Austin Fire Chief Joel Baker is in hot water over his failure to immediately deploy the city's employees and resources to Kerr County ahead of and during the historic floods that ravaged the Texas Hill Country over the weekend. Kerr County is roughly two hours west of Austin via US-290.
In an interview with the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Firefighters Association President Bob Nicks said Chief Baker denied informal requests from Kerr County on both Wednesday, July 2, and Thursday, July 3. When Nicks began texting Baker, he claims the chief was unresponsive. Finally, on the afternoon of July 4, three Austin Fire Department rescue swimmers were deployed to the area.
Nicks took to the union's Facebook page to vent his outrage:
The Austin Firefighter Special Operations teams are specially trained for Hill Country swift water rescue and are some of the best, if not the best, swift water boat teams in the State of Texas.It is absolutely outrageous that the Austin Fire Chief, Joel G. Baker, would not allow highly trained firefighters from Austin to respond to Kerrville. Because of this egregious dereliction of duty, LIVES WERE VERY LIKELY LOST BECAUSE OF CHIEF BAKER’S DECISION!
The Association plans to hold a vote of confidence this Thursday, July 10, in order to determine Baker's future with the Department. In Nicks' view, Austin Fire boots on the ground 48 hours in advance could have made a substantial difference in the number of evacuations and rescues. There is reason to believe this is accurate, so why the slow and silent response from Chief Baker?
The City of Austin is wildly in debt. According to a Texas Public Policy Foundation study by James Quintero, the 2022 city principal and interest debt totaled $11 billion. An internal email obtained by the Statesman includes a detail about the city owing its fire department $800,000.
While Nicks states he explained to Baker that the State of Texas is prepared to reimburse this kind of deployment, Baker appears to have harbored doubts about the State money coming in before the end of the department's fiscal year on September 13.
Given the information available, it appears the Democrat-run City of Austin is in debt up to its eyeballs, and its fire department is low on the priority list of payment. Chief Baker cast his vote of no confidence for the City of Austin.
In an effort to save money, Chief Baker cancelled the capital city's contract with the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System (TIFMAS), a program that "includes grants, training, qualification, and mobilization systems to make statewide use of local resources." Per the TIFMAS Business Guidelines, "All fire departments are members of TIFMAS by legislative authority...Member departments who wish to be eligible for deployment must have qualified members."
The qualifications are not cheap and are expected to be paid by the department; removing the Austin FD from the program would be a cost-saving measure and disqualify them from being tapped to deploy in situations like that in the Hill Country. This explains the informal (not official) requests for deployment leading up to the flash flood crisis that has claimed more than 90 lives, many of whom are children.
The question is not who is right and who was wrong in this situation. No, the question is why do Austinites continue to elect moronic leaders like Kirk Watson, who has been mayor of the city twice, once between 1997 and 2001, and 2023 to present. He lost the race for Texas Attorney General to Greg Abbott in 2002 but found a home representing part of Travis County (where Austin is located) in the Texas Senate.
In the gap years, we had the rubbish days of Steve Adler, the mayor who permitted homeless camps to clutter downtown streets, deterring tourists and locals from contributing to the local economy. Did I mention he gutted and hamstrung the Austin Police Department? A chunk of Austin's debt is due to Adler's Rail to Nowhere, a light rail train that does not go anywhere people want or need to go. He closed parks and outdoor spaces during COVID, but permitted the summer protests against police to go on unobstructed.
While the firefighters' union and their chief air their dirty laundry on Thursday, Austinites would do well to examine the phenomenon we call Cause and Effect.
To put deaths on the shoulders of one man, in this case, Chief Baker, is irresponsible. The City of Austin’s misguided priorities put Baker in the unfortunate position. The best thing Austinites can do at this point is to start making better choices in the voting booth in hopes of being better-prepared for the next disaster.
P.S. I used to work with James Quintero at the Texas Public Policy Foundation when Brooke Rollins (now President Trump's Secretary of Agriculture) was its president. I also used to live in Austin, leaving in 2014 to marry my Marine Corps husband, who was stationed at Camp Pendleton. Before I agreed to marry my husband, I made him promise to bring me and our future family back to Austin (Marble Falls, really) but have since retracted that requirement, at least until the voters start exercising a modicum of common sense.
