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GATESVILLE – Thanks to two grants, members of the Gatesville Volunteer Fire Department are able to perform their life and property saving duties more efficiently.

The department recently purchased and installed a BAUER CFS 5.5 Series Fill Station. The system allows the Gatesville VFD to fill their breathing air bottles at the fire station.

Gatesville VFD Chief Grant Ashley said the department used a $40,000 grant from the Office of the State Fire Marshal and a donation from Nucor Steel – Hertford County to purchase the system.

“We applied for the matching funds grant through the State Fire Marshal’s Office, which paid for the bulk of this equipment. Nucor helped finish it off with a $15,000 grant through their Community Outreach Program,” Ashley said. “We offer our thanks to both for helping us keep the homes and businesses within our community safe.”

The system consists of a compressor and a “filling station” capable of filling two air bottles at a time.

“Some of the other fire departments in Gates County have this system,” Ashley noted. “It’s inconvenient for us and affects our training ability because after training or following a fire call we have to take our air bottles elsewhere to get them filled.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to have local departments with this system, but this is something we’ve recognized for a while that we needed,” he added. “It gives us so much more flexibility. We can schedule a training session and fill our air bottles immediately afterwards. Those bottles are then ready when we’re paged out on a call or for the next training session.”

Ashley said the system can fill the air bottles, two at the time, in under eight minutes.

“If we have a fire call, we can fill the air bottles back up when we return to the station. Before we purchased this system, we would have to go to another department to fill the bottles,” he said.

The new system at Gatesville VFD has been in service for less than two months.

“We’re blessed to have the support of the state and the support of local businesses to help us afford equipment such as this new system. We would have to sell a lot of chicken and barbecue plates over a long period of time to generate the amount of money needed to purchase this system,” Ashley noted.

Founded in the 1950s, Gatesville VFD currently has 27 members. They protect the community through the use of two fire engines, two tankers, and an equipment truck.