Matt Hamilton/Daily Citizen-NewsCohutta Mayor Ron Shinnick, left, talks to Assistant Fire Chief Andy Lopez. Town officials recently dissolved the volunteer fire department, but Shinnick says they plan to use keep its medical response truck and maintain a rescue service.

COHUTTA, Ga. — Before the town of Cohutta officially existed, the Cohutta Volunteer Fire Department was battling fires and keeping the citizens safe.

The fire department was actually started several years before the town was chartered in 1969, Mayor Ron Shinnick said.

That’s why, he says, it was a difficult decision for Cohutta officials to dissolve the department earlier this year.

“But it was time,” he said.

Assistant Fire Chief Andy Lopez said the number of volunteer firefighters had fallen from 18 just a few years ago to about eight.

“The training requirements have increased, making it difficult for volunteers,” he said. “Now, volunteers have to have just as much training as full-time firefighters. If somebody is going to go through that much training, they are going to just go ahead and try to become a full-time firefighter.”

Some Cohutta-area residents said they were sad to see the department ending but understood why.

“People are so busy now,” said Hank Conway. “It’s hard to commit to things that require a lot of time and no pay, especially when it could be dangerous.”

Shinnick said the Whitfield County Fire Department’s plans to open a station at 5268 Cohutta/Varnell Road reduces the need for the Cohutta fire department. Built with some $1.5 million from the 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, the 7,800-square-foot building will feature three bays for trucks, along with living quarters for up to six firefighters. The station, like the other 10 in the county, will have two firefighters on duty 24 hours a day. Officials expect it to open by the end of June.

“That definitely played a role in our decision,” he said.

Lopez said firefighters at the new station will be able to answer calls more quickly than the Cohutta department could.

“All of our firefighters carried pagers, and when a call went out, they’d get paged and someone would have to come to get the fire truck,” he said. “That new station will be manned by full-time firefighters, so when they get the call, they’ll be out of that station in two minutes or less.”

Lopez said the Cohutta fire department rarely answered fire calls.

“We do more medical calls than fire calls. We have a medical response unit, and some of us are EMTs. Probably 90 percent of our calls are medical calls,” he said “In fact, Cohutta was the first agency in Georgia to have a defibrillator on its unit.”

Lopez said the medical unit was vital, given that Cohutta is at the northern edge of the county and far from Hamilton Medical Center and Whitfield County Emergency Medical Service’s headquarters.

“The response time from Dalton, even running red lights and sirens, could be 14 minutes or more,” he said. “By us having a medical unit, any resident of the north end of the county can get a response in just a few minutes, and when you are talking a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death.”

Shinnick said the department’s sole fire truck and some equipment will be sold but the town will keep its medical unit and use it as a volunteer rescue unit.

“We think we can do that,” he said. “The training required isn’t nearly as extensive. We can help the police department out when there are downed trees or helping them direct traffic at accident scenes.”

Police Chief Ray Grossman, who is also a firefighter and instructor with the department, said he was sad to see the fire department close.

“It had to happen,” he said. “But it was such an important part of the town for decades. They really built the town around the fire service.”