As the county’s population increases, so does the demand for services from county agencies. In 2007, Carroll County Fire Rescue saw its calls for service jump 10 percent.

“Ten percent is a little high,” Chief Gary Thomas said. “Six to 10 percent is usually pretty good for us.”

One of the biggest increases in calls was car accidents. In 2006, there were 425 accidents reported. 2007 saw almost 200 more calls for accidents.

“I think that’s just an increase in traffic in the county,” Thomas said.

Increased traffic has also led Thomas to start thinking about adding more stations to the county to cut down on engines’ travel distance.

“The increase in calls and that traffic effects our response time,” he said. “We may have to look at adding fire stations to cut down on response time.”

Thomas said he looks at year-end data when making budget and special purpose local option sales tax requests.

The fire department has requested some new positions in the budget, and its $17.5 million SPLOST request includes money to put a new station in the Hulett community and $2 million to redo the Villa Rica station, which is the county’s busiest.

In 2007, Engine 16, a fire station which covers the area north of Interstate 20, was in operation for its first full year. Thomas said squads in that area responded to more calls than in 2006. Engine 2 and Engine 3, which were partially relieved by Engine 16, each received about 100 more calls than last year.

“That (Engine 16) helps overall for that area, but that area is still a high-growth area, and their calls continue to rise,” Thomas said. “Sixteen took a little piece of Engine 2 and Engine 3’s territory. So that tells me calls are still increasing.”

Although the county’s newest fire station only houses one crew, growth was anticipated when it was built. “That’s the reason we built that station as a four-bay with extra bedrooms,” he said.

If a new station is built in Villa Rica, Thomas said the same plan would likely be followed.

The annual report also helps the fire department plan programs they will offer in the coming year. Thomas said in response to 12 civilian injuries in 2007, the department will be offering more fire safety programs.

“We’re really going to do a push in the fall of this year in the schools,” he said.

Carroll, Heard and Haralson counties have started working together as part of the West Georgia Regional Fire Safety Coalition. Thomas said the idea was to combine the fire safety programs each county offered.

Only 13 families took advantage of the department’s free smoke detector program in 2007, and Thomas said he’d like to see that number rise. There is one catch to get a free detector.

“The only qualification to get one is that you let us install it,” Thomas said.