VALDOSTA – The Lowndes County Fire Rescue team unveiled Phase Two of its fire expansion plan Thursday with a hose uncoupling for a new station on Bemiss Road to better serve the unincorporated area.

Bemiss Fire Station 5 will be staffed with full-time firefighters manning the station 24/7, along with a bay for South Georgia Medical Center EMS.

County Manager Paige Dukes said the LCFR, SGMC and the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners have collaborated for more than a year on improving fire and EMS services across the county due to only one department overseeing all of a growing Lowndes County. The final project called for three new fire stations.

The first phase was the remodeling of Clyattville Fire Station 2. The facilities were originally built in 2008 but due budget constraints, the space was used for volunteers. Now it houses a full-time staff and the Bemiss station will be utilized in the same way.

“One year ago, Lowndes County Fire Rescue had 15 firefighters and two administrative staff. Today, we are a team of 11 administrative staff and 60 firefighters. So the challenge that the Board of Commissioners gave myself and our fire chief is to expand the department with three additional full time stations. Prior to Clyattville and this station, we only had one full-time station, so that was quite a challenge for them. It wasn’t the standard we wanted to meet for response times to our citizens, so this entire expansion project is to get emergency services to them as quickly as possible,” she said.

“This is the second step in the expansion plan, so we are halfway there. Our Bemiss corridor is a very high-volume call area. Not just for structural fires but for vehicle accidents and medical calls because of the population density. We used Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to add on to this building to also co-locate EMS, so now there’s an ambulance presence here as well. Our job, as it relates to being fire responders, is to be our best on the days our citizens are at their worst.”

Randy Smith, chief operating officer and chief nursing officer of SGMC, said the idea to add the EMS portion came while county and city firefighters were receiving medical training in their pursuit of obtaining EMS agency licensure.

“When Paige and I got to really talking, we were like ‘You know what? It makes a lot of sense that we’re building new fire stations; why should we have stand-alone EMS stations? Why not build them together?’ So, that’s how all of this came to fruition,” he said.

“Oftentimes, firefighters may be first on the scene, so they’re able to do that initial on-scene assessment and do some basic stabilization. This extends the arm, the reach, of EMS. We’re glad to see that. The places I’ve been to, you see these departments have really close collaboration, so we’re really excited to expand on that.”

Fire Chief Lloyd Green shared similar sentiments, praising the LCFR staff for their dedication to their training and county staff for opening up the Bemiss corridor.

“I’m ecstatic; it’s great to be a part of this. I have an unbelievable staff who paved the road for me, so to speak. I’m glad to see this one open and I’m looking forward to our next one. To be part of something that most fire chiefs in their whole career will never see. … It’s just a great opportunity for all of us.”

Dukes confirmed the county is planning for the third facility to be built in the North Lowndes area sometime in the next 10-12 months and said it’s an exciting time for public safety in Lowndes County.

“With the character and the leadership and the quality of our firefighters we have here with our department, they are just simply knocking it out of the park and I cannot be more proud of them,” she said.