City of Killeen Fire personnel held a press conference on Friday and shared their experience following a recent two-week deployment to Southern California, where they assisted crews with wildfire coverage.
Fire Captains Jason Wuest, Marcus Stillwell, and Chris Poston, along with Morgan’s Point Fire Captain Katharine Meyers, deployed on January 11 and returned on January 27 after providing support during a tragic event that prompted evacuation orders for 200,000 people in Los Angeles County.
“Working wildfires in California is vastly different than what we do in Texas,” Poston reporters at the press conference. “The terrain is different, the way they operate is a little different.”
The Killeen Fire team deployed to Los Angeles to staff a fire engine as a part of an Emergency Management Assistance Compact request, which is a part of a national mutual aid system connected with the Texas Division of Emergency Management agency.
During Friday's press conference, the firefighters detailed their preparation for deployment, the conditions they encountered, and the mental challenges they faced.
“During this event they had peer support set up for all the first responders that were there,” Wuest said. “They had teams ready for anybody that needed the help. To have that set up that quickly, that was amazing to see. Those are thing you usually don’t see upfront at an incident like that. It’s usually something that happens afterwards.”
They also discussed the lessons learned from the wildfires and emphasized the crucial support provided by their spouses throughout the deployment.
“One of the best ways for me personally to combat the devastation is to think about all the love and support we had while we were there,” Poston said. “From the minute we left to the entire time we were in California, we were getting waves and ‘thank yous.’
The full press conference can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OgJMf7yqFE. To learn more about the Fire Department visit www.killeentexas.gov/fire.