A grass fire started about 2:30 p.m. Thursday near Van Zandt County Road 3406 and Highway 64, just outside Wills Point. Texas A&M Forest Service had the fire at 550 acres with 50 percent containment as of 10:30 p.m. Thursday. The Texas Department of Public Safety closed Highway 64 near the grass fire. Officials asked the public not to drive into heavy smoke on the nearby county roads.
The Van Zandt County Sheriff's Office said four firefighters were taken by ambulance to the hospital in Canton with heat exhaustion. According to Myrtle Springs Volunteer Fire Department, 17 mph wind on dry grass pushed the fire west of 3412 toward 3416. Crews from Van Zandt, Kaufman, Henderson, and Hunt counties worked the scene. Multiple homes sat in the path of the fire.
For a Mabank business, this fire is a local problem rather than a story from another part of the state. The problem shows up on a closed highway if the only copy of the files lives in that building.
The current files for the office should already sit somewhere other than that building. The logins needed to reopen the office should sit in that same off-site place. A way to reach customers belongs in that copy as well. A drive on the same desk is not off-site storage. A copy at the house of the person who also works there is better than nothing. A backup that already ran Thursday night is the stronger version of that idea.
If staff had to leave the building, email should still open from another place. A working phone away from the building should still reach the customers who need you. Nobody should have to stand in the parking lot to do either job. The usual test is mail an owner can open from a phone, a backup that does not live in the same room, and a list of who to call if the building is dark. Waiting until the smoke lifts is not a substitute for those three things. Hoping the server survived is not a plan for the next morning. Write the gap down today if those three things are missing.
You do not need a wildfire headline to justify the work. You need a copy that already lives somewhere else. That copy needs to be in the hands of a person who can reach it without standing in front of the building.
My I.T. Consultants is a managed service provider in Athens. If you want a short look at whether the office can reopen from somewhere else, call 903-675-5431 Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
