El Paso Fire water rescue team earns national recognition, award

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) - Six members of the El Paso Fire Department's water rescue team were deployed to central Texas on July of 2025.

"This recognition is is a huge deal for us because given that we are remote out here in far West Texas, we don't have the training environment that other departments have, so for us to be able to go out, train, and then be able to take that skills and then deploy in an actual emergency situation is a significant accomplishment for this team," said El Paso Fire Department Battalion Chief Brandon Kovach.

Their mission was to assist area first responders to rescue flooding victims after flash flooding left the Guadalupe River overflowing and flooded most of the area.

"Every time we make a deployment with another team with Texas Task Force One, we have a learning environment that we collaborate with each other. We learn from each other, and we'll pick up something new from them that will allow us to enhance our game at the end of this," added Kovach.

The six team members are assigned to Texas Taskforce 1 were recently recognized by the Higgins & Langley Swiftwater Rescue Award Committee with the Swiftwater Rescue Outstanding Achievement Award for the lifesaving efforts at the Kerrville incident on July 2-5, 2025.

"Texas Task Force One is is part of a statewide initiative, and there's teams from all over the state. Our water rescue team is just one of about six that can be deployed across the state in times of you know state emergencies, and and it's really one of the busiest specialty operations that we have in the city. They call upon us a lot when those storms come up through the Gulf," said El Paso Fire Department Chief Jonathan Killings.

The El Paso Fire team saved two people trapped in a tree along the river. They also helped over 30 people evacuate from flooded areas in a RV park.

"What it does for our team is it it gives them an opportunity to go out and get all the knowledge and experience that they get dealing with those floodwaters and rescues, and bring that knowledge back to El Paso," added Killings.

The El Paso Fire Department currently has 30 members on the team that train monthly. The training includes boat work, rope rescues, and other technical skills. The training keeps the members ready to deploy at any moment and their professionalism shows.

"We saw our team operating on national news stations back back in July of last year. So also, we get great feedback from the departments that they go and assist about the professionalism of our team, the high level of training that they have, and so you know our teams are representing our community out there," said Killings of his team. "It's representing our department, and we're just getting positive feedback across the state."

The team is aware of the dangerous situations they may face, but rely on their team members and their training to save lives and stay safe. Though there are always challenges that they face.

"One of the challenges that we experienced when we were performing that rescue was trying to launch the boat in a a wild environment, meaning that there was no good place to actually launch the boat, and actually one of our team members back there actually got swept underneath the boat during the first launch, and we were unable to launch the first go round. So we had to stop, we had to regroup, we had to reevaluate, and then made the determination to send the boat out. And in this particular case, it was a high-risk operation with a high reward," added Kovach.