McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The South Texas city of McAllen is offering to train Mexican firefighters in what the mayor calls the first such binational collaboration among fire departments.
“This is the first in the country where you have a Mexican fire department coming and training in the United States. So we’re really proud of what we’re doing,” McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos said Monday afternoon.
Villalobos and Carlos Víctor Peña Ortiz, the mayor of the northern Mexican border town of Reynosa, signed a memorandum of understanding at McAllen City Hall, which will allow Reynosa firefighters to train in a new 10,000-square-foot fire training facility that the City of McAllen is building.
“It is truly a historic moment what we’re doing today. It is something that has not been done in all the United States,” Villalobos said.
McAllen and Reynosa have been sister cities since 1992 and both leaders say they share more than the Rio Grande.
Javier Villalobos, mayor of McAllen, Texas, and Carlos Víctor Peña Ortiz, mayor of Reynosa, Mexico, signed an agreement in McAllen on Feb. 26, 2024, to let their firefighters cross the border to train with one another. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
“Reynosa and McAllen, we are family. We are bound together by business and trade and families. And a river doesn’t separate us, it unites us,” Villalobos said.
Peña says this agreement is more proof of the “collaboration” that both border cities have been doing for several years.
“We are a family here. One binational community and hopefully we’ll be able to do more agreements like this,” Peña said.
McAllen Fire Chief Juan Gloria said McAllen firefighters also will go south of the border and learn the command centers and operations of Reynosa firefighters so they can better communicate when an emergency happens.
In March 2022, winds carried a wildfire across the Rio Grande near Laredo from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, into the small town of El Cenizo, Texas.
Gloria told Border Report it could happen again in the Rio Grande Valley.
“Can a wildfire jump the river? The answer is yes,” Gloria said. “If there was something to crossover, we want to make sure that the firefighters in Reynosa are not just capable but we want to make sure we have open communication, direct lines of communication with them so we can manage the situation. So we know what they’re doing and they know what we’re doing. And figure out how it is that we can provide intel to each other.”
The City of McAllen in January donated a surplus pumper fire truck to firefighters from the town of Doctor Gonzalez, a suburb of Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo León.
The truck had served the city for decades before it was donated south of the border.
Villalobos says the City of McAllen has sister city agreements with several Mexican cities.
And he put out an offer that any other Mexican city that also wants to sign an MOU and send their firefighters north to McAllen “is welcome” to contact them and get the ball rolling.
Officials from Reynosa, Mexico, traveled to McAllen, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2024, to sign an MOU to allow their firefighters to cross the border and train in the U.S. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
Gloria says the training benefits McAllen firefighters as much as others.
“There is always an opportunity to learn,” he said. “Every country is different and how they go about it can be completely different but not less effective. But that gives us an opportunity to learn and get clever about how we can things better ourselves.”
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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