Fairview firefighters get the call 40 minutes after opening new station

FAIRVIEW, Georgia (WDEF) – A new fire station came online today in north Georgia just in time to respond to their first call.

Walker County upgraded the building in Fairview to be a round-the-clock station.

It opened for business at 7 AM this morning, and got their first call at 7:40.

The fire was a home at 7 Catharine Street.

One person was inside at the time, but got out safely.

Firefighters got it out quickly but the home suffered about 20% fire and smoke damage.

“They had a less than five minute response time,” said Chief Blake Hodge. “To put it in perspective, if it was yesterday the Flintstone station would have responded and it would have been a little over 8 minutes response. We know that fire doubles in size every minute, so minutes count, seconds count.”

The Fairview district got more than a thousand calls last year.

The department trained 11 new firefighters this summer to staff the station.

They just graduated from the academy on Saturday.

Chief Hodge commented on his new recruits.

“I look at the fire service as a four legged stool. It’s training, education, experience and continued training and you can’t beat experience. Today, it started day one. It will settle them in a little bit. They will review this incident and see what they did great and what they can improve on.”

The station was previously volunteer-only, but there weren’t any volunteers for it.