The Rockingham Fire and Police Departments have released their activity reports for the month of July as part of their monthly duties to the city council.
The Fire Department responded to 47 total alarms in July, including 13 wrecks, one cooking fire, two electrical fires, and one water rescue.
In total, the department spent 14 hours and 12 minutes on calls in July, and saved an estimated $34,960,000 in property damage out of the $35 million worth of property that was exposed to fire. Rockingham Fire Chief Harold Isler said that the department arrives at these seemingly inflated numbers because large, expensive buildings that have fires often sustain little damage because of prevention systems in place.
“[The amount of potential property damage] varies from month to month,” Isler said. “Quite naturally if we go somewhere like Cascades [Tissue Group], the tissue plant down there, they have a lot of equipment in there, the building is worth a lot, so that’s how much we protected, but a lot of times they won’t have a lot of damage. The fire a lot of times will be confined.”
Isler said that these statistics vary significantly month to month, where long periods of low action will be broken by several fires in quick succession. In his three-year tenure, Isler said that the least amount of calls he’s seen in a month is 17.
For example, Rockingham did not have any structure fires in the month of July, but has had four already in August.
“The month of August has been busy already, we’re four fires in already,” Isler said. “That’s pretty substantial for us. We may go a couple months and not have anything and this month we’re not even halfway there yet and we’re already four fires in.”
The State of North Carolina requires that 12 firefighters respond to a structure fire, and Rockingham is able to send between 18 and 20 per call, according to Isler. There are about 30 people on the RFD staff, including part-timers.
“We handle [large fires] pretty well,” Isler said. “We’ve got options where we can call outside the county to get them to send additional manpower if we need it, but for house fires and stuff like that we usually don’t, we’ll usually handle it with what we have in-house.”
Of the $40,000 that was sustained to Rockingham property in July, $25,000 came from a playground fire in which a group of children piled pine straw into a plastic tunnel and set it on fire. The blaze melted the vinyl siding on four nearby apartment buildings and damaged the main office building of the complex.
The state also requires that firefighters spend at least 16 hours in training courses per person per month in order to reach 196 hours a year. RPD staff averaged 36 training hours per person in July, which Isler said was a major reason that the department was able to improve it’s rating with the Insurance Service Office (ISO), a for-profit organization that rates and sells data given to it by the Office of State Fire Marshal to insurance companies that helps them set their insurance prices.
The better your rating, the lower insurance costs for businesses and homes in your city.
“There’s a lot of different elements [in the ISO’s criteria] that we have to make sure that we meet and that was actually a big big reason that we were able to get our ISO rating down, because we were able to meet all the training qualifications,” Isler said. “We try to do something everyday, so, just because we’re not fighting fire doesn’t mean we’re not doing something. We’re working.”
Rockingham Police Chief Billy Kelly was unavailable for comment for this story. The following was submitted by the Rockingham Police Department to the city council for the month of July:
Rockingham Police Department
Total Calls in July: 1278
Animal Control Calls: 44
Alarm Calls: 159
Escorts: 75
Unlock Vehicles: 97
Charges generating arrest:
Felonies: 14
Misdemeanors: 109
Drug Violations: 12
Juvenile: 2
Warrants served: 103
Citations: 151
Accidents reported/investigated:
Property damage only: 59
Personal injury: 8
Officer hours spent in court: 43
Officer training hours logged: 264