Supervisors discuss options for fire departments for the future

During its meeting on Monday, the Pearl River County Board of Supervisors discussed and approved an assortment of items on their agenda. At the end of the meeting, several members of the board voiced their concerns on how the low number of volunteer firefighters is affecting the county’s ability to fight fires.

During the discussion, the Supervisors entertained the idea of strengthening the ability to combat this with a unified firefighting troop. There have been a small number of cases with the volunteer shortage leading to a lack of response on scene for small brush fires. The idea is to provide better coverage county wide within the next 10 years by adding two full time firemen with a truck, one on the north end of the county and one on the south end. They would work five days a week to act as the first responder with volunteers taking over at night and on weekends.

This unification is in no way meant to minimize the efforts of our volunteer firemen and we are grateful for the time and effort they have provided.

District 3 Supervisor Hudson Holliday stated, “I understand that with the price of fuel and the way times are changing, it’s hard on the volunteers and we should therefore come up with a comprehensive plan on where we are headed with the fire departments.”

The board tasked EOC Director Shawn Wise with preparing a plan to present to the Supervisors to show options of how the plan could be structured and implemented.