The Anniston Star
OXFORD, Ala. — The Oxford Fire Department on Sunday dedicated a new fire station that will serve the Bynum community to a volunteer firefighter who served the city nearly two decades.
City leaders, many first responders and the volunteer’s family showed up to the dedication and ribbon cutting for Station No. 3, which bears Dennis Cox’s name in silver letters over the door. According to Oxford fire Chief Gary Sparks, three firefighters will be posted at the three-bay station, which will house a fire engine, rescue unit and brush truck. The new station will drastically cut response times to calls in the western part of the city, Sparks said, and will also serve as a substation for the Oxford Police Department.
“Fires have changed,” assistant fire Chief Ben Stewart told the roughly 150 gathered for the dedication. “They burn quicker, so we’ve got to be quicker.”
Dennis Cox Oxford Fire Station
“We’re going to be able to get people on scene in five minutes, even in the furthest areas out here,” Sparks said.
That’s a dramatic improvement, the fire chief said, over the previous response time: between seven and 11 minutes, depending on where the call came from.
Besides quicker response times, residents could see a drop in homeowner’s insurance premiums if the Insurance Service Office gives Oxford a better fire-suppression rating.
Sparks said the city’s Fire Department was re-rated in January, including the then-unfinished station, but that he hasn’t received the rating yet.
“We should be getting ours soon,” he said.
Police chief Bill Partridge said with the addition of the fire station, public safety agencies in Oxford were “ready for anything that could happen within our city’s corporate limits.”
Having a police substation at the fire station will allow the officers who patrol Bynum and Eastaboga to stay in the area, rather than traveling back to the Police Department to file reports, he said.
The substation will also serve as a place for officers to meet with members of the community, Partridge said.
The station’s namesake, Dennis Cox, served as a volunteer firefighter in Oxford for 18 years. He was a lineman for Alabama Power, and suffered a traumatic brain injury on the job.
Cox died a few years later, in 1995, as a result of that injury. He was 42.
Cox’s widow, Myra, took to the podium and said she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry during the dedication.
As a new flag raised in front of the station flapped lethargically in a leaden sky Sunday afternoon, Cox said she appreciated the city honoring her husband’s service to his community.
“Those of you who knew Dennis know he would not expect this fanfare,” Cox told the audience, many of whom counted firefighters and other first responders as family members.
Her son, Nicholas, now a firefighter himself, agreed. “My dad would be humbled ... he wouldn’t want the attention,” he said.
“I don’t like the attention either,” he admitted. “I’m just doing a job that I love.” Nicholas inherited his father’s number, F23, when joined Oxford’s Fire Department.
Cox said the station’s dedication to his father meant a lot to him. It meant a lot to members of the Bynum community who attended the ribbon cutting, too; they feel safer with the station open, they said.
“It’s the difference between a kitchen fire and a house fire,” Eddie Shurbutt, who’s lived on Grandview Drive for 16 years, said.
Ray and Delle Bean echoed Shurbutt’s sentiment.
“It’s nice to have them as a neighbor,” Ray said. He and his wife own a large farm across U.S. 78. “Farming is dangerous. It’ll be nice to have someone close ... Accidents do happen.”
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