Firefighters start District 9 VFD after City of Howardwick dissolves dept.

HOWARDWICK, Texas (KFDA) - After being sued by the City of Howardwick, firefighters there are starting a new volunteer department that’ll mainly respond to incidents outside the city limits.

The District 9 Volunteer Fire Department started a month ago after receiving approval from the Donley County Commissioners’ Court.

It will respond to areas north of Howardwick going toward I-40 and mainly west on the interstate.

“We got together and started talking about it and wanted to help the county out a lot more and relieve Clarendon of some of the traffic that they have to do since we would have a closer and faster response time to a lot of the ranches out here,” said the Assistant Fire Chief, Coy Cooper. “The ranchers that we have north have a lot of grassland and farmland and run cattle on them, and we want to be able to help them respond to every citizen of Donley County and surrounding neighborhoods, such as McLean, Groom, Claude.”

The volunteer fire department currently has 22 members.

“We have four that are SCBA certified that they could go into a burning house and we also have four certified divers, and we’re putting a dive team together to help out the other dive teams in the area since we have three lakes here,” said Cooper. “We got Lake Greenbelt, we have McClellan Lake, and we have the lake over at Claude.”

This weekend, the firefighters raised $1,100 in their first community fundraiser for a building.

They’ll also be picking up a gear in Amarillo this week courtesy of the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“We’re working with the state also on a 90-10 program which they would pay 90%, and we have to come up with 10%, and we’re trying to get that done as soon as possible so that we can get our vehicles from Texas A&M Forest Service,” said Cooper.

They've already requested various types of trucks from the Forest Service, but as of right now, they are only equipped for traffic assistance.

“We’re requesting it all, and we’ll get what we can get, and we’ll go from there,” said Cooper.

The City of Howardwick is also starting its volunteer fire department to respond within city limits. Its members are currently undergoing familiarization training.

Members of the District 9 Volunteer Fire Department said at the end of the day, it’s all about keeping their community safe.

“There are no personal vendettas here. There’s no hate back and forth on our side. We’re here to protect the citizens of Donley County," said Cooper.

“I go out there and volunteer my life, my time my everything to make sure that the people around me are protected and I stand behind that 100 percent,” said IT Manager, Chris Reuter.

Until the City of Howardwick Volunteer Fire Department is up and running, the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department will respond to incidents within city limits.

District 9 Firefighters are also accepting donations for the construction of their building.

For more information or to donate to District 9, residents are urged to head over to their Facebook.

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