The start of what I think is something big for Panola County occurred earlier this week and you may not have noticed.
Two rural fire departments, Red Hill and Pleasant Grove, turned over administrative duties to the Panola County Board of Supervisors.
Now those five supervisors are not going to individually run those fire departments, but from now on those departments will be a part of Panola County government. Others of the remaining eight rural fire departments have expressed interest in “surrendering” the departments that will continue, at least for a while, to be run by the volunteers we have depended on decades.
But this may well be the beginning of county-wide fire service that can be expected to turn into a professional department with full time firefighters in the future. It is a natural progression.
The municipal fire departments of Batesville and Sardis, one with full-time firemen and the other with more volunteers closer than most, answer or assist with 90 percent of structure fires in Panola County, according to Fire Coordinator Daniel Cole.
There are clearly advantages—centralized management and maintenance, equipment sharing, mass purchasing, training, required standards and being held accountable to a higher authority, some of which are already in place.
And there are certainly disadvantages.
One fireman Monday recalled he and other volunteers working on an engine late every night when they got off work.
“How long did it take?” he was asked.
“Every night until we got it fixed,” he replied.
There is pride in ownership and under the current rural fire districts many volunteers and their families have “birthed” the local department, either serving as firemen, in the auxiliary or on the commission board.
And nobody is going to run your business like you do. They might run it better and they might run it worse, but for sure they are going to run it differently.
Rural fire departments in some cases have become the community centers of today where once country schools or churches provided the only gathering spot.
Batesville Fire Chief Tim Taylor explained last week that employers are more reluctant to allow employees to take off for every false alarm and automobile fire or collision now that they have become so much more frequent.
As former Pope Chief Jerry Cranford noted at Monday’s supervisor meeting, “Recruiting and keeping volunteers is the biggest problem we have county-wide.”
But later he said, “At any given time a tone can go out and upwards of 100 people (volunteers) will come to your aid.”
We don’t need to mess that up.