For more than 70 years, the Fairhope Volunteer Fire Department has served residents and businesses in Fairhope. Today, more than 40 volunteers, most of them professionally board certified at Firefighter 1 or 2 level, continue to safeguard our city.
The FVFD’s unofficial historian is Tom Odom. Mr. Odom, who served 40 years as a volunteer firefighter and now is the City’s fire inspector, says Fairhope’s department was the first on the Eastern Shore. “The Eastern Shore Fire Department, responsible for fighting fires from Spanish Fort south to Mullet Point, was organized in 1936 under Jack Titus. It became the Fairhope Volunteer Fire Department in 1938 with William S. “Bill” Funk as the first Chief.”
According to Odom, the city’s first fire station was downtown on Section Street, at the site of the current city Welcome Center. At the time, the building also housed the police department and the generating plant for the city-owned utilities. Odom said a siren called firefighters to action.
“That worked pretty good when the town was small enough then for everyone to hear it,” he recalled. “But we didn’t have very much protective gear in the early days, so the fellows who lived closest to the station got the slickers, and the rest of us just showed up in our regular clothes.”
The FVFD grew with the addition of Leo Keller Station No. 1, on Ingleside Drive (built in the mid-1960s and enlarged in the 1980s), Roy White Station No. 2 on Thompson Hall Road (also the site of the department’s training facility), and Les Bung Station No. 3 at the Fairhope Municipal Airport, located on Baldwin County Road 32, just south of the city.
A fourth station is in the works for the Parker Road area, north of the city, Saraceno said. “We’re working on the details now, but we expect it to be a three-bay station at minimum.”
As the department grows, training remains a top priority, said current Fire Chief John Saraceno. “Our firefighters attend a minimum of 72 hours of training a year, but most do much more than that. We offer our firefighters outside training at the Alabama State Fire College, the National Fire Academy in Maryland, and elsewhere. Our firefighters are as well trained as those anywhere, volunteer or career.”
For more information about the FVFD, call 990-0143 and leave a message or visit the Department Website: fairhopevfd.org
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