What You Should Know About ICVFD

Indian Creek Volunteer Fire Department (ICVFD) covers 62 square miles of Cooke County. It is one of ten volunteer fire departments in the county. Only six of the Volunteer Fire Departments (VFD) are certified to respond to medical calls. ICVFD is a first responder, responding to more than 500 calls per year. The vast majority of those calls are medical.  If you have a medical emergency, an ICVFD volunteer is likely to be the first on the scene.  Cooke County funds 5 fully staffed (24/7) ambulances which are responsible for all of Cooke County (900 sq. miles).  The closest ambulance to Lake Kiowa is located in Woodbine on County Road 211. Response times for the ambulance range from 10 – 30 minutes.

 

ICVFD as our name implies is a volunteer staffed organization.  Currently there are 18 volunteer fire fighters. Of those 9 are professional fire fighters who live locally and work in the Metroplex.  We are always in need of additional volunteers.  There is turnover as people age or move to other locations.

 

ICVFD is primarily funded by donations from Members (who are those who live within our fire district).  Cooke County contracts with ICVFD annually $16,500 to provide emergency services.  The operating expenses for ICVFD are approximately $75,000 (excluding equipment and grant reimbursement). We also secure some funding from grants. Walmart has been particularly generous in providing funds.

 

Updating the emergency equipment has been a long standing goal of ICVFD.  We will take delivery of a new fire engine in May 2023. The cost of this engine is $620,000 and due on delivery. We have accumulated the funds to pay for this engine over the last 10 years. The fire engine it will replace has been in service for more than 20 years.  We recently were given a $240,000 grant to purchase a new brush truck. Under the terms of the grant we are required to provide a minimum of 10% of the purchase cost.  We will add a minimum of $24,000 and likely more to outfit this new vehicle.  In 2022 we took delivery of a new rescue vehicle (Tahoe).  This vehicle took 3 years to secure due to COVID delays. We currently have 2 rescue vehicles which are outfitted with equipment to respond to medical emergencies.

 

The existing fire station is located at 550 Kiowa Dr. West. This fire station is leased to ICVFD by the Kiowa POA for $1.00 per year.  We use an emergency gate behind the fire station to access CR 224.  The lake is an impediment to timely response to emergencies in the eastern portion of our area of responsibility.  We have acquired land for a potential second location and are evaluating future expansion. We currently do not have the funds to build or sustain a second location, but it will be required as the County population continues to increase. Donations toward this future expansion are greatly appreciated and will go a long way to improve our fire departments ability to respond to calls in the future.