This year marks the third year that Pampa ESU has had their feet on the ground assisting local fire departments and law enforcement agencies in both Gray and Roberts county. Pampa ESU is a non-profit volunteer organization that mostly assists with directing traffic at the site of vehicle accidents, structure fires and city events like the annual rodeo. With their help, police officers can return to their patrols instead of being held up in a single spot for hours on end; and firemen can focus on their jobs without worrying about their hoses being run over or being hit by a car themselves.
“We basically do traffic control for anything that they need; police, fire, wrecks on the highway, things like that,” said Pampa ESU Director and Founder Rob Hampton.
“[For example], structure fires are a big thing. When you go to a structure fire, it’s not a quick thing for the police to come over and direct traffic. It’s usually two to three hours, and that ties our officers up. Other calls get put on hold. So, with us being there, that frees them up to respond to more important things.”
“We’ve gone to structure fires where it’s been one house on the entire block, and 50 people will drive around claiming that they either live there or they know somebody that does live there. That becomes a safety issue for our first responders on scene, and the last thing we want is to have a firefighter get run over because somebody is out driving around to see the flames. Not only that, the equipment that they use is very expensive. Before we started, they had a lot of hoses being ran over on scenes. When a hose gets ran over, it has to be pulled out of service and tested. It’s a lot of time and money that it takes to do that.”
“Since ESU started three years now, they have not had one single hose ran over,” Hampton said.
“We’ve had some major police calls come in when we were on scene that they had to go to. And when they leave, the police and firefighters are just unprotected. So basically what we want to do is we want to pull up to where police officers are and we’re going to relieve them immediately,” former police lieutenant and Training Director of Pampa ESU Fred Courtney said.
“When I was a police officer, we would have to go guard intersections and the fire department would have to guard intersections, too. And what that translates to is overtime.”
While traffic control ends up being the bulk of the work Pampa ESU volunteers find themselves doing, they also provide other services such as storm-spotting, disaster oversight and even setting up LZs for helicopters.
“We do all the storm spotting as well,” Courtney said.
“During an event like the winter storm we just had, there’s a lot of traffic and dispatch can get overwhelmed,” Hampton said.
“One of the other things that have happened as a result of our cooperative efforts is that we will get called out on a couple of things that nobody does, like spot downed power lines and the smell of smoke or the smell of natural gas. They will ask us to go check it out to have more eyes and ears [on the situation, whatever it may be]. We have found multiple things doing this,” Courtney said.
Pampa ESU also recently set up their first LZ (basically an impromptu landing spot for a helicopter) on Highway 60 after a major accident.
“When we first started, we decided we were going to do an LZ class for Life Star, so we coordinated the class and figured we would probably never do it ourselves, but would know how if we had to. Not too long after that there was an accident on Highway 60 and a firefighter ran up to me and told me that they needed an LZ for an inbound chopper,” Hampton said.
Hampton says that the idea for Pampa ESU came to him when he started volunteering for the Pampa Police Department in 2010, and right away, he saw a need for the services ESU now provides.
“We looked at other cities that have similar programs, such as Amarillo. Amarillo has had emergency services- they’ve been doing it since 1956,” Hampton said.
Inspired by similar programs in neighboring communities, Hampton started kicking around the idea of Pampa having its’ very own emergency service unit. In 2017, after a lot of hard work and networking, his idea came to fruition and Pampa ESU was born.
“When we first started, it was a learning curve for everybody- not just for us, but for the police department too because they were so used to doing things a certain way. Now, if you listen to a scanner when there is a fire or an accident or something, you will hear that we are one of the first ones that they are calling for,” Hampton said.
“Three years ago, there was nothing like this and it was just a mess.”
The organization is completely self-funded by the volunteers.
“We’re completely self-funded. We didn’t apply for any grants to the state or the federal government. We are a non-profit organization. We have thought about doing fundraising, but we have found out that when you have volunteers that are willing to not only put their time in, but also money out of their own pocket, then you get the very best volunteers. Each individual person funds all their equipment that they are required to have. It’s a minimum of $1,000 investment,” Hampton said.
Some of the equipment Pampa ESU volunteers purchase include lights, digital radios, high-visibility gear, cones and more.
Pampa ESU is comprised of nine units; Director and Founder Rob Hampton (ESU #1), Assistant Director Jim Hart (ESU #6), Training Director Fred Courtney (ESU #7), ESU #2 Jim Free, ESU #3 Emily Hart, ESU #4 Wayne Slater, ESU #5 Mike Cox, ESU #8 Liz Wood and ESU #9 Dianne Jennings.
Most of these volunteers have jobs outside of Pampa ESU, so the team works in shifts to get things done.
“We’re extremely lucky to have Fred. He’s a retired police lieutenant from the police department and he’s our training director,” Hampton said.
“We also have a retired Sheriff. Liz Wood is a dispatcher for the police department, Dianne Jennings substitute teaches, Wayne works a night security job, Jimmy Free owns his own business and Rob used to own his own business,” Courtney added.
“We’re coming up on almost 2,000 hours of service to the city of Pampa and I think that’s pretty impressive,” Hampton said.
“I’m really proud. The main reason I want to do this story is because I want these guys to be appreciated.”
Courtney and Hampton say that anyone who would like to become a member of Pampa ESU would be subject to an application process and a background check.
“They (prospective volunteers) would need to call one of our members and we have an application process. They have to pass criminal background checks and that goes through the police department. Once they have done all of that, they also have to have the money to put all the lights on their vehicles and buy their other gear. It’s at least a $1,000 commitment,” Hampton said.
The Pampa News would like to thank the volunteers of Pampa ESU for all the help they provide and would like to congratulate them on their third year of service.
