“We really saw the best of the community that night. It wasn’t just firefighters helping out, it was neighbors rescuing neighbors,” Battalion Chief Scott Roseberry said of the actions he witnessed on Dec. 26 after Garland was hit by an EF4 tornado.
Garland’s first responders had already been taxed twice as two major flooding events caused widespread damage. And in May, two men were shot by police after an alleged ISIS terror attack at the Curtis Culwell Center.
“We’ve had a lot of practice this year with the three major incidents and we knew we had a lot of incident command experience, but this was just overwhelming.”
Garland has 60 firefighters on-duty at 11 fire stations operating with six engines, five quints (trucks), 11 ambulances and two battalion chiefs who divide the city north and south.
When reports of severe weather were coming in, Battalion 2 Chief Scott Roseberry reached out to Battalion 1. Based on a two majors flooding events in the city earlier in 2015, the two decided that Battalion 1 would work with the 911 center to prioritize calls and deploy the appropriate assignments while Battalion 2 would remain in the field.
“We had just finished dinner and we were going to play cornhole to see who was going to the dishes when the sirens went off,” Roseberry recalled of the moments before EF4 tornado hit his city.