THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409210164
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
RETIRED Great Bridge Fire Chief William R. ``Billy Ray'' Powers, who was the second person hired at Station No. 5, remembers the time a woman called with a request for firefighters to come to her home and get a snake out of the loft. Powers didn't go.
``I told her, `I'm just as scared of snakes as you are!' and stayed right here,'' he said.
Powers and A.O. ``Benny'' Benson, a retired plumber who was one of the first volunteer firemen to work at the station, said calls like that one were common, along with requests to recover drowning victims from the Northwest River, to put out fires as far away as Moyock and to locate hikers who were lost in what, 50 years ago, was the wilderness of Great Bridge.
The old fire station on Reservation Road, built with Army Corps of Engineer labor and about $10,000 of old Norfolk County's money, was the only one between South Norfolk and Fentress. Benson said that, in the 1940s, federal law required that any government installation valued at $250,000 or more had to either have its own fire station or close access to one.
Station 5, begun in 1947 and completed a year later, was built primarily to service the 100-plus acres known as the Government Reservation, which include the Great Bridge locks and bridge. For years, Powers and Chief Clarence Curling were the station's only paid firefighters. The company existed with a corps of about 30 volunteers, including Benson, who lived within five miles of the bridge.
A siren would blow, warning that there was a fire or emergency, and volunteers would drop whatever they were doing and rush to the station. There they would be told where they were needed, and they would head out in their own vehicles.
``Oh, it was risky back then,'' said Benson, ``mostly because of the lack of equipment. But we didn't have to deal with the plastics and synthetics they have now; we fought mostly wood burning fires.''
Even though they had little personal gear, the volunteer firefighters were well trained, meeting twice a week at the station to practice their skills.
``Four or five of us had our emergency medicine certificates,'' Benson said, ``and we were all very well trained. We were good, and we knew it.''
Through the 1940s and into the 1950s, the station's only vehicle was a 1947 Ford fire engine. A surplus Army ambulance was donated in the early '50s. Its green paint was replaced with white at the Ford plant in Norfolk, he recalled.
``That engine had a 500-gallon tank, which could pump water for about 10 to 15 minutes,'' Powers said. ``You know that old saying, `Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes?' Well, we had a saying, too: `Don't pump until you see the flames!' ''
There was a fire hydrant near the station, and one on the government reservation, but rural Great Bridge and Hickory had no hydrants.
The lack of a water supply may have been the reason Station 5 firefighters were on the scene more than 25 hours at what Powers calls ``the most spectacular fire of the early days.'' In the early 1950s, Great Bridge firemen, along with those from several other stations, were unable to save the furniture manufacturing division and the planing mill of Richmond Cedar Works, then located on Bells Mill Road.
``By the late 1950s, it became apparent that we needed more equipment and more people at Station 5,'' Powers said.
Capt. Wayne Sanders, a youngster of 45, added that by the mid-1960s, with the formation of the city of Chesapeake and with development spreading to the south, city officials realized Station 5 was in a poor location.
``If the bridge was open, we couldn't get to the other side,'' Saunders said. ``And, whereas before, everyone lived right around here, they were moving farther south. It's been obvious for many years that we needed to be in a better location, and that the building has outlived its usefulness.'' by CNB