Thursday evening, Houston Fire Department wildland firefighters who are deployed in Southern California held a brief online call to discuss their experiences fighting the fires in the area.
HFD Senior Capt. A.J. Castillo was joined by engineer operators Jonathan Williams, Chris Mixon and Travis Hobbs.
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The four firefighters first explained that their assignment in California was not mandatory, and they chose to take the 23-hour drive in a specialized fire engine to fight the fires.
Texas has had its own experience with wildfires in recent memory, as more than a million acres across the Texas Panhandle in early March of 2024. KPRC 2′s Michael Horton asked the firefighters to compare those wildfires to what first responders are seeing now on the West Coast.
They said the biggest factor that makes these fires different is the population density of Southern California.
Michael Horton: How does the experience fighting these fires compare to what we saw in the Texas Panhandle fires last year?
HFD’s Chris Mixon: The main differences I’d say, is that, with the Texas Panhandle fires, you have low, flashy fuels, a lot of wind, and a lot of flat ground, so [the fire] moves quick with the wind. I’ll say, it was such a massive area in [the case of] the Texas Panhandle fires—I’m not sure how many acres, but I’m pretty sure it was... over a million. If you take that wide area, and you compare it to the destruction in California, just the houses alone, the destruction is a lot greater in California... It’s a lot more densely populated.
Michael Horton: Would you say that—I know you mentioned the population—are there other specific elements that makes fighting these fires unique to the area?
Travis Hobbs: Fire likes to travel uphill, and you have a lot of hills and mountains here, so all that heat and energy transfers very quickly up those slopes.
Jonathan Williams: We’ve been told how fast it moved through the hills, and it’s truly incredible. People barely had time to move.
