Andrews – A meeting that reignited years of debate about the town fire department’s failure to respond to emergency calls ultimately brought an end to the 115-year-old agency last week.
Emotions ran high as the Andrews Board of Aldermen listened to almost 90 minutes of public comment that included serious accusations about actions – and inaction – by the department. Emergency personnel from other departments recounted stories about falsified training documents, firefighters refusing to work with other departments and some even standing by as the E-911 director’s house burned down in 2011.
When all was said and done, the board of aldermen unanimously voted Jan. 18 to dissolve the Andrews Volunteer Fire Department and approve a five-year contract with nearby Valleytown Fire & Rescue to handle the town’s emergency needs.
“The vote I give is simply for the citizens of this town and the safety they’re under,” Alderman Jonathan Ellison said after the motion had been made and seconded.
The meeting ended with the now former members of the volunteer fire department turning in bags of gear by dropping them in front of the board’s table. Mayor James Reid thanked longtime members of the department for their service, but said the stakes were too high and a change needed to be made.
“We’re not saying nothing (bad) about how great of a fire department we had for many years,” Reid said. “We’re saying what we’ve had for the last four years is going to get somebody killed.”
Andrews’ new contract with Valleytown will cost the town $50,000 per year. Reid said the board budgeted $75,000 for the Andrews Fire Department last year and the actual figure ran to about $100,000 due to buying new equipment. The budget also has been considerably lower at times – in the $30,000-50,000 range – in past years.
Valleytown covers about 103 square miles, but has the benefit of a much larger budget funded by a fire tax. Valleytown also has two full-time paid firefighters on staff.
Communication issues
The Andrews Fire Department has been plagued by years of electronic communication struggles, and firefighters have repeatedly said pager alerts go off only for them to hear static.
Ray Frazier, who volunteered with the department for almost four decades, told the Cherokee Scout in 2018 that enough power comes through to activate a pager, but often not enough to allow the receiving end to hear the communication. Little seems to have changed in the years since.
Reid said a recent fire alarm at Andrews High School sparked renewed concerns. No one from the Andrews Fire Department responded to the call, but Valleytown sent four members of its department and a truck.
“We can’t hear calls,” firefighter Shayn Loy said during the Jan. 18 meeting. “We get nothing but static. Because we have such problems with radios with the fire department, we’ve been using E-911 for our phones. It’s a nice app; it works wonderful when you have cell service.”
However, Loy noted that there are many areas around town where a signal is unavailable, and those problems have only been made worse by recent issues with Verizon cell service. Cherokee County recently sent a letter to state Rep. Karl Gillespie and state Sen. Kevin Corbin (both R-Franklin) formally requesting their help in attempting to resolve the issues with Verizon.
Loy recalled one instance in which he said an emergency call went out at 9 a.m., but he did not receive notification until 1 p.m.
Reid said he believes firefighters have had legitimate electronic communications issues, but the town has spent years trying unsuccessfully to resolve the problems. A purchase order confirmed that a new tower arrived in July 2021, which could have boosted the signal to firefighters’ radios and pagers – but it was never installed.
“It has laid up there ever since and had weeds grow up around it,” Reid said. “To put this into perspective, because a lot of people think, ‘Oh my God, they had to erect a tower,’ it specifies that it takes approximately six hours to put this ‘tower’ up.”
A ‘frat club’
Cherokee County E-911 Director Theresa Creasman recounted her own personal story about the way she said the department failed her more than a decade earlier. Creasman lost her home in the Valleytown District due to a fire.
“I lost everything I owned in 2011, and you know why?” Creasman asked. “Because Andrews Fire would not work with the Valleytown Fire Department and Peachtree that showed up to fight my fire. I literally watched firemen from this department sitting on the bumper of a truck, while the rest of the Valleytown and Peachtree fire departments tried to save my home.”
Creasman described the Andrews Fire Department as operating like a “frat club” in recent years, and said members made a practice of shifting blame. Serious issues with the department have repeatedly gone unaddressed for long periods of time, only for members to develop a sudden urgency to address them when confronted with the problems.
“Every time this subject comes up, we want to focus on ‘now,’ ” Creasman said. “Now how can we fix this?
“For the last five years, same story, it’s smoke and mirrors with these people. ... At the end of the day, the town of Andrews’ citizens deserve better, however that needs to occur.”
Reid said the problems have gone beyond electronic communication, including a failure to update paperwork for nine years from 2012-21. Former department member and alderman Scott Stalcup took two weeks off from his job to update the paperwork last summer. Without that effort, the mayor said the town’s insurance rates could have skyrocketed.
Justin Derreberry said he left the Andrews Fire Department for Valleytown, in part, due to concerns over paperwork.
“It’s a thousand wonders that there’s not been fraud detected here for falsifying documents,” Derreberry said. “There’s stuff that my name’s on that I was never at.”
During the meeting, Reid said he was most concerned about the allegations of falsified documents and threat of litigation. He spoke to Derreberry afterward and learned that the issues stemmed from training paperwork. Department members are required to have 270 hours of training each year.
“That’s where they were falling short,” Reid said. “It sounded a little more damning than what it was.”
Volunteers defend department
Longtime department member Ed Holloway asked the board to give the department more time to erect the tower and improve communications. He had just marked his 35th anniversary as a volunteer a day earlier.
“I’ve been on this department for 35 years as of last night,” Holloway said. “To me, it’s a slap in the face if this department gets contracted out. If we get a little bit of time and a little bit of effort that we’re putting in now, we can have this department back like it was.”
Loy said some of the criticisms the department has faced have been caused by aging equipment. One of Andrews’ trucks was sidelined with a flat tire for five weeks because it is a 1980s model, making it difficult to find someone to work on it.
Frazier accused the board of going behind firefighters’ backs to reach an agreement with Valleytown.
“The Andrews Fire Department has been left off your agenda for a long time, and I am sick of you people,” Frazier said. “I don’t trust you. I can’t operate with you anymore. Even if you vote to keep the fire department, I am done.”
Frazier came forward and tossed a key onto the table where the board members were sitting before walking away.
Andrews once ‘elite’
Reid said he was encouraged by the fact that two members of the Andrews Fire Department approached Valleytown Chief Justin Hyde after the meeting and inquired about joining that department. Valleytown already has a healthy mix of original members of that department alongside former Andrews members.
Still, the decision to dissolve Andrews Fire Department was something he never expected to be part of.
“When I was growing up in Andrews, the Andrews Fire Department was elite,” Reid said. “That’s why I kept saying if somebody told me 20 years ago we’d even be having this conversation, I would’ve told them they were insane.
“I truly meant that, because we had the best of the best, but you age out. And if you don’t have that next generation coming in to say, ‘Give me that torch and show me how to carry it,’ then you’re in trouble.”