While county commissioners agreed Tuesday night to purchase a $450,000 site for the Laurel Canyon area station, there is no plan at this time for a downtown Canton fire station.

County Manager Jerry Cooper told commissioners at their meeting Tuesday night that the former downtown station would not be used when the county consolidation is complete at the first of the year.

Cooper said Chief Prather and his team have a plan of action to provide services without the Canton station in use, but he did not give specifics of the plan.

The downtown fire station on East Main Street in the former Post Office building has issues with asbestