The Daily Citizen
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If you haven’t yet read Rachel Brown’s story about Whitfield County’s need for new fire equipment as a result of growth in the county, we recommend it (it can be found under local news).
The story highlights the pressure that new construction, particularly the new Coahulla Creek High School, has placed upon county fire services while also exploring the fact that the county can’t afford to add any new equipment right now.
Whitfield County Fire Chief Carl Collins plans within the next few weeks to ask county commissioners for an $850,000, 100-foot ladder fire truck capable of reaching tall buildings and broad-roofed industrial facilities.
He says he needs the new truck to provide the best fire protection reasonably available to several industrial buildings in Valley Point, future development at the Carbondale business park and a couple of church buildings that are three levels at their highest points, as well as the three-story high school, which will open for the 2011-12 school year.
Collins told The Daily Citizen that the equipment the county currently owns will not allow firefighters to reach the top of the new school’s third level, which is 45 feet above ground. Unless county officials come up with the more than three quarters of a million dollars in time, Collins said firefighters will have to use the equipment they have, which is designed for smaller buildings. With stairs at each end of the building, firefighters would have to go inside to reach the top of the roof in the event of a fire.
The problem for the county, however, is that adding such an expensive piece of equipment isn’t currently in the cards.
Commission Chairman Mike Babb said commissioners have discussed the matter some but aren’t entertaining any serious thoughts of purchasing a truck at this point. “(An aerial fire truck) is a major, major expenditure,” he said in the article. “It’s been talked about, but in these economic conditions it’s not a serious subject at this point,”
The problem isn’t that the students and staff of the new school won’t be safe — they will be — but that it seems like one governmental hand didn’t know what the other was doing.
In designing the school, district spokesman Eric Beavers said school officials submitted site plans to county officials in early 2008 and sent detailed plans to the state fire marshal’s office in March 2009.
“School districts are required to submit their plans to the state Department of Education and state fire marshal when building a new school,” Beavers said. “We have also worked with the county fire department since the beginning of the project on matters including designing the fire access and placing fire hydrants.”
State Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said the DOE reviews and approves facilities plans. The DOE’s site selection guide for schools places heavy emphasis on the availability of water and sewer services, but it mentions nothing about fire protection.
Not once, however, did the question of whether the county had a fire truck to adequately cover a three-story building come up.
No one in the whole process did anything wrong, but no one had a grasp on the whole scope of the project and what it would mean for county services.
It’s one thing to make sure the building is close enough to a fire station and that there are adequate water hook-ups and another thing to take that thinking a step further and anticipate that it might mean new equipment.
Growth puts pressure on all facets of public and private life. With projects like Carbondale coming on board we will be faced with more and more of these kinds of decisions.
What the public needs to be assured of is that in planning for these projects, the city, county, state or whoever isn’t just making sure it follows all of the regulations.
We need to be sure that all of the known consequences of that growth have been thought out and planned for so that we don’t get caught by surprise again.
