By Beth Velliquette
The Chapel Hill Herald
CARRBORO, N.C. — The Orange Grove Volunteer Fire Department has built and paid for a new fire station on Rocky Ridge Road west of Carrboro.
It’s the department’s second fire station, with the first one located on Orange Grove Road at the intersection of Buckhorn Road.
The new fire station is located just north of the Maple View Country Store and was built on land that the Nutter family leased to the fire station at a very low rate, according to Thomas Holmes, chief of the fire department.
It’s a 40-foot-by-50-foot metal building with two bays and a bathroom, Holmes said about the new building. It will house a pumper truck and a tanker truck, he said.
“It’s a station we paid for out of our budget,” Holmes said. “We didn’t have to finance any of that.”
The station had help from the Nutters as well as Allen Knight, a contractor who donated his services, Holmes said.
The new station will serve as a substation and will not be manned, but Holmes has assigned eight volunteers, who live close by, to the station.
“We’re running calls out (of it) right now,” Holmes said.
Construction began in March and finished about three weeks ago.
In addition to fighting fires, the volunteers serve as first responders to accidents, wrecks and medical emergencies in the 15-mile wide district.
The new station will fill the gap between the main station on Orange Grove Road and the Carrboro Fire Department’s coverage area to the east.
The new station, once it’s certified, should give homeowners who live in the area a break on their insurance costs, he said.
“This should take care of everybody on the eastern side,” Holmes said.
The next project, which the department hopes to start in about 18 months, is to build another substation on the western edge of the fire district close to Mebane Oaks Road.
The Orange Grove Volunteer Fire Department has 36 volunteers and two paid employees. The paid employees work Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the main station.
The Orange Grove Fire District does not have any fire hydrants, so the trucks have to carry water to fires and pump it out of ponds, Holmes said.
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