Baconton fire station nearing completion

BACONTON — A new fire station in Baconton is nearing completion after about a year of work and expected to be completed by June 15.

The structure itself is up and the director of Mitchell County E-911, Randy Johnson, said that while sheet-rock work and wiring still remains to be done, they’re making good progress. He added that there’s also some landscaping and paving left to do and the weather will need to cooperate in order for them to complete the job. Money was available in the special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) fund to build, and an estimated $950,000 has been spent so far.

About three years ago, issues arose with the old station in Mitchell County when owners of the property wanted the area vacated.

In addition to E-911 director, Johnson is also the county liaison between the Mitchell County Commission and the volunteer firefighters, including the Baconton Volunteer Fire Department. He acted as the primary overseer of the project and, over the last year, worked to find a site, get bids in and get construction going. He said adhering to deadlines helped the process go smoothly and it will, in turn, benefit the community financially.

The new location will be able to retain its Insurance Service Office (ISO) 3 rating. The rating is on a scale of 1-10, with 1 the best rating. The lower ISO number, the lower the insurance premium is. Johnson said the rating helps the community not just save money on buildings their tax dollars support, but on residential property and such as well.

“That’s why we’re really adamant about our stations built and in shape and in the proper locations,” he said, “make sure that everybody we could possibly cover gets coverage.”

He added that they will be able to continue to that goal of servicing as much of the community as possible.

“By the time we get through building our fire station and so forth that we’re working on now, we will probably have between a 95 to 98 percent fire coverage in Mitchell County and that’s almost unheard of,” he said.

Johnson noted the efforts by those that volunteer and how important they are to the safety of the surrounding area.

“It’s a lot of work effort by volunteers,” he said. “They’ve done a great job of staying on top of things. There’s a lot record keeping and a lot of training and responding to the fires and automobile accidents. They give a lot of their time freely and a lot of time they do spend on fire services. It saves the taxpayers so many hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing that.”