Fire chief juggles resources

RIDGEVILLE — Cold nights are always a hassle for Fire Chief Herbert Cummings.

He has to move a firetruck and rescue vehicle from a shed north of town to a fire station a couple of miles south of town.

He can't leave the truck in the shed when it gets cold or the pumps will freeze. He doesn't like to leave the vehicles in the station south of town because of the train tracks that run through the middle of town.

A train coming through town could keep firefighters from reaching a fire on the other side of the tracks. It's almost happened before.

Cummings didn't have this problem until July. That's when the Dorchester County codes enforcement department closed down the town's fire station, which is across from Town Hall on the north side of the tracks.

Officials said the station was unsafe. Cummings said he wasn't surprised because the town had neglected it for years.

The station south of town is run by the county's rural fire board. The system operates mainly with volunteers and relies on extra taxes collected from rural residents for equipment and buildings.

Cummings, the town's fire chief for years, is also chief of the rural station, as well as incoming chairman of the rural fire board.

The rural fire tax costs the owner of a $100,000 house about $75 a year, according to estimates from the fire board when they got council to raise the tax in 2006. But the extra protection can lower the homeowner's fire insurance by several hundred dollars.

Ridgeville residents will start paying the extra tax already paid by residents of nearby Harleyville. Ridgeville officials signed a contract earlier this month with the rural fire board to provide service until the town can build a new fire station. That could be a long time, since nobody has any idea where the town would get the money.

Last summer, after the county closed the town's fire station, Town Council informally agreed to try to find a loan for a new station as soon as possible. There was no talk of money for a new station when council approved the agreement with the rural fire board two weeks ago. Cummings said council has dropped the idea for now.

A couple of months ago, Mayor James Williams said he was hesitant to move ahead with a new station until it becomes clear what the town needs. Ridgeville is on the edge of Summerville's growth wave, and the population could mushroom if building resumes and the town annexes several new developments in the area.

Williams could not be reached for comment this week.

Meanwhile, Cummings is looking around for some land for another station on the north side of the tracks. He will ask the rural fire board to consider building it, although it would compete with several other requests from rural residents.

"If I lived on this side of the tracks, I'd be worried about it," he said.