Stephens County receives short notice of Fire Department need

The Stephens County Board of Commissioners recently approved the purchase of 39 airpacks for Stephens County Fire.

During its regular scheduled meeting, County Fire Coordinator Jonothan Jordan came before the board requesting its approval to purchase the new equipment.

Jordan says that due to the age of the departments’ air packs, the manufacturer will no longer service the airpacks.

“These airpacks are kind of like your cell phones, they’ll come out with the latest and greatest and then in three-years-time, they’re building the new latest and greatest. Well these airpacks were purchased when we bought the ’99 trucks. For two-years now, we’ve known that there’s no more parts to fix these airpacks,” Jordan said. “Earlier this year, we went down to Fire Line, on another matter, and the representative told us that he would no longer flow test this (current airpacks). There’re only two places in the state of Georgia that will flow test these airpacks that we have. So, I contacted him, and he told us that we could ship all of them down to Florida, and they could convert them; but, if they still fail the flow test then they would still be out of service.”

Chairman Dean Scarborough expressed initial concern after hearing how much each airpack will cost.

“Since we know we don’t have this much money, is there some other station that has some money, partial, for helping funding these,” Scarborough asked.

“Phyllis (Ayers, county administrator) would have to be the one to answer that, I know the Big Smith budget, but I don’t know the other ones,” Jordan said.

“I’m going to follow up with this question: This is a request for SPLOST VII; but, obviously there’s a need before SPLOST funds can be [used], so I don’t know how we got into this ‘not asking for it ahead of time,’” Scarborough said.

Jordan says the state requires each truck to have a number of airpacks on board; but, without them the trucks would be deemed out of service.

New Hope Fire Department Chief Stacy Pulliam verified the information Jordan was presenting to the commissioners.

Pulliam says that the notice that the county’s airpacks would no longer be serviced came as a surprise to the department.

“MSA which is the manufacturer, there’s like four big dogs, MSA Incorporated, unfortunately, they’re the biggest dogs out there and they get to make their own rules,” Pulliam said. “So, Jonothan is telling the truth, it was a bombshell dropped on us as well. We had been told for the last two years, that they are running out of parts. County Fire has been trying to limp-by and get to SPLOST; but, unfortunately, the guy called to say ‘hey, we’re not going to do that anymore.’ So, the bottom line to it is, and I hate to say it, but it is what it is, and these trucks are going to be out of service. If we had of known, last year or six months ago, we would have been in your ear then, but we just found out ourselves.”

The board voted and approved a motion to purchase the airpacks, and if the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) VII passes then the county would use those funds to reimburse the general fund.

The cost to replace all 39 airpacks will be released once the county receives bids from companies that offer the equipment.