Tuesday, March 4, 2025–4:00 p.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
The Rome-Floyd County Fire Department is preparing for growth, especially with plans for a new industrial park out on Highway 411 East.
According to Fire Chief Troy Brock, who was a guest on WRGA’s First News with Doug Walker on Tuesday, two and possibly three new fire stations will be needed in the years to come.
“Our existing stations have been in place since the 1980s,” Brock said. “We did relocate some of them back in the 90s on the outskirts of the city limits to try and eliminate the need of adding stations, because you have additional operating costs and manpower. That is the most expensive part of operating a fire station. However, we are to the point that we are going to have to do that, or we are going to lose our ISO rating. We have to maintain coverage. We have 514 square miles, and we have a lot of unincorporated areas.”
The ISO or Insurance Services Office Fire Score is a rating that determines how well the fire department can protect the community. The rating is used to determine homeowner’s insurance rates—the lower the score, the lower the cost to insure your home.
Other areas of need include the Horseleg Creek area and Lindale.
Brock also spoke about how the special purpose, local option sales tax has helped fund needs in the department.
“I cannot stress how important that SPLOST has been to our department,” he said. “We have got a burn building now due to SPLOST. Our training tower has been renovated due to SPLOST. We have brand new SBCAs due to SPLOST. They were out-of-date and had to come out. That was a large ticket item—over $1 million. Along with that, the face masks on the new ones are Bluetooth-compatible.
SCBA’s are self-contained breathing apparatuses.
One project that will have to wait a while is a new fire department headquarters. The Rome Police Department needed a new home, and that was the big ticket item included in the latest SPLOST referendum.
“We’ll be back,” Brock said. “We definitely need a new Station One- the current one is a 1973 model.”
Brock said they are also in dire need of a history museum because they have a ton of memorabilia dating back to the beginning of the fire department in 1850.
