County fire chief reflects on 8-year master plan, 5 years in
Without a crystal ball, it wasn’t likely county officials would be able to see the future when they created the Greenwood County volunteer fire service master plan in 2015.
The eight-year plan outlined the strategic goals the county had for funding, staffing and expanding the reach of the fire service, and recently County Fire Chief Steve Holmes gave County Council a brief update on where things stand more than five years into it.
“Any time you present a plan over eight years, things you foresaw for the future aren’t always what pans out,” he said in an interview Thursday. “It just felt like it was time to say all right, this is where we’re at.”
Staffing goals called for transitioning into a hybrid of volunteers and paid staff, and the fire service has full and part-time paid firefighters. But over the years, staffing has proven to be one of the toughest challenges facing the fire service.
“It was hard for me to project five years ago how many volunteer firemen I would have eight years later, and our numbers are down,” Holmes said. “Younger, stronger, more able-bodied firefighters — we have to find a good reason for these people to volunteer for the fire service.”
COVID-19 hasn’t helped. Franklin Cloninger, a city and county firefighter who serves on the county chief’s advisory group, said stations have a tendency to lose volunteers the less the crew meets in person. Because of the pandemic, there have been significantly fewer opportunities to get station staff together.
“While we’re trying to be safe in COVID, it starts to be really detrimental to our engagement of our volunteers,” he said. “People who might be in a high-risk category, too, might get a call and say, well, do I really want to risk going out there and potentially being exposed.”
On the other hand, Cloninger sees opportunity. COVID has shown how integral firefighters are as essential first responders during the pandemic, and he thinks that could be leveraged in recruitment — provided the county can develop tangible benefits to offer volunteers.
“Right now, it’s an incredibly tough atmosphere to recruit in,” he said. “The biggest benefit we have now, as I see it, is that we can go after the people who are able to work from home, who can be flexible enough to also work in the fire service.”
It’s also been a tough atmosphere to train in, Holmes said. COVID precautions meant also shutting down weekly, centralized training at the Coronaca fire station, where firefighters from any station were welcome to come and join in group training sessions. Firefighters are still training with their home stations, but training opportunities have become scarcer under COVID conditions because it often requires people to work closely together.
In terms of equipment, Holmes said a major chunk of the problem faced five years ago was solved with the Capital Projects Sales Tax. Funds were used to buy new trucks and other equipment and vehicles, allowing them to decommission older tools that were past their life expectancy.
Holmes said his maintenance costs on older equipment hit more than $200,000 a year, so firefighters have leaned heavily on using the new equipment, which is covered by a two-year, bumper-to-bumper warranty and preventative maintenance plan.
Some of that newer equipment is coming up on a year and a half of service, however, and Holmes said he knows they’ll have to address the older equipment again soon.
The county has been striving toward getting a unified, countywide fire district with a single fire safety rating from the company Insurance Services Office. Right now, some stations have to hold onto more vehicles than needed to ensure they meet ISO’s standards for their fire district. A single, countywide fire district would allow them to decommission certain older equipment, because stations will no longer be formally isolated, and they’ll work together to respond to calls.
More fire stations have gone up, as well. Recently the fire service opened the Bradley station, along with one on Carter Road and the finishing touches at the Medic 30 station on U.S. Highway 25 South are nearly complete. The county has land on Miller Road and on Highway 221 for two more and is working to acquire land on Morgan Road for another station, with construction expected to start in the spring.
“What we were able to do with these stations was put 99% of the county within five miles of a fire station,” Holmes said. “Whether we get a countywide rating of five or a countywide one, if you live more than five miles from a fire station, you’re an automatic 10.”
ISO ratings range from one to 10, with one indicating the highest category of fire safety possible.
One of the most impressive things of the past five years, Holmes said, was how cohesive the fire service has become. He was warned years ago by people in other fire services that mixing paid staff and volunteers creates a volatile environment, but instead, Greenwood has seen harmony as the part-time, full-time and volunteer crews work together to tackle calls.
“My faith in my volunteer departments has only been reinforced, in how well every one of them has gotten along and came together,” Holmes said.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Feb 1, 2021
By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com