2 years ago
Nail by nail, Daniel Pollnow is repairing a house that went up in flames in Bryant. ?Basically this whole side was charred from the bottom up," he explains. "And the firefighters came and they took out a lot of this area right here, just to make sure the fire didn't go into the attic. If it had it would have ruined the whole roof.?
Homeowner Kim Moore and her family were asleep at the time. It really shook up the whole family. ?Scared to death, that's frightening," she says. "When you have two small children in there asleep and we caught it. We're very fortunate we caught it.?
Moore says she called 911 for the fire department, but there's a twist to the story.
Bryant has seen eight to ten percent growth in the last couple of years; they're second to Maumelle in Arkansas. But for all the folks moving into the city, many don't know that they don't have a 24-hour fire department. And guess what? That even goes for the folks that already live in Bryant.
Moore says, ?We've lived here for three and a half years and didn't know that. Had something like this not happened to us, we probably still wouldn't know that.?
The Bryant Fire Department is staffed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Chief Randy Cox says he's looking for the community to rescue them with an added million dollars to expand to full-time operations. ?It's going to allow us to hire and equip and train 22 additional firefighters," he explains. "That would put 15 firefighters on staff 24 hours a day.?
City councilman Ed Collins says this is a no nonsense deal. ?With the growth in residential and commercial, we're forced to make decisions that will allow us to keep up and provide a service of safety to the citizens."
As for Moore, she's just thankful that the volunteers who work at the fire department after hours rushed to save her home.
The special election will be held July 11th.
