Fire departments hosting benefit lunch in Portales

We could all learn some lessons from the folks who volunteer for our community fire departments.

One of the best is the concept of “mutual aid.”

Paul Luscombe, chief of the Dora Fire Department, defines it officially as this: “A joint powers agreement between departments which states that we will come to the other’s aid if requested on any kind of call.”

Kellie Bilbrey, a longtime volunteer with the Milnesand Fire Department, concurs.

“Mutual aid for us is the knowledge that when our little department is shorthanded or we have a major incident,” she said, “we have some wonderful neighbors at the ready with personnel and equipment to help. We have both a written and a spoken understanding to ‘be there’ for each other.”

Those two fire departments, along with the members of the Causey Fire Department, will be involved in a mutual aid project of the best kind Saturday.

They’re jointly hosting a benefit lunch in Portales for one of their own, Brandy Walker Rains, an emergency medical technician and volunteer firefighter with the Dora department, who is battling breast cancer.

Local barbecue master (and volunteer firefighter) Mark Clark will be smoking a mountain of brisket and pulled pork this week (150 pounds of each), and members of all three departments will be on hand starting at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Jake Lopez Building at the Roosevelt County Fairgrounds, 705 E. Lime, Portales, to fix up plates to eat inside or to go.

The lunch will run as long as the food lasts, and donations of all sizes are welcome. By the way, it’s also Peanut Valley Festival weekend at the fairgrounds, so there is a double incentive to come out.

Brandy Rains, a Roosevelt County native and 1999 graduate of Dora High School, is known to many in our community.

Besides more than two decades of working with rural fire departments (first Elida and now Dora), she’s been a regular in the emergency room at Roosevelt General Hospital for the last 13 years as an EMT/ER tech.

In early August, she got the kind of news nobody wants, a diagnosis of “stage 3 ER+PR-HER2- ductal carcinoma that had metastasized to my lymph nodes,” Rains said.

Even though it was caught early, she’s three treatments into 16 scheduled rounds of chemotherapy, and also faces surgery

“The good days outweigh the bad most of the time, but I am not going to lie,” she said. “It’s more intense than what I imagined.”

Enter that mutual aid.

“Whether because of illness, hard times, family issues, or whatever the situation is,” Kellie Bilbrey said, “we have to be there for each other. It is not only spoken of in the Bible but is laid on our hearts as part of a community and our commitment to serve others.”

Causey Fire Chief Michael Mapp, who also volunteers for the Dora Fire Department, has known Rains since high school.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with Brandy in the volunteer setting as well as seeing her at the hospital,” Mapp said, “not only with patients but with family members as well. We would encourage everyone to come out and make a donation.”

“Brandy has always been a giver to the community,” Rains’ department chief Paul Luscombe added. “She goes out of her way to help out on any cause that needs to be helped with. I think it’s a good thing for Roosevelt County to come out and support one of its own, especially one of our firefighters and EMTs.”

It’s even more than mutual aid, according to Mark Clark, who volunteers with both the Dora and Arch Fire Departments. “It’s about paying it forward and helping people any way you can.”

Rains said the notion of being on the receiving end of the love of her big-hearted colleagues has taken some getting used to.

“When your community and friends want to rally around you to support you emotionally and financially, it’s hard,” she said, “but it also makes you come out of that hole you just ran and hid in and realize they are right.

“I was born and raised in this community,” Rains said. “I love being a part of this community, and feel so blessed and thankful that Dora, Causey, and Milnesand Fire Departments are doing this for me.”

If you can’t be there Saturday and would like to chip in some mutual aid from afar, donations may also be sent via Cash App to $rains268, or by Venmo to @Brandy-Rains-3 .

Betty Williamson loves being part of a community that takes care of its own, especially when Mark Clark’s smoked brisket is involved. Reach her at:

[email protected]