After a spirited debate, a proposal to buy a boat for North Stafford waters failed by a 4–3 vote last week, with Supervisors Jack Cavalier, Paul Milde and Laura Sellers voting in favor. A proposal to buy a boat for the Berea station died for lack of a motion.
Fire and Rescue Chief Mark Lockhart said his department responds to an average of more than 50 water-related emergency calls a year. That number is expected to rise, he said, with the opening of Lake Mooney reservoir in May.
“The boats we have currently are leisure boats that have been converted to fire-and-rescue vessels,” Lockhart said in a telephone interview. “We don’t feel we have adequate boat resources currently that are available to us year-round.”
But supervisors questioned whether the number of past incidents warranted the additions.
“I’ve heard the statistics, but I’ve also heard that we have been responding one way or another,” Supervisor Cord Sterling said. “We’ve got a number of assets already in the region for this.”
Since 2010, the department has received 290 water-related emergency calls from across Stafford. The annual numbers range from 33 so far in 2015 to 70 in 2010, according to a Fire and Rescue Department report.
Boats stationed at the Falmouth, Widewater, Mountain View, Brooke and White Oak fire stations have helped respond to some of those calls. The Sheriff’s Office also has a boat, though it isn’t docked year-round.
One proposal called for a 21-foot fire boat equipped with a 500 gallon-per-minute pump to be housed at the Berea station. The $111,770 boat would have helped in water rescues and fighting fires at Lake Mooney, Abel Lake and the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers.
It would have been purchased using the Virginia Department of Fire Programs’ annual allocation to Stafford’s Fire and Rescue Department.
Currently, Stafford responds to some Rappahannock incidents with a boat that holds two or three people, Lockhart said. But Sterling noted that Fredericksburg helps out with river incidents and Sellers wondered how quickly the boat could get to the river if it was stationed at Berea.
“My feeling is maybe we need a better water rescue boat rather than a fire-fighting boat with 202 water rescues since 2010,” Supervisor Meg Bohmke said.
The second 30-foot boat with the same pump capabilities of a land-based fire engine—1,000 to 1,500 gallons of water per minute—would have been limited to the Potomac River and the Aquia, Potomac and Accokeek creeks. It would also have been equipped with technology to aid in locating drowning victims.
Unlike existing Stafford vessels, this $256,430 boat would have been kept in the water year-round at the Aquia Harbour Marina. A boat at Brooke station is also docked but not year-round.
Lockhart told the board that this boat would be stationed in a section of the county where response times can sometimes be longer.
Cavalier said firefighters and residents in the Widewater area have told him “this is something that they strongly want.” Milde added that the costs were small compared to what the county has spent on public safety needs in the past.
Others questioned the need for and cost of the boat.
?Vanessa Remmers: 540.735.1975
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