CANADIAN, Texas – When wildfires spark up, it doesn’t take much to turn them from a small burn into a raging inferno.
Texas saw first hand how quickly a combination of low humidity and high winds can drive a fire to historic proportions.
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It was one year ago that the 2024 Texas Panhandle fires started. That includes the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest wildfire to ever burn in the Lone Star State, consuming more than one million acres of land.
In the year since the devastating fire, a state-led investigative committee found that the state doesn’t own any aerial firefighting planes or helicopters.
Not a single one.
Currently, the state will contract with companies to respond to wildfires, or put companies on an “exclusive use” contract, which is the quickest current response time.
In that report, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd proposed spending $500 million to purchase helicopters and planes to create a state-owned and operated aerial firefighting team.
“Chief Kidd testified that as a starting point, the state should purchase four fixed-wing aircraft, two rotary-wing aircraft, and a command aircraft. The committee believes the number and type of aircraft should be the subject of additional evaluation. An early mix of exclusive use contracts and procurement is estimated to cost in excess of $500 million plus ongoing staffing and maintenance,” the report reads.
During the wildfires in 2024, there was a delay getting planes and helicopters to the rough terrain of the Panhandle.
However, there were a few helicopters working to stop the fire from spreading.
“We taught ourselves what we’ve got. We had zero aerial firefighting training,” said Trey Webb of Canadian, Texas.
He and his friend Jason Abraham both own helicopters and volunteer their time, their years of experience and their own money to fight the flames from their community and others around the region.
“It totally clear cut our property. It burned 100% of our grass brush trees,” Webb said, speaking about his ranch, which was nearly all but destroyed.
The two took KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding on a first-hand tour of their operation during a trip to the Panhandle, including simulating dropping water on a wildfire.
“It’s taking all the power I’ve got to fly out of this thing,” Abraham said.
The bucket dangling below the helicopter, called a bambi bucket, holds 72 gallons of water.
It might not seem like a lot, but when it dumps on the ground, it can do some damage.
Jason Abraham: “It’s about 25ft wide and about 250ft long.”
Gage Goulding: “That right there could do more than what, a dozen firefighters on the ground can do.”
Jason Abraham: “Yeah, and we can make it rapid. We don’t run out of water.”
In the small towns that dot the Panhandle, like Canadian, Fritch and Stinnett, all of which were burned by the Panhandle fires, it’s not hards to find people who are willing to pay up for the protection.
“Absolutely,” said Charles Clark, a volunteer firefighter in Stinnett, Texas, who lost his home to the fires.
“I say yes because I feel like if we could have got planes here sooner,” added Jennifer Walker, who lost her family’s house in Fritch, Texas.
The guys who volunteer their time and money to fight the fires agree.
“We need to have our own resources here in Texas to support Texas,” Abraham said. “We need to have it were whenever we call Austin, there’s planes flying in five minutes. We could have had it out, but we didn’t have any aircraft.”
There has been no official action taken to form a Texas state-owned and operated aerial firefighting team.
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