BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
STARKE— Bradford County’s fire chief told the Keystone Heights Rotary Club that his department switched over to paid firefighters because the volunteer system no longer worked.
Ben Carter made the comments during a Feb. 9 meeting. He has been the Bradford County fire chief since 2020, working in the county’s emergency medical services department before that.
“Volunteerism in general has declined over the years and so it was no different for the fire service,” he said. “And the requirements to be a volunteer firefighter were just about the same requirements to go be a paid firefighter, so what was happening was the county would invest in these people to send them through the volunteer program and then they would go to an extra 90 hours of school and become a paid firefighter.”
Carter added that the county also attempted a combined volunteer and paid department.
“And again, the volunteerism just wasn’t there,” he said.
Carter also said the sheriff took over the department, but after a year requested that county commissioners take the operation back.
Now, the fire operation has six firefighters on duty around the clock, two at Sampson City, two in Theressa and two in Lawtey, in addition to one supervisor on duty.
The county also operates five advanced life support vehicles and five ambulances with 10 emergency medical staff on duty in addition to one supervisor.
Carter compared the six firefighters per shift to the National Fire Protection Agency’s standard for responding to a structure fire on a 2,000-square-foot ranch-style home.
“They expect you to have 16 firefighters on that home,” he said of the agency, “so we don’t come close to meeting that safety standard. It’s our mission to get closer to that goal.”
Carter said the county has applied for a grant to expand its staffing for fire rescue. He said that if the county receives the grant, he could add five additional firefighters a day, taking the total per shift to 11.
Now, the department has 72 employees in addition to a few part-timers.
Carter added that Bradford fire-rescue responded to 10,243 calls for service in 2021, including around 52 structure fires.
Carter said that additional goals for his department are to activate the Speedville Fire Station on County Road 21B.
He added that the station was originally built without sleeping quarters because it was designed as a volunteer station.
He said he hopes to find funding to convert the facility into a fulltime station. He added that the emergence of the Keystone Heights RV Park and a spurt of residential construction in the southern part of the county is increasing the need for more coverage in south Bradford.
Carter also said the Hielbronn Springs area is another region that could use additional coverage. He added that while the department was under the control of the sheriff’s office, Sheriff Gordon Smith secured a grant to upgrade the Heilbronn Springs station for living quarters. However, the grant amount wasn’t sufficient to cover increases in construction costs that occurred after the grant was applied for. Carter said the county is attempting to increase the size of the grant to upgrade the Heilbronn station.
He added that the department is also looking to build its own training facility to train firefighters inhouse.
