OXFORD, Ga. — One of Georgia’s first fire stations built with a decontamination area designed to lower firefighters’ cancer risk officially opened for business Thursday, June 24, in north Newton County.

Newton County elected officials, staff members and Newton County Fire Service firefighters and administrators participated in a ceremonial “hose drop” — the equivalent of a ribbon cutting — to officially open the new Fire Station No. 8 in Oxford.

The $2.7 million facility at 2345 Gum Creek Road will serve a part of unincorporated Newton County roughly between Gum Creek Road on the south and the Walton County line on the north.

Fire Chief Mike Conner said the station was “kind of a concept” that was the product of a building committee of firefighters and elected officials.

“This station has kind of a cancer initiative that we tried to implement into this station,” Conner said.

He noted studies have found firefighters have a much higher rate of cancer than the overall population because of the often hazardous materials with which they come in contact when fighting fires.

“It’s because of our jobs,” Conner said.

The decontamination process in the new station begins when firefighters return from a fire and leave their equipment outside for cleaning, said Jeff Prine, the county’s project manager.

Firefighters then enter the decontamination unit — located off the truck bay — and clean and wash their personal equipment, such as their suit, in a room before showering in a separate area.

This prevents them from entering the living space covered with any contaminants that can spread to other firefighters.

“It sounds simple but it takes a lot of effort and design to get to that point,” said Jeff Prine, the county’s project manager.

The contaminants can include any number of cancer-causing agents found within more than 100 chemicals released when materials burn, as well as asbestos in older structures.

An International Association of Firefighters research study showed that cancer was the disease that caused the most death among firefighters, with cancer causing a 61% rate of career line-of-duty deaths among firefighters between 2002 and 2017.

“In one of these fires, they come into contact with all of these carcinogens — plastics and stuff — and it’s absorbed through our skin,” Conner said. “We have a very, very high rate of cancer in the fire service.”

Prine said the $2.7 million station was completed under budget and on time with three truck bays, a decontamination area and office space.

The building also was designed to be an “emergency event stage” with an electric generator to provide emergency power so it can remain online during a major event, Prine said.

Newton County Fire Service formerly responded to the north Oxford area from Station 9 on Mt. Zion Road, which is about five miles from the new station site, and Station 1 in Covington, officials said.

Insurance companies in the U.S. typically use a rating from one to 10 by a company called Insurance Services Office (ISO) that rates how well a fire department is equipped to serve homes and businesses within a geographic area.

One is the best possible rating while a 10 means the fire department did not meet ISO's minimum requirements.

Conner said some north Newton residents formerly saw lower insurance rates because they lived close enough to take advantage of a mutual aid agreement with Walton County’s fire department.

However, many others in the area did not live within five road miles of a station or a source of water for fighting fires which the Insurance .

In recent years, the ISO rating of those residents’ homes increased and their homeowner insurance rates “went through the roof,” Conner said.

With the completion of Station 8 and Station 4 under construction in eastern Newton, about 96% of all county residents will live within five road miles of a fire station and likely see reduced insurance rates, he said.

ECONOMY SLOWED CONSTRUCTION

Conner said the station’s construction was included in the voter-approved 2011 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. However, officials did not begin work to complete the project until 2019, he said.

Former District 3 commissioner Nancy Schulz said sales tax collections were slow during the economic downturn in which the 2011 SPLOST was approved. The county also was unable to use bond financing based on the 2011 SPLOST, Schulz said.

“Consequently, we had to wait until we received a substantial portion of the collections to begin each project,” she said.

Schulz, who served from 2009 to 2020, said she worked with her District 3 predecessor, Ester Fleming, and his son, former District 5 commissioner Tim Fleming, on the project.

She said the project was slowed as the county focused on finding a site for Station 8 in northeastern Newton from 2014 to 2018.

There also was high turnover in fire department leadership before Conner was hired and he identified the current location in northwest Newton, she said.