Wartrace fire chief defends department's response

A recent fire that demolished the Knob Creek home owned by Jim Porter on July 31 has apparently stirred up rumors against the Wartrace Volunteer Fire Department. Area resident Barry Knox approached the Wartrace Board of Mayor and Aldermen at the meeting Monday night to express his concerns about the department and the safety of the people living in the area.

"I appreciate the fire department," said Knox. "I'm not really concerned about what went on. I'm more concerned about what's going to happen in the future, about if the first responders have adequate equipment, adequate training."

According to Fire Chief Jeff Phillips, some rumors he's heard claim the fire department took an hour to respond to the call, but his own records from the dispatch center show the time of arrival to be within 18 minutes. Three of the eight volunteer firefighters in the department were out of the area or unable to respond. Phillips was on vacation, Josh Carlock, also a firefighter for the Shelbyville Fire Department, was in Fayetteville, and another firefighter was at home with a sick family member.

"I was in Fayetteville and I still made it in 30 minutes," said Carlock.

Phillips said the Bell Buckle VFD was on standby and responded quickly, as did the Normandy VFD and the main Bedford County Fire Department station in Shelbyville.

"We had 18 firefighters on the scene," said Phillips in a later interview.

He said the problem was not in the numbers of fighters, or even in the time of response, but in the severity of the fire, which was already engulfing the home when the call went out.

"It was already fully involved," he said. "It had a shingle roof with tin over it which made putting the fire out very difficult."

Knox questioned the credentials of the firefighters, saying he had been asked to go on a fact finding mission," and that some of the firefighters were about to lose their certifications.

When Phillips asked him which ones, then said none of them were, Knox agreed and said, "None of yours."

Phillips told the board he has been trying to expand the numbers of the volunteers from eight -- which includes him.

"I'd feel a lot better with twice that number," he said.

Phillips said he had talked with Ronnie Lokey, chief of the Bell Buckle VFD who had some recruiting success after posting a large sign outside the fire hall extolling the benefits of joining, both to the fire fighter and the community. Phillips said he plans to do the same, and he stressed his "open door" policy for all recruits -- within reason.

"I've never told anybody who wants to do it he can't," he said. "But I'm not going to take anybody who isn't going to commit."

Those wanting to be volunteer firefighters need to fill out an application, be in good health, not have a criminal background, and above all -- go to training, he said later.

"There's a 16-hour orientation before they're allowed to be on a structure fire," he said.

The firefighters must get certified, and there are mandatory training sessions twice a month. This, he said, is what has been the problem with some volunteers in the past.

"If they can't make it to a training session because of work or something, they can always call me and I'll work with them -- meet them down at the station, get some practice in driving the truck. But if they don't let me know and they don't go to training ..."

He said none of those who have been released from the department because of not attending training have approached him about reinstatement, and he would be more than happy to talk to them, as long as they were ready to make a commitment to learning the job.

"We pay for it," he said. "It's all in-house."

Mayor Don Gallagher told Knox that when it came to chain of command, Phillips was at the top with the fire department.

"I can't tell him what to do."

He also said that the training regulations and requirements were handed down by the state, not Phillips, and had to be followed.

Knox said he knew the firefighters would "do the right thing."

In other business, the board voted to add a new security camera recording device to the budget for $1,696. The town currently has two 4-channel DVRs to capture images from five security cameras around the town but they have not been functioning properly. According to Todd Niehouse with Stewart Security System, the DVRs are having hard drive problems and because they are an "off brand," they are hard, if not impossible, to get repaired. He recommend the board invest in a new, name-brand DVR, a single unit with nine channels, not only capable of hosting all five cameras, but leaving room for expansion.

Another problem with the current system, he said, is that for the Comm Center to access the recorders, it can only do one at a time, and has to log out, then log back in to see the images on the second one. The new system would allow easier access, as well as real-time recording which the faulty system did not offer.

The board also agreed to close the city park from 7 to 9 a.m. every Tuesday morning during the mowing season for safety reasons, to prevent visitors from being injured from flying debris from the mowers and trimmers.