Troy native comes home to lend a hand during fire season

Montana was burning, and when the rapidly growing wildfires began to creep closer to his hometown of Troy, one marine operating out of San Diego took his leave and rushed home to put his training to use.

Maj. Tim Garrison not only has roots in Troy, but roots that date back to 1909 when the Garrison family first settled in the area.

From his great-grandparents to his own children, Garrison’s family history has been intertwined with the town of Troy for over a century.

That, he said, is why, when the call rang out that Lincoln County was on fire in early September, he took time off to come help.

“That’s just where I felt that I belonged,” he said.

Garrison’s career in the Marine Corps dates back 25 years, and during that time, he said he has acquired special training with emergency operations centers that he felt could make him useful to the teams and volunteers working to get information out to the community.

When he first arrived, Garrison said he went straight to Gary Caldwell, the mayor of Troy, to ask if there was a way he could help.

He was sent to the volunteer coordinator for Lincoln County who put him to work for two days answering phone calls on the evacuation lines, informing citizens of evacuations, what to do and where to get help.

After a couple days, he found that his experience and training would be of better use to the understaffed incident team managing the fire itself.

He took on the role of public information officer, communicating information directly from the incident command post to community leaders, media and the public.

Around 90 percent of the population sees the fires come and go every year, he said. But it’s the remaining 10 percent who are directly impacted by the fires that brought him home.

Though many people throughout the community may have wanted to volunteer and help out their neighbors, Garrison said he recognized that most of them still had daily jobs to do and could not afford the time off.

He, however, had time off available as well as training with FEMA for national incident management, making him a valuable asset to the frightened community.

Over 10 days, he put in an estimated 140 hours of work to make sure the correct information reached the right people before fear could incite rumors that could incite panic.

“Every time the smoke would shift, someone would think there was a new fire,” he said. “We were able to get information to people when [questions] arose.”

Garrison took pride in the work he accomplished in helping his community, but he gave much of the credit to the incident command team over the fire.

Though he has worked on multiple fire and disaster situations, working with the incident team, he said, helped reinforce his training and taught him a lot about the control and commitment involved on their end.

Despite his intense schedule during those 10 days, he said there were people on the incident team who stayed up later and got up earlier.

He expressed his appreciation for the crews and firefighters, for their commitment to the job and their understanding of what they were protecting.

Fire season has finally begun winding down, and Garrison has since returned to his post in southern California.

However, he said he knows that this will not be the last fire in Montana and he plans to return in the future if needed to offer his assistance again.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.