It was announced earlier this year that Scout Motors is planning to provide the Blythewood Fire Service with a new ladder truck and other specialized equipment to upgrade our fire service. That takes me back to how we started the service here in Blythewood just over 60 years ago. In those days, the fire service was all volunteer and primitive by today’s standards, but we were proud of it and it served the town well.
When the Columbia Fire Department extended its service area to include Dentsville in the late 1960’s, Columbia provided the Dentsville station with fire trucks, so it no longer needed the two trucks it had.
Blythewood’s Ed Cooper had friends at the Dentsville Fire Department, and they agreed to donate their two fire trucks to Blythewood since we had no fire service here at all.
A group of Blythewood residents began to organize a transition that would provide all the things needed for Blythewood to have a fire service. Richland County built a 20’ x 40’ tin shed fire station on Langford Road across from what is now our town hall and to the side of what is now Doko Station Pub. Property for the building was donated by James and Alice Brown as well as Charlie Proctor.
Blythewood’s Freeman Sharpe, a retired Columbia firefighter, agreed to serve as the fire chief for Blythewood’s new fire service.
A dozen or so amazing guys volunteered, for no pay, to perform this dangerous job of fighting fires in order to help their neighbors. Many residents contributed to the effort. Chief Sharpe gave us volunteers our training, teaching us how to utilize the pumps, etc.
After Chief Sharpe stepped down, I was made the fire chief as well as the treasurer in charge of soliciting donations for equipment and supplies. Many Blythewood residents donated $15 annually.
At that time, the only method we had to notify the volunteer firefighters of an emergency was a loud siren at the station. Later, we improved on that by hiring an answering service to notify the firefighters.
Later, because of Bob Ellison, Sr.’s friendship with the Columbia Fire Chief, Bert Dickert, Columbia agreed to receive the emergency calls and notify our Blythewood volunteers through belt pagers. We were moving up.
Another thing we had to accomplish was to name all the roads in our fire district. As the Chief, I met with the members of the Blythewood Community Center for help with naming the roads. I recall that our first mayor, Harold Boney, and many others of the old Blythewood community assisted us with some of the existing road names like Langford Road and Syrup Mill Road. We named most of the unnamed roads after landmarks such as churches.
Later, the 911 system assigned numbers to all of the houses.
After I resigned as chief in 1983, I was succeeded by Kenny Mattox, then Richard Branham and later Bob Ellison, Jr.
We operated as a volunteer fire service for many years until the Richland County fire Department merged with the Columbia Fire Department and built a new brick station for Blythewood that stands at the corner of Main Street (Hwy. 21) and Oakhurst Road.
The Blythewood station is now primarily manned by paid fire fighters.