Houston Mesa Fire - General Info

The Houston Mesa Fire District/Department provides fire
protection and first-response emergency medical services to the
communities of Mesa del Caballo and Wonder Valley/Freedom
Acres, operating one municipal-type fire engine, one large-capacity
water tender (tanker) truck, and a small brush fire truck out of one
fire station. All vehicles are modern and well-equipped. All
personnel are volunteers, with the exception of the Fire Chief, who
is a part-time paid employee. The department responds to
approximately 80 calls per year, 70% being medical in nature.

The department is dispatched via radio and pagers by the Town of
Payson Police/Fire/9-1-1 Dispatch Center, a modern facility which
uses Enhanced 9-1-1 telephone technology and computer-aided
dispatch (CAD) equipment, and dispatches six area fire
departments with a total of thirteen stations. The central dispatch
system is complemented by an area-wide automatic aid
agreement, which has been in place for many years, which
basically means that everyone works off of the same radio system
and responds back and forth as needed to assist each other….just
like one big fire department. For the HMFD, this means that
instead of having to operate like a stand-alone fire agency, the
HMFD has the luxury of being able to operate more like an engine
company station in a larger department.

As a part of the automatic aid system, administered by the
Northern Gila County Fire Chiefs (NGCFC) group, all area
departments participate in a standardized numbering system, with
all apparatus using three-digit numbers. The first digit indicates
the department, the second the station, and the third the unit.
Thus the HMFD's fire station is Station 31……third department, first
station. The ICS Type 1 engine runs as Engine 311…..third
department, first station, first engine. The water tender (ICS Type
3) runs as Water Tender 311 for the same reason. Most of the
small brush trucks, the ICS Type 6 engines, use a six as their last
digit, so the brush truck runs as Engine 316…..third department,
first station, Type 6 engine. The Chief Officer in charge of any
department at the time uses the radio designation Battalion…..so
the HMFD Chief normally will operate as Battalion 3.

Throughout the NGCFC's automatic aid area, the standard First
Alarm dispatch for a structure fire in rural areas without fire
hydrants is three engines, two water tenders, a light/air utility
unit, and two Chief Officers. In HMFD's district, this normally will
be Houston Mesa Engine 311, Payson Engine 121, Beaver Valley
Engine 911, Houston Mesa Water Tender 311, Beaver Valley Water
Tender 911, Payson Utility 121, Houston Mesa Battalion 3, and
Payson Battalion 1. This adds up to approximately 20 firefighters
and 7,500 gallons of water. A Second Alarm will double that, and
addition water tenders or other units can be special-called as
needed.