By Miles Layton

COLUMBIA — Johnny Spencer was up at midnight last week responding to a call five miles from his house. He did it for free — just as he has done since he was 16 years old.

Spencer, 53, is the fire chief of the Tyrrell Volunteer Fire Department, a private corporation under contract with Tyrrell County and the town of Columbia to provide fire protection across roughly 400 square miles of one of North Carolina’s most sparsely populated counties. Captain Devin Craddock, a board member who has served alongside Spencer for 24 years, shares his chief’s assessment of the department’s situation.

“We are a unique department in a unique county,” Craddock said.

That uniqueness cuts both ways. The department’s county-wide structure has kept fire protection alive where the population is too thin and the tax base too small to support anything else. But that same structure — combined with aging equipment, a shrinking volunteer pool, and a grant system that penalizes consolidation — has left the department in a deepening financial bind that neither county government nor state policy has adequately addressed.

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One Department, Seven Stations, One Budget

Most North Carolina counties operate multiple independent fire departments, each covering a defined district. Tyrrell consolidated into a single county-wide department in the mid-1990s, placing its main station in Columbia and spreading substations across the county’s vast, wetland-laced interior. A seventh station, in the South Fork Creek area, was recently funded and is nearly ready for service.

With roughly 40 to 43 members total, the main Columbia station carries more personnel while substations operate with smaller crews — an arrangement the state has increasingly accommodated as volunteer numbers have declined statewide.

“The only way they could figure out to make it work was to make it a county-wide department,” Craddock said.

The department runs 17 to 19 apparatus and responds to everything from structure fires and car wrecks to brush fires and water rescues. Tyrrell is surrounded by water on three sides, and U.S. 64 — the primary corridor between the Triangle and the Outer Banks — runs directly through Columbia, generating heavy tourist traffic and a steady stream of serious accidents.

“Columbia is a bottleneck,” Craddock said. “It is a very dangerous stretch of road.”

‘You Can’t Get So Much Blood Out of a Turnip’

The department’s annual budget sits at just over $200,000. Insurance alone consumes more than $50,000 of that. What remains must cover operations, maintenance, training, and equipment across all six active stations and nearly two dozen vehicles.

The department’s newest engine is a 2013 model — its first-out truck, meaning the first vehicle dispatched to a fire. A bare-minimum new fire truck runs around $600,000. The department’s ladder truck, a 1998 model, would cost roughly $1.5 million to replace new.

“It is costing so much money to try to keep it going,” Spencer said of the aging ladder. “We can’t even afford to replace it, and we don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Self-contained breathing apparatus — air packs required for interior firefighting — cost $10,000 each. The department needs 42 of them, a total of $420,000 for that equipment alone. Personal protective gear runs $2,500 to $3,000 per firefighter. The department also operates a boat, a former marine patrol vessel with a motor from the late 1980s or early 1990s that Spencer said cannot be replaced if it fails.

“If something happens to that boat, we’ll just have to park it,” he said.

The fiscal constraints are rooted in Tyrrell County’s tax base. Approximately 53 percent of property in the county is non-taxable — held by federal or state entities, primarily the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and other conservation lands. A penny on the county tax rate generates only about $53,000, Spencer noted, compared to more than $1 million that the same increment raises in more populous jurisdictions. The county has roughly 2,700 residents.

“The county wants to help more, they just can’t,” Spencer said. “You can’t get so much blood out of a turnip.”

Without fire protection, Spencer warned, residents would feel the consequences immediately. Insurance rates in the county, he said, would more than double.

“Your citizens are either going to pay high insurance rates without a fire department,” he said, “or you pay higher taxes to help provide firefighting.”

A Funding System That Doesn’t Fit

State grants offer some relief, but the department’s county-wide structure works against it in ways Craddock and Spencer have spent years trying to change.

Neighboring Washington County operates multiple independent departments. Each can apply individually for state funding, meaning Washington County effectively receives multiple grants while Tyrrell receives one. Tyrrell’s single department is limited to a $30,000 grant annually and must match it 50-50. Departments in more populous counties can each apply for $30,000 to $40,000 and match only one-third of the award.

