KFD expands to meet demand

KYLE — It’s been 143 years since the Kyle Fire Department (KFD) was founded — the same year the city of Kyle was incorporated. But just as Kyle isn’t the same little township it was more than a century ago, KFD has evolved into a different department alongside the city.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Fire Department[/caption]

According to KFD Chief Kyle Taylor, the department consisted of mainly volunteers up until the early 2000s, around the same time the second station was constructed. The downtown station was torn down and rebuilt in its place in 2009, while the third station in Mountain City was established in 2018.

When Taylor first became chief in 2013, KFD employed 12 firefighters, but today there are 45.

Now, bidding is open for the construction of KFD’s fourth station, to be located at 110 High Road.

“We are in the bidding process with contractors [for the fourth station]. We’re about a year or a year and a half [away from completion] if everything goes fine,” said KFD Training Chief Freddy Rolon. “In the years that I’ve been here, we were only two stations and five firefighters per station and now the [downtown] station has seven firefighters, because we have two engines running out of here.”

Taylor noted that the station’s average response time is six minutes and 45 seconds; however, he’s hoping to whittle that number down with technology such as Opticom Cloud Platform — a GPS system that changes red lights to green lights for emergency vehicles — and the construction of more fire stations.

The impetus for building the fourth station is growth within the city, the chief said.

“Growth, just keeping up with the growth,” Taylor said. “There are just so many new neighborhoods and new apartments.”

The location for the fourth station was decided based on response times and congestion, he added.

“It’s one of the areas that our worst response times were and just the congestion,” Taylor said. “So, that is just to improve response times in that area. It was taking us 12 to 13 minutes to get out there and now, we can be out there in two to three minutes. There will be an ambulance out there as well.”

KFD is growing hand-in-hand with the city and is looking forward to building a fifth station as well.

“We are behind the growth. Our station number two truck is one of the busiest trucks in the whole state. We are behind,” Rolon said. “We are looking to expand some of the stations to have the same concept that we have here [downtown] — two trucks at one [station]. Again, there are challenges with the growth. Apartment complexes keep popping up like popcorn everywhere. Houses are selling everywhere and we’re getting more calls. Our graph of call volumes is just going up and it’s not looking like it’s going to be stable in the next five to 10 years.”

The KFD chief added that maintaining a growth plan has been difficult due to the explosion of the area’s population.

“Keeping up with the five-year plan is difficult because of the amount of growth. It’s like we’re already behind,” Taylor said. “The first five-year plan I did, we completed in two and a half years. The five-year plan is always a moving target; there are training facilities and more stations, and now we’ll have one west and it’s a question of which one we build first. It’s a question of which one has the most need. Some of these neighborhoods really get going in the next couple of years; it’s, 'Where are the calls? Where do we have the worst response time?' As we look at and start planning the next few years, we’re trying to get land now east and west, that way, whichever one is needed first, we’ll already have the land.”

Taylor explained that when he started in 2013, KFD ran 2,100 calls that year. “Last year, we had about 6,100,” he said. “It hasn’t slowed down and it’s not going to.”

Not only has there been an uptick in calls, but to meet the demand, KFD has brought on eight additional firefighters and is looking to hire approximately five more, with two immediate openings and three in October.

“We’re the best fire department in Hays County. We strive for excellence,” Rolon said. “Our training room is always busy with different development classes. Our crews are training out there all the time. One of the areas that we can improve in is a training facility. We need a place where we can put a training facility where our guys can get better. We are aiming for the best candidates possible. We also have a family-oriented environment. We take care of our people. We take care of our family and our members, so they stick around. We don’t want to lose members to other fire departments.”

As the department evolves with the growth, KFD makes a point to be involved in the community. It’s about integrating the community and the department.

One of Taylor’s goals has been to create an environment with the community so that citizens are more exposed to firefighters — and not just on the worst days of their lives.

“COVID kind of really put a damper on that, but slowly, everything is coming back to normal. We’re going back to the schools for water days and stuff. Just this week, we’ve gotten emails for three career days. And we have a bunch of field days coming up where we get to spray the kids. We had a meeting the other day about community outreach projects,” the chief said. “That’s always been one of my goals — being in the community and having the guys seen. It makes the community understand our role that we are out there and they see the trucks, they see the guys, they know what their tax money is going toward. I don’t want to see them on their worst day. Because when you call 911, it’s your worst day, so if they can see them other days, it’s much better.”

Rolon added that it also helps with the fire department’s mission of safety.

“It helps us to be closer to them and spread that safety message. If they stay safe, we don’t receive a call. If we can spread that message more and more and more, we’re going to have more families in our communities that are going to be safe,” he said. “So again, interacting with them and training them will lead us to have a safer community overall.”

With the community’s support, Taylor and Rolon are looking to the future of the department as it evolves with the city.

“We’re seeing the school district demographic reports and information from the city that in the next 10 years, we may double again,” Taylor said.

Rolon added, “We’re not the same fire department we were 10 or 15 years ago. We’re completely different, a more progressive fire department. We have a bunch of young leaders that we’re shaping for the future so our department can keep running for years and years to come and that’s all that matters.”