City of Charleston discusses construction of new Johns Island fire station

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCBD) – City of Charleston council members approved Tuesday night nearly $12 million for a new fire station located on Johns Island.

Station 23 is expected to have one engine and one ladder with eight people on staff. This comes as the city acquired the land several years ago and now have the final cost and contract. Station 17 is the only one operated by Charleston right now.

“It allows us to start expanding in the future,” Forrest Cockcroft, deputy chief of the Charleston Fire Department, said. “We have more plans for more stations as we go forward in years, but right now this is a big piece to get us more closely aligned with where we need to be with our response packages.”

As the second station comes in, the Johns Island area isn’t reliant on just Station 17. With the large service area, the city has been working with St. John’s Fire District to respond to calls through an auto-aide agreement.

“There are seven departments that are working in the auto aide group right now. We all respond under the ability to have the closest engine respond,” Cockcroft said. “So, on Johns Island that would be us and St. John’s Fire District, and we are able to not only to improve our coverage by sharing resources and sharing personnel – we’ve also been able to improve our response times through that.”

St. John’s Fire District is working on expanding as well. Both agencies are addressing the population growth on Johns Island by adding more stations.

“So with new fire stations comes new units and more firefighters. With one unit you can have several firefighters on scene within 5-10 minutes of every single fire and we’re trying to beat a national standard,” Ryan Kunitzer, fire chief of St. John’s Fire District, said. “We feel like we’re going in the right direction with that.”

The fire district is able to funded by Charleston County and has plans to get one new station and replace old stations.

“As the population grows, the fire district needs to grow along with it. Every year is our busiest year, so we need to effectively respond to everyone on Johns Island. We work with the city of Charleston in regard to that. So, we’re expanding on the southern end of Johns Island. We got some large neighborhoods going up so we’re adding fire stations there and some of our fire stations are getting old and need to replaced too,” Kunitzer said.