When state and federal agencies evaluate equipment needs, they count apparatus per department. Because Tyrrell operates as one entity, its total truck count is weighed against multi-department counties that spread many more vehicles across separate rosters — even if those vehicles serve overlapping or lower-need areas.

“We don’t get looked at the same, and it hurts us in that viewpoint in terms of money,” Craddock said. “We’ve been to the state and federal levels trying to get this changed.”

That effort brought the department into contact with Congressman Don Davis. Craddock said they learned through social media that Davis had allocated grant funds to fire departments elsewhere in the region — and Tyrrell had been left out.

“We started seeing it on Facebook and we were like, ‘Hey, how do we get involved with all this?’” Craddock said. Davis’s office told them the funding for the year had already been distributed but expressed interest in future cycles, and a staff member visited Columbia to learn more about the department’s needs.

Spencer, asked whether Davis could make a difference, was measured.

“Only time will tell,” he said. “I guess it depends on if he gets reelected or not.”

Wildfires, Wrecks and the Weight of the Job

The calls the department answers reflect the full range of rural emergency response. Structure fires, vehicle accidents, brush fires, water rescues — Spencer said his crews see it all. Craddock added that Tyrrell faces a wildfire threat that operates on a geologic scale.

Roughly 52 percent of the county is owned by state or federal entities — forested wetlands that have historically burned on approximately a 25-year cycle. The 2008 Evans Road Fire scorched more than 41,000 acres and forced the near-evacuation of homes in the Newlands area before a fortunate wind shift spared them.

“That’s always our go-to,” Craddock said of large wildland fires. “Every 25 years there’s a huge wildland fire, and we’re always talking about we’re due. It’s gone on that time frame when we should be getting it again, unfortunately.”

Current drought conditions, he said, heighten the risk further.

Beyond the physical hazards — burns, structural collapses, traffic dangers — both men pointed to threats less visible to the public. Cancer, Spencer said, has become one of the leading health concerns for firefighters nationally, and it isn’t limited to smoke inhalation. Carcinogens absorb through clothing and gear, making proper cleaning of turnout equipment critical.

Mental health is another quiet burden. Fatal accidents, house fires involving deaths, incidents with children — they accumulate.

“There’s a lot of people don’t realize the PTSD that goes along with firefighting and rescue operations,” Spencer said. The department maintains a chaplain and access to stress management services to help members cope.

Why They Stay

Spencer has been a firefighter since he was 16. He became chief at 31 and has held the role for nearly 22 years. He retired four years ago as Tyrrell County’s utilities director and now works for an out-of-town company, spending much of his time on the road. His father was a firefighter. So is his cousin.

Craddock was born and raised in Columbia, joined as a junior member, and has never left. He and his wife both grew up here and still live here. He knows the families he serves across generations.

“I know the kids, and now I know the kids’ parents,” he said. “Eventually I’ll get to the point where I know their grandparents — and say, ‘I remember your family. We were there for this, helped them through this hardship.’”

Neither man draws a paycheck for any of it.

“We don’t do it for the pay because we don’t get paid,” Spencer said. “It’s being a servant to the community — a sense of pride that you’re serving the community and able to help others through troubled times when a lot of people can’t.”

Craddock echoed that sentiment, but said he hopes outside attention can help translate goodwill into something more tangible for the volunteers who’ve given decades of their lives.

“There are so many guys that have gotten more than 24 years,” he said. “If it helps bring more awareness, more of a better situation for our department, then it’s worth it.”

How to Help

The department welcomes donations and holds three major fundraisers each year. A barbecue plate sale is scheduled for May 17 at the fire station in Columbia. The department’s largest event — the Jr. Simmons ATV Rally, which draws 200 to 275 riders and 250 to 300 attendees — is held on the last Saturday in September, with a $25 registration fee per rider. A bulk barbecue sale follows in the fall.

“We’re taking any and all donations,” Spencer said.