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.