2525 Handley-Ederville Rd, Richland Hills, TX – February 25, 2021 12:34 (Thursday) – One of the smaller departments in Tarrant county worked one of the largest fires in recent history. What was initially dispatched as a fire alarm quickly rose to a 5 alarm, multi-day incident. Fortunately, Richland Hills Fire Department, led by Chief Russell Shelley, is part of a much larger, local fire service community. Dispatchers for “NHRW” (North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Haltom City and Watauga) quickly escalated the incident from a fire alarm to a 2 alarm after more callers reported and confirmed a fire and Haltom City Battalion 47 requested it as he arrived to find heavy fire from a 134,000 sqft. tilt-wall foam recycling facility. Dispatchers reported seeing the smoke from their center in North Richland Hills. Thankfully, all employees were able to evacuate the large facility. There were some minor injuries, so additional medics were requested. Shortly into the fight the roof collapsed. The exterior, defensive attack would continue until about 18:00 Friday, with a couple of return calls over the following days as hotspots flared up.

Chief Shelley was incident commander over the large-scale, drawn out operation calling on and receiving help from numerous shared resources in the area. Local fire departments were just catching their breath after being inundated with calls related to the winter storm the week before, and still committing resources to Covid19 vaccination centers. There were several significant challenges on scene due to a limited water supply and a broken water main, potential power line involvement, limited access, and secondary grass fires to name a few. Fort Worth neighbors the fire scene and FWFD provided a big hand right away. Other Northeast Fire Department Association (NEFDA) departments quickly joined in various roles beyond fire attack. It wasn’t just neighboring fire departments that assisted. North Richland Hills Police and other public works departments contributed as well. Because apparatus were on scene for so long, it was necessary to bring in fuel trucks and fleet maintenance to keep them operating. Bedford provided their mobile command post along with an air truck to refill air bottles as Truck 151 worked with several other trucks to douse the fire from above. Bedford Battalion Chief(Training & Safety) Tamayo worked as one of the safety officers. Grapevine FD and NRH PD assisted command providing recon by using their drones. Southlake worked Brush 401 to take care of grass fires.

In all, over a dozen fire departments(with approximately 150 people on scene) worked the fire at some point along with various other city departments, county, and even state agencies. Below is a partial list based on observation and a quick playback of radio traffic. However, there were likely many more involved providing coverage for other cities on other incidents as well as off-site support, unknown to me.

Richland Hills (FD, PD, Public Works) Azle, Bedford, Colleyville, Euless, Fort Worth(FD, Water), Grapevine, Haltom City, Hurst, Keller, North Richland Hills (FD, PD, Fleet Services), River Oaks, Southlake, Tarrant County (fleet services), Texas Commission on Environmental Quality(air monitoring), Watauga as well as volunteer rehab teams.

The photos and video below are courtesy of Bedford Fire Department. Any local departments wanting to use the photos are welcome to.

Many other sites feature photography and video from the incident, and can be found at the links below.

Grapevine Fire Department Drone Video

Firehouse.com has some video and an article at the link below.

https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21211897/watch-tx-firefighters-tackle-recycling-facility-fire