Florida firefighters are in Texas right now, helping the recovery there from that recent deadly winter storm.
It turns out helping after a major hurricane is valuable experience to assist there. “We do what we do because we love it. We do what we do because we’re passionate about this work. This isn’t just our job, this is who we are,” said Ludie Bond, a public information officer from Gainesville with the Florida Forest Service (FFS).
She’s part of the 30-member team from the FFS that left Florida last Saturday, and took over the food and water distribution at the Randolph Air Force Base outside of San Antonio Monday morning. “Mostly it is that experience that we can bring,” said John Kern, the incident commander who lives just north of Tampa.
They’re all trained on a national incident command system with the same terms and organizational structure to be boots on the ground help anywhere. “We can be plugged into any type of emergency,” Kern said.