Firehouse debate still simmering

Cobb Island VFD volunteers reject Tompkinsville idea

Friday, Aug. 24, 2007

A study commissioned by a handful of Cobb Neck residents that surfaced at the beginning of the year proposes to move the firehouse — but officials of the Cobb Island station say the document has quite a few holes in it.

It is not the right time to build a fire station in Tompkinsville, said Sam Bowling of Rock Point, who has served with the Cobb Island Volunteer Fire Department since 1962.

‘‘A station at Tompkinsville will be unmanned; it makes no damned sense,” he said. ‘‘If you try to build that station now you’ll be building a failure.”

Plans have been in place since 1998 to build a new, four-bay fire and rescue station on Cobb Island Road across from the present firehouse, Bowling said. The plans include tearing down the old fire station and turning the area into a lot for overflow parking during events at the new firehouse.

The estimated cost of the new building was $3 million, but fire department officials expect it to increase because the project has been in the works for a few years, Bowling said.

There are also plans to build a 130-foot pier where the fire company’s rescue boat can be docked rather than near gas pumps at Shymansky’s restaurant across Neale Sound.

The fire department has been struggling for several years to obtain state and county permits to move forward with the plan, Bowling said.

Currently, the department is awaiting word from the Maryland Department of the Environment regarding construction of the pier.

Bowling said the pier will be owned by the county and will be licensed to the fire department to dock its rescue boat.

The department is also waiting for the county planning department to sign off on a site development plan for the project.

The newest wrinkle in the proposal stems from concerns raised by William Hocker, who lives about two blocks from the firehouse on Neale Sound Drive, and a few Cobb Neck residents. He and nine other people commissioned the study written in December for a group known as the Citizens Concerned About Public Safety in the Cobb Neck Region.

The other members of the group do not want to be identified, said Hocker, who has lived on Cobb Island for five years.

‘‘No one wants to speak up on the matter in fear of retaliation,” he said.

Hocker asserted that the fire station would provide better public safety if it were relocated to a five-acre site in Tompkinsville donated about a decade ago to Cobb Island for a fire and rescue substation.

‘‘In a true emergency, the entire stretch from Cobb Island to Newburg could, in theory, be cut off,” he said. ‘‘The primary location for the fire department should be inland, and Cobb Island should be a substation. It’s the complete opposite of what they’re trying to do.”

But Bowling countered that the Cobb Island station is fully manned with volunteers who answer fire and rescue calls from their homes because there are fewer than a dozen combined calls a month in the department’s first-due area. Most of those calls are on Cobb Island and in Rock Point, he said.

‘‘Nobody sits around the station and waits for calls,” he said. ‘‘If they can run calls from their homes, they do it. Let’s wait until we see roads and houses going up in Swan Point before we make decisions about Tompkinsville.”

Swan Point contains several hundred houses now, but an expansion of the waterfront community is planned. When completed, the community will hold a hotel⁄conference center, yacht club, 219-slip marina, restaurants, retail shops and 1,500 homes.

Bowling said the Tompkinsville site does not pass percolation tests, which means the land would require costly adjustments before a station can open there.

In addition, there are not enough volunteers to man a Tompkinsville or Swan Point station right now, Bowling said.

‘‘Until Swan Point gets a more working-class group of people living there, there are no volunteers,” he said. ‘‘Most of us in the fire association recognize the fact that you’ve got to have volunteers to make a firehouse work.”

Currently, Cobb Island has 83 volunteers, and 65 of them live on the island, Bowling said.

Joe Martin of Swan Point argued that regardless of what is decided about the Cobb Island fire department, his community needs fire and rescue protection, particularly during rough weather.

‘‘We need a pumper and an ambulance,” he said. ‘‘We need a substation here. Two thousand homes in Swan Point could be cut off if a hurricane comes in here. ... If they can’t put a substation in Swan Point, then they should take the fire station completely off the island and build it at Tompkinsville.”

In addition, Martin said Swan Point homeowners have to pay high fire insurance rates because the Cobb Island station is located more than five miles from the community.

Bowling said the Cobb Island fire station serves as a shelter for residents when severe weather blows through the area.

‘‘It serves so many more functions than just a fire station,” he said. ‘‘It’s a shelter where we can feed everybody when there’s no power on the island. Everybody else in the county has got a damned building they can go to. We’ve got nothing here but the fire station.”

‘‘During storms, especially hurricanes, the fire department serves as the nerve center on the island,” said Bill Kilinski, former chief and president of the fire company. ‘‘People come into the firehouse, rest, eat and go back out and do their tasks.”

The issue has raised some concern among members of the Charles County Board of Fire and Rescue Commissioners, and a committee was recently appointed at the suggestion of the Charles County commissioners to take a look at fire and rescue protection in the Cobb Neck area, said Don McGuire, the county’s emergency services director.

The six-member group has met twice and is expected to forward recommendations to the board next month, McGuire said.

The decision on where to build the new station will ultimately fall to the Cobb Island fire department, after it gains approval from executive committees of the Charles County Firemen’s Association Inc. and the Charles County Association of Emergency Medical Services Inc., said Duane Svites, the county’s volunteer fire chief, who chairs the committee.

Hocker said he will continue his quest to have the firehouse relocated to Tompkinsville.

‘‘I’ve been relentless about this from the start, and I believe that I’m right,” he said. ‘‘If I thought that I was wasting my time I would have bailed out a long time ago.”

Bowling said Cobb Island will not close the firehouse, even if volunteers have to renovate the building that has stood near the water’s edge for several decades.

‘‘We’ve worked like Turks for years and years and years, then someone comes in next to the firehouse and complains about the sirens,” he said. ‘‘What the hell did he expect?”