MIDLAND, Texas — The war in Israel continues to rage on presently.
However, one firefighter in Midland got a first hand experience of the conflict.
His name is Preston Wright, a captain at Midland Fire Station 3.
Wright was volunteering as part of the nonprofit "The Emergency Volunteer Project".
There, he learned how the Israeli Fire Department worked while helping where he could as part of a combined training mission.
While it wasn't his first time there, it would become a trip he wouldn't forget.
“May of 2023, Gaza attacked Israel with some rockets," Wright said. "We deployed over, we went into the south, we went into Ashdod and Gan Yavne, to those two towns, and helped them out while we were being attacked.”
An app on Wright’s phone warned him of incoming rockets while he was asleep in his motel. While he put it off initially, text messages from friends and family alerted him to the danger.
“So my phone started going off, and it was going off rapidly, like a lot. So I picked up my phone and looked at it. I put it on silent and kind of laid there for a little bit," Wright said. "Then I started getting some text messages from some guys asking if I was ok because they knew that I was over there. I was like, 'what do you mean', and they were like, 'oh they’re firing rockets right now'.”
He was in Jerusalem at the time, in the city center far away from the Gaza border.
Sometimes, he would hear air raid sirens and see the chemical trails of the rockets. Eventually, he was called in for support.
“I ended up deploying up by Nazareth, where I ended up going, it’s kind of up in the mountains," Wright said. "I backfilled up there, helped them out with whatever they needed and just ran fire trucks out of their stations.”
Despite the dangers, Wright is still willing to make the journey to Israel if he gets the call.
“If this conflict keeps going, I'll rotate back through and go to wherever they need me to go," Wright said. "We go for about two weeks at a time and we’ll be there, we will backfill the stations. We’ll do whatever they need.”