Wytheville Fire and EMS services to combine in 2020

The Town of Wytheville Fire Department and Wythe County Rescue Squad are getting ready to combine into one entity in the coming months.

For years, both departments served as volunteer, but according to the town’s fire chief, it’s just too difficult to have good response times as volunteer only. That’s why Marc Brade helped to transform the town’s fire house to be fully staffed 24 hours a day.

“The faster we can get out of the building and get to the scene, the better,” Brade said.

Until only a few months ago, volunteers would take the calls and have to drive into the main station to pick up a fire truck and head to the scene. Brade said they have significantly reduced their call times from 10 to 15 minutes down to three or four.

“Volunteers have always been part of this department, and after the transition, we want to be able to still include them in our services,” Brade said.

According to Brade, the revenue recovery abilities that EMS has will allow them to add personnel without increasing taxes. When all is said and done, there will be about 30 full-time employees between both buildings, with four people on staff at each, 24 hours a day. Everyone will be cross-trained to do both jobs, except for a few people who have been grandfathered to stay with their positions.

“What that does is it gives us the ability to have someone on scene no matter what unit as quickly as possible,” Brade said.

In early 2020, the services will be combined. Brade said his next order of business is to try to build a brand new fire and rescue squad building. The current fire house is over a century old and was not built to fit the current size of fire trucks. It could also be a home for antique trucks they still keep.

“We try not to damage things as much as we can, there’s a few scratches here and there, but we’re working on it and it’s what we have right now,” he said. “We’re making it work and it has worked for a long time. We’ll continue to make it work, but if we have a new facility it could certainly improve things.”

Having more room to maneuver in and out of the garage will also help to decrease response times.

Fire trucks will be equipped with advanced life support capabilities in case both of the medic units are out on a call. This way, they can dispatch a fire truck and render care until mutual aid assistance is available.

“All of these things we’re doing are really to improve our capabilities of protecting the citizens, their property, to the area that we cover,” Brade said.

He expects the transition to happen by February of 2020.