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Firefighters

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Written by Staff Monday, 07 January 2008

Bruce Herms, Cedar Park Fire Marshal

Photo of Bruce Herms Fire Marshal Bruce Herms started fighting fires in Cedar Park as a volunteer 14 years ago. In 1994, the city sent four volunteers, including Herms, to the Austin Community College fire academy in Taylor. Three of those four are still with the Cedar Park Fire Department. Herms was named fire marshal three years ago, which took him off everyday responses. “Sometimes I miss being on truck; a lot of times I don’t. I certainly don’t miss the middle of the night medical calls.”

Q. What are the busiest times of the year for firefighters?: A. You can ask three different people that and get three different answers. There’s not any year that’s the same. I would say probably around the holiday times it’s busier. A lot of calls are medical calls, so it stays busy pretty much year ’round. As far as fires, those happen at different times of the year — there’s no set time. You may have one fire one month, and the next month you may have four fires. Some Fourth of Julys are busier than others. Fortunately — knock on wood — this last one was not.

Q. Do you rescue cats from trees?: A. I’ve actually gone out on calls like that. A lot of times, if you just leave the cat alone, they’ll come down on their own. One particular time, when we got to the call, there was a dog in the backyard barking at the cat. Once we got the person to put the dog in the house, we got the cat out of the tree.
Q. Have you ever worked in a station with a Dalmatian?: A. No. They used Dalmatians in the early years when they had the horse-drawn fire engines. Those dogs would help firefighters control the horses.
Q. What is the biggest fire you’ve fought?: A. The biggest call that we had, that I can remember, was back when they had the tornado in 1996. It wasn’t a fire call, but it was a pretty large scene and lasted more than a couple days.
Q. Why do fire trucks often come with an ambulance when there’s no fire?: A. That has been the protocol since I started in this business. If the ambulance responds, there’s two people in that ambulance, so we’ll send an engine along for more manpower. On a medical call, if the paramedics deem they can handle the call, they’ll cancel us.
Q. What do you do when not responding to a call?: A. There are always station duties. There is annual hydrant testing and annual pre-plans, which is where they go out to businesses and make a plan so if there is ever something that happens there, we have information on that building and what’s inside. We also do public education in schools, day cares and so forth.

Family: Wife, two children and one grandchild
Contact Information: 401-5200

Carroll Cubit, Leander firefighter

Carroll Cubit first got started with the Leander Fire Department in 1997 when he was still in high school. After volunteering for two years, Cubit attended the fire school program at Austin Community College and returned to LFD part time. When population growth forced LFD to employ full-time firefighters in 2001, Cubit was at the front of the line.
“It really gets my adrenaline pumping. I think of how people would want their home treated and do my best to protect their property.”

Q. What are the busiest times of the year for firefighters?: A. It’s hard to say. Our calls have increased a lot — probably the summertime with the grass fires.
Q. What is your most valuable piece of equipment and why?: A. That would be my fire truck, because that’s what gets us to the calls — that’s what puts the fires out. We need water and the truck provides that.
Q. Do you rescue cats from trees?: A. It has happened a few times. It’s no inconvenience for us; we love to get out there and do stuff like that.
Q. What is the biggest fire you’ve fought?: A. The biggest one would have to be the Summerlyn grass fire. It was a little over 100 acres and it was a lot of tall, dead grass. We had a front come in, so we had 15-20 mile per hour winds. We had flames shooting over two story houses.
Q. Why do fire trucks often come with an ambulance when there’s no fire?: A. We’re also Emergency Medical Technicians, so if we get to the medical call first, we can start assisting the patients first. Then, when the paramedics get there, they can give them drugs and make them feel better — stuff that we can’t do that they can.
Q. What do you do when you’re not responding to a call?: A. We do stuff around the station as far as cleaning it, our trucks and maintenance on our trucks. We do a lot of training so we can keep up with certification and work towards other certification that we need.
Q. Do you take turns cooking?: A. Each person on our shift will take turns buying groceries for the week. Come dinnertime, depending on what we want for dinner, we’ll go to the store to get something to cook.
Q. What is the best meal you’ve ever had at the station?: A. I’d have to say steak dinner with baked potatoes. Of course we put on a lot of butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon bits — anything we can think of.