Agenda - 12-15-1987 - Laserfiche WebLink

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005 There are ten fire departments in Orange County, two paid departments and eight volunteer fire departments. Together, these departments answered 1,854 fire calls in 1986. The two paid departments, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, have their own paid Fire Marshal. Therefore, the paid departments have not been included in this report since a county fire marshal would not directly serve these departments. In July, 1987, the Orange County Fire Chief's Council requested funding for a county fire marshal's position. This request was accompanied by a letter of support from all of the fire departments except one. The Hillsborough Fire Department did not support creating a fire marshal position. They did not feel that there would be enough work in the rural areas of the county to justify a full-time fire marshal position. To determine what other counties were doing about the role of a fire marshal, this office sent out fifteen questionaires. These questionaires were sent to counties with similar needs as Orange. County. From these questionaires (see attached), we obtained the following information. Four counties have a full-time paid fire marshall position. All of these counties have twenty fire departments or more and answered over 1,300 calls in 1986. Nine counties combined the position of fire marshall with at least one other position. The fire calls answered varied from 380 to 2000 calls in 1986 and the number of fire departments in each county ranged from eight departments to 32 departments. Only one county had no one acting as fire marshal . This county answered 452 calls in 1986 and has eight fire departments.