Fire union prez: Chief blocked Kerrville rescue

Austin Firefighters Association president Bob Nicks has leveled an explosive allegation against Austin Fire Chief Joel Baker, accusing the chief of preventing his firefighters from assisting in rescue operations in Kerrville.

"LIVES WERE VERY LIKELY LOST BECAUSE OF CHIEF BAKER’S DECISION!" wrote Nicks on the union's Facebook page this morning.

He continued:

"Deployment orders came down from the State of Texas on July 2. We would've been pre-deployed before the waters even began to rise! It is unforgivable that a fire chief would NOT allow his firefighters to answer the call to save lives. Why would Fire Chief Joel G. Baker do this, you may ask? It was a misguided attempt to save money. I say 'misguided' because the fire department is fully reimbursed by the state to deploy. I explained the reimbursement process to Chief Baker last week, and he failed to understand this very simple concept."

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Kerr County at 1:18 pm on July 3 and local authorities began to issue flash food warnings that night. The catastrophic flooding did not begin, however, until the early morning of July 4.

In a phone interview this afternoon, Nicks said he expected the city to claim it never received a request for assistance from the state. This is disingenuous, he said. Texas A&M Taskforce 1, the state's FEMA Urban Search & Rescue Task Force, first makes unofficial requests to agencies throughout the state via a GroupMe chat before submitting a request through official channels. On July 2, said Nicks, both AFD and Austin Travis County EMS denied the request. On July 3, TX-TF1 made another request –– this time EMS accepted but AFD again said no.

EMS has not yet responded to a request to confirm those details.

Ideally, said Nicks, AFD would have had three or four boat crews –– each with 4-6 people –– deployed to the area by July 3rd, "before even one inch of rain had fallen."

Nicks said that AFD boasts arguably the best water rescue operation in Texas and is regularly called upon to assist in storm events all over the state.

"Someone on the spec ops said 'we got to do something,'" recalled Nicks. "'He said we have Black Hawk helicopters that are grounded because we have no rescue swimmers.' And that's [Austin's] specialty."

After relentless lobbying from one firefighter "risking retaliation," said Nicks, the chief finally approved three rescue swimmers on the 4th, after the extent of the devastation had become apparent. Today, after AFA put up the Facebook post and Nicks spoke to the assistant city manager who oversees AFD, a team of seven structural collapse specialists were approved to deploy. They arrived on scene this afternoon.

In a statement provided by AFD, Baker said "the decision about how to allocate resources to help our fellow Texans is not a simple one" and that the department "must also prioritize having sufficient resources in our own community given the unpredictability of this weekend's storms and the risk for catastrophic flooding in our immediate area."

He noted that AFD sent two crews over the weekend to assist with devastating floods occurring in western Travis County, outside of AFD's jurisdiction.

Nicks noted a key difference between the help sent elsewhere in Travis County and deployments to Kerrville. In the first case, the department simply ordered on-duty firefighters to go elsewhere in the county during their shifts. It doesn't cost the department any money and reduces the number of on-duty resources in the city. That is in contrast to a deployment, where off-duty staff are called upon at additional cost and often sent to work for an extended period of time.

Nicks said Baker was sticking to a standing order he issued a month ago suspending deployments to other jurisdictions. A June 6 email written by Division Chief Andre Jordan justifies the decision in fiscal terms. Even if the deployments were reimbursed by the state, he wrote, the state has been slow to pay the city what it is owed:

"The City is facing a budget crisis, and there is currently something like $800,000 in outstanding reimbursements owed to AFD by the State of Texas.  The City wants to make sure this money is reimbursed before the end of the fiscal year, and does not want to be in a situation where additional money is expended on deployments and is not recouped before the end of the fiscal year."

In a postscript, Jordan said, "the argument that AFD 'makes money' on deployments is moot because this is a cashflow problem, and has little to do with the amount being reimbursed. "

The union is holding a press conference tomorrow at 11 am. It is planning to hold a no confidence vote on Baker. Such an expression of discontent from the rank-and-file would put pressure on the city manager to push the chief out.

Nicks pins the blame almost entirely on Baker, rather than City Manager T.C. Broadnax or Assistant City Manager Eddie Garcia, who oversees the public safety departments. He said that while city management could have been more attentive to the situation, it was Baker's decision to suspend deployments and not deploy to Kerrville.

The union and chief have certainly butted heads in the past, as is to be expected. However, there has never been anything approaching this level of open hostility.

Nicks said that he would not have considered calling for Baker's head until now, but called the chief "incompetent" and a "bully."

This blowup is occurring while the union is engaged in contract negotiations with the city. Nicks said he expects it to make his negotiating position harder, but ousting a fire chief would certainly be a show of strength.

If somebody forwarded you this email, please consider subscribing to the newsletter by visiting the website.