
Employers who see their volunteer workers disappear from the workplace for days at a time to fight fires exhibit varying degrees of understanding, volunteers found out last week.
“It depends on how close the fire gets to their business,” Butch Crimm said jokingly.
Crimm, who works in the oil field, said his boss told him “go do whatever you need to do.”
John Bouligny, Dove Creek volunteer firefighter, also works dispatch for the city of San Angelo. At the Encino Fire, he would work eight hours at his job, then pull an eight-hour fire shift. At one point he worked 30 hours straight.
“That’s just part of it,” he said. “You’ll never catch us complaining about it because we volunteer for it.”
Bouligny said the department is lucky because he and two others don’t have “normal day jobs,” making it possible to pull half a crew together for daytime calls.
The departments receive some money from the county, but they also depend on fundraisers to get them through the year. As the Wildcat Fire raged, Concho Valley residents sent supplies and money along with their best wishes.
In fire stations across the county last week, refrigerators and tables were stacked with fresh fruit, granola bars and trail mix. In Quail Valley, the women’s bathroom was used to store cases of water.
Tom Green County Treasurer Dianna Spieker said the department was designated as the main collector for all Wildcat Fire donations. If a donor specifies an agency for support, that’s where the money will go. All general funds will be divided among local volunteer fire departments.
“Of course, everything is still kind of winding down,” Spieker said Thursday. “The first response is to take care of the (fire), the second is to do all the paperwork.”
The Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office has collected $2,500, Spieker said. Grape Creek Volunteer Fire Department reported raising about $18,000, she said. A meeting is scheduled for Monday to start a formal count of money raised.
“Our citizens have got to be the best,” Spieker said. “People who live in West Texas have big hearts.”
Butch Crimm also was impressed with the community’s support, and the response joins the multitude of sensations and emotions he has experienced since the blaze began.
On his way back from a fire call Thursday Crimm pointed to the miles of charred pasture bordering his community. When the Wildcat was raging, he said, along those hills all you could see were flames. While driving along State Highway 208 he recalled an odd sight; smoke clouding everything but the road, which was bright orange with reflected fire.
In his 22 years with the department, he said he’s seen two other major fires - one four years ago that burned 200,000 acres, another near the Rocker B Ranch that destroyed 50,000. This fire came at a time when state resources already were stretched thin, he said. It had enough fuel, arid climate and changing winds to make it the most difficult to fight.
Since the Wildcat, Crimm said he’s had people approach him to inquire about joining the department.
“It’s a shame it takes something like this happening to bring people out,” he said. “We might have six in six months, and now we’ve had six in six days.”
Still, Crimm tells people wanting to volunteer to think twice - slow periods with few calls could be followed by an inferno.
“It’s not something that happens all the time,” he said. “Thank God.”
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