Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX, pronounced "teeks") is a state extension agency that offers training programs and technical assistance to public safety workers, both in Texas and around the world. Established in 1940 as the Industrial Extension Service, the agency took on its current name when it joined The Texas A&M University System in 1948. The agency sponsors the state's primary urban search and rescue force, Urban Search and Rescue Texas Task Force 1, and operates the Brayton Fire Training Field. Brayton is the largest firefighting training facility in the United States, and also contains a mock city for conducting training operations for emergency responders.

History

The first step toward the formation of the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service was the passing of the Morrill Land-Grant College Act in 1862, which led to the founding of several land-grant colleges, including the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in 1871, which later became known as Texas A&M University. Despite its name, the college taught no agricultural classes, leading to protests by farmer groups and to much of the college's leadership being replaced. Other land-grant colleges around the country were also struggling, as farmers felt they had little incentive to adopt intensive farming methods and other advanced agricultural technologies. In response to the growing criticisms and lack of agricultural research being conducted, Congress passed the Hatch Experiment Station Act of 1887, which provided funding for agricultural experiment stations in each state. While considered a big step toward improving farming, the stations struggled to effectively communicate their findings to farmers. Texas quickly took advantage of this new act and formed the Texas Agricultural Extension Service in the same year, associating it with the Agricultural & Mechanical College of Texas (Texas AMC). Texas AMC began offering a limited industrial teacher training service. In 1919, the school began offering the Trade and Industrial Teacher Training Service. Supervised by the school's Agricultural Education department, the program was designed to train industry professionals to teach trade and industrial courses at Texas public schools. The School of Vocational Training took over the program in 1924, with the offerings split into three departments: Rural Education, Agricultural Education, and Industrial Education. The agency was charged with "providing occupational and technical training services on an extension basis to the citizens of Texas". The agency's current director is Gary F. Sera, who became the director in December 2007 after serving as the agency's interim director for nine months. Serving under the director are the deputy director, two associate agency directors, and six division heads. More than 4,000 firefighters and emergency workers visit the facility in the summer for its annual Texas Fire Training Schools.

Adjacent to Brayton's southern border is "Disaster City", a mock city that serves as a training facility for emergency responders. Costing $7.7 million to construct, the city was built in 1998 in direct response to the Oklahoma City Bombing which then director G. Kemble Bennett felt highlighted the need for "a world-class facility to train responders in near-lifelike conditions." The city acts as the main training location for Texas Task Force 1, and features collapsible structures that are designed to simulate various kinds of disasters and wreckage. It also provides complex interactive disaster scenarios for state and federal urban search and rescue teams, U.S. military CERFP and WMD-Civil Support Team teams, Department of Health and Human Services Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) and NVRT teams, and other specialized international search and rescue teams.

References

  • The Disneyland of Disaster - slideshow by Der Spiegel