History

In July 1957, 35 energetic men started the Swepsonville fire department. With Wallace Bennett being the first chief the fire department started with a 1941 Ford pumper bought by the Lions Club and a building with a dirt floor that the Virginia Mills owned. In 1958 the fire department ran a total of 12 calls, and by 1961 the fire department had gained an insurance rating of 9. The year 1970 brought a big change in the way things operated for fire departments all across Alamance county, with Swepsonville leading the way a vote was brought up for a fire tax and it was approved overwhelmingly, and departments in the county began to follow suit.

 

Swepsonville fire department was the first fire department to use pagers in Alamance County in 1974; this was a huge step from the days of firemen throwing bags of lime along the road to show following trucks which direction to take. The fire station was bought from Virginia Mills in 1975, that same year the EMT program was started and Swepsonville fire department hired its first paid fireman. Four years later a sub-station was built in 1979 on Hwy 54 to help cover the expanding fire district.

 

After remodeling several times the Swepsonville fire department out grew its original location purchased from the Virginia Mills. So in 1988 the fire department began construction on a new building just 100 yards from its original location. In 1989 the fire department moved into its current location. The station was equipped with a large apparatus bay floor to park the trucks, a meeting room for the fire department to utilize for training, several offices, a kitchen, a day room with furniture and TV, and a bunker room for the paid personnel to sleep in during their 24 hour tour of duty.  The station was added on to in 2002 to add a bay for more equipment, the station houses two engines, two tankers, a utility truck, an EMT squad vehicle and a Brush truck.

 

August 8, 2007 was a sad day for the Swepsonville fire department, they experienced their first Line Of Duty Death when Deputy Chief Jerry Donley past away after responding to a structure fire the previous day. Also in 2007 The Swepsonville fire department began the construction of a new station on HWY 54 to replace the old station. In 2008 the Fire department moved into its new station that has an office, an apparatus bay floor, a kitchen and bunkrooms for the paid staff. The station houses two engines, a EMT squad vehicle, a brush truck and a fire prevention trailer. 

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