On February 19, Lanny Blair resigned as chief of South Gulf County Volunteer Fire Department.  Lanny has a lot going on and didn’t feel that he had the time to fulfill the obligations of this position, however he will continue to stay active with the fire department. 

We have been very fortunate to have Lanny as our chief.  The department has grown and has become much better trained under the direction of Lanny.  We appreciate the great job that he has done for us and really appreciate all of his contributions to our success.  And we are extremely happy that he will remain active with us. 

The board of directors took immediate action and appointed Jim Caughey as the new chief effective immediately.   Jim has been extremely active with the department and we are very fortunate to have someone with his knowledge and experience that can immediately step in as our chief.  Jim has been the driving force behind the training of our firefighters.  Jim has also written several grants that our department has been successful in receiving. 

The Board of Directors has also appointed David Sapte as Secretary to serve until our elections in August.  Larry Wilson will continue to serve in an at-large director position. 

The South Gulf Volunteer Fire Department has made huge strides in growing, training and equipping our department over the past three years.  Currently we have a large class of new firefighters and first responders taking an extensive training program to prepare them to save lives and protect property.   

We now have Jaws of Life equipment and had a training with this equipment on Monday, February 18th.  We would like to thank Mr. Tullis with Tullis Auto & Towing who gave us an automobile to use in our training.  Our firefighters were able to just about totally disassemble this automobile with our extrication equipment.  I would like to thank Shane McGuffin and Tim Hatcher for conducting this training exercise. 

We are continuing to look for property to establish two additional satellite fire stations to be closer to our emergencies and provide quicker service.  Anyone that can help with this please contact us.  We were able to identify a couple of properties but ran into roadblocks on both. 

I continue to be proud of our leaders in the fire department and all of our firefighters and first responders for their dedication.  It takes a lot of time and sacrifice to be a volunteer and our people put in a lot of time and effort.  We have the best trained volunteers in Gulf County and whenever there is an emergency we have many people that show up ready and willing to serve.   

Preston Russ