“Stoked about his job” |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2010 06:18 PM PDT September 5, 2010 Stoked about his jobJoey Reed brings a bagful of experience and a passion to his job as director of ESDA visitor to Joey Reed's office immediately encounters a variety of awards, commendations, medals, pictures, model fire engines, helmets and other mementos from a life's work in firefighting. Work that's hardly done, by the way. But before Reed became director of the Johnson County Emergency Services District No. 1 in 2009 he worked thousands of incidents in his more than three decades as a firefighter, a career that started as a volunteer in Burleson before evolving into a livelihood in Arlington, Haltom City and Los Angeles. The native Texan and graduate of Arlington Sam Houston High School got his first taste as a paid firefighter in that city, but something inside of him told him that he wanted more. "There wasn't enough for me — things to do exciting. We were being trained by guys from Los Angeles," he said. "And they're telling us all stories about high-rise fires and riots. I thought 'Man, I've got to have some of that.' " While waiting to hire on with the city of Los Angeles in 1988 [the city and county have separate departments; he eventually worked for both], he also saw action as a crew member with the U.S. Forest Service, fighting fires in California, Oregon and other locales in the western United States. The city didn't agree with him, and he moved back to Texas, to Haltom City and eventually back to the Arlington's department. Then in 1994, the call that he had been waiting for finally came. The call Reed was hired on with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the department made famous when its fledgling paramedic program was depicted in the 1970s Jack Webb-produced television show "Emergency!" And in a county where anything and everything does happen — brush fires, swift-water rescues, high-rise structure fires, forest fires, earthquakes, mud slides — Reed saw it all. "There were so many things that I could do there that I couldn't do [in Texas]," he said. "I got to do a lot of them." Reed remembers well one incident on Super Bowl Sunday some years ago, when working as part of an urban search and rescue team at Station 135 in Lancaster, Calif., they received a call of climbers stranded in the mountains outside Wrightwood, Calif. Most people think of Los Angeles as a sunny, warm city where it never rains. But in the mountains outside the city, it can be as cold, icy and as dangerous as any mountainous area in the country. "We drive up into the mountains up to Wrightwood and we get up there and one guy's dead. He slid 500 feet down an ice chute and hit the highway. There was a man and woman. They were experienced ice climbers and he slipped and slid all the way down," he said. "They had a friend that was coming to join them apparently and he found the guy dead on the highway and realized that the female was still up there." A helicopter from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office and a Los Angeles County Fire Department Blackhawk helicopter also responded to the area, attempting to locate the stranded woman. "They're circling and can't see her. The sun is almost going down, the wind is blowing and it's 30-something degrees," he said. "We could see her because she's flashing a light and they're trying to direct the helicopters. They were afraid to do a hoist down through the timber that is swaying." After the helicopter teams failed to rescue the woman, the incident commander tells Reed and his USAR team to go up and get her. "We had ice axes and carried packs with ropes and hardware. We're going up the side and we are going to crisscross across to her. We got up to her and the sheriff's teams come up from the other side," he said. "It took a couple of hours. It was 20-something degrees and the wind is blowing. The problem in that type of situation is the gear we're wearing. If you wear too much warm gear underneath, you're sweating bad. If you don't wear enough and you're not moving, then you start getting cold. I was freezing." 'Everyone in the world wanted to help' The Los Angeles County Fire Department frequently sends personnel to assist with disasters all over the country and the world. Reed was part of a team sent to New York to help at Ground Zero after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks in 2001 and again in 2005 to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "Everyone in the world wanted to help the New York City Fire Department. New York City had never asked for help before in 200 years. They really weren't set up and the whole world is wanting to help," he said. "Our fire chief said, 'If you can get in there and talk to either the department people or union people, tell them the LA County Fire Department will send bulldozers if they need them. We'll send them anything they want.'" When Reed's team arrived, more than 200 volunteers and 15 FEMA teams were at the site. Rescue workers from across the country were working to find survivors. "You could still see things smoking. The NYPD was a completely gracious host to all firefighters who came from anywhere. They would give you the shirts off their back," he said. "They had lasers touching the building because they were afraid it was going to fall on the workers. If the wind was blowing and the laser lost contact, it would send off a siren and everyone would have to run out of the area," he said. Back to Texas Reed would eventually become a battalion chief responsible for Battalion 1, which includes West Hollywood, Marina del Rey and Universal Studios. An injury forced him to retire two years ago, and he returned to Johnson County last year to assume duties as director of the county's ESD, which covers about 735 square miles, an area with a population of about 157,500. The ESD contracts with 16 fire departments to provide fire and emergency medical services to county residents. Three of the departments are staffed with a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters, the rest are staffed with volunteers. Reed hopes that his experience and knowledge will serve him and Johnson County residents well. He said he has two top priorities. "The first priority is that when someone calls 911, someone is responding now. We need to improve our response times," he said. "In July, there were 40 calls where the initial fire department was unable to respond. A secondary department had to go." Reed said that his second priority is to ensure that the people who are responding to those emergencies have quality training in fire and medical needs. "They're very simple. Those are basic issues," he said. "This first year with me has been building the infrastructure, getting things organized and setting the direction for the district. I'm for the volunteer system. We need to increase it, but we need to improve it." Cleburne Fire Chief Clint Ishmael said he believes that Reed has the knowledge and experience to improve the county's fire response. "His experience with a variety of departments is helpful to us. He's also worked as a volunteer firefighter, so he knows what the needs are," he said. "He's a good communicator and knows how to get the job done. Mutual aid is at the heart of fire service in Johnson County." But Reed's ultimate goal, like in Los Angeles County where he never lost a firefighter under his command, is to ensure that all first responders go home safe. "I have a saying and a lot of people don't like to hear and that is that we're here to save lives and it's dangerous, but we go to the edge of what's life-threatening to do the job," he said. "We do that based on our experience, our training and our equipment. We go as far as those things allow us to go. We don't go beyond that. And in reality, the first lives we save are our own. We can save a lot more lives as long as we ensure our own safety in doing it." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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