You never know when you will need a firefighter, but you always know when you need a firefighter. Near the end of a blistering summer less than a year ago, Mason County needed our volunteer firefighters, plus many others, to confront the blaze later named the North Art Complex Fire.
At dusk on August 22, after a string of days where temperatures held steady above 100, cloud-to-ground lighting strikes peppered the horizon in our area, igniting the landscape. The lightning set off a series of fire ignitions, some active and some smoldering, over a broad area. The focal point was an inferno at Art that could be seen from the hilltop at Ft. Mason, more than ten miles away.
Under the command of Mason Chief, Brandon Neece, Mason VFD firefighters fought in rugged terrain to contain the rapidly spreading Art fire and other smaller blazes around the county. They were joined by other volunteer stations from both near and far, including Castell VFD, Doss VFD, Harper FVD, Hext VFD, Llano VFD, Placid VFD, Rochelle VFD, Tierra Linda VFD, Pontotoc VFD, Brady FD, and Fredericksburg FD.
