By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post

Changes may be coming soon to the Ellis County Rural Fire Department.

In an effort to deal with a shortage of firefighters and aging facilities and equipment, Rural Fire Chief Darin Myers has proposed consolidating fire companies.

At Monday night’s Ellis County commission meeting, Myers presented the commission with a plan to combine Rural Fire Companies 2 and 3 at Catherine and Companies 6 and 7 at Ellis.

Myers said Company 3, located on the Saline River Road, will have three people retiring in October, leaving the company with no one to run the station. According to Myers, Company 2 has eight or nine firefighters.

The chief of Company 7, south of Ellis at the 120th and Antonino Road intersection, retired earlier this year, and they are also fighting low numbers. Myers said they have had firefighters come out of retirement to help staff Company 7 and they want to retire. The interim chief will retire at the beginning of next year.

After talking with the Ellis and Schoenchen Companies, Myers said “All companies are supportive of this. They are in agreement this is a good plan.”

Myers said the public in those two areas may be concerned about losing the station in their area and how it may affect their insurance.

But those two fire companies are not recognized as fire departments by the Insurances Services Office (ISO), because, according to Myers, due to the aging truck, lack of training and personnel, and the poor condition of the facilities.

The changes may lead to some areas seeing an increased ISO rating because of the new service area. A reclassification study must be done to determine that, Myers said.

Under Myers’ proposed plan, Company 2 would cover much of the northeast corner of Ellis County and Companies 6 and 8 would split the area in the southwest corner. Myers said the county will likely seek to redraw the rural fire districts if the plan is approved.

Myers expects the changes to increase response time. He said there have been several incidents, at both locations, where these two companies were called out and they were beaten to the scene by other companies.

“It creates a false sense of security,” Myers said, “because they think we have this firetruck in this fire station. However, for more of the stuff we do in the fire service, it doesn’t have any equipment to get there.”

It would be difficult at this time to hire all new people to fill these positions, according to Myers.

It would also be extremely time consuming to train a new group to run the station. He estimated it would take between eight and 10 years to properly train new firefighters to have the station be completely self-sufficient.

Commissioner Dean Haselhorst said before they make the changes they need to get the public’s input. Anyone with concerns or questions is encouraged to contact Myers at (785) 625-1061.

The commission will take up the issue again the first week in October.

• In other business the commission approved the purchase of a 2006 Ford F550 four-door rescue unit from Hays Fire Rescue for $47,500–a third of the cost of a new one, according to Myers. The truck will be used for rescue calls although it can help to extinguish fires. Myers said stats show most of the calls Rural Fire responds to are rescue and EMS calls.
• The commission approved the purchase of four new Dell computer servers. Two will replace aging servers with the other two being used for backup storage.
• Allowed the Public Works Department to advertise for truck driver and heavy equipment open positions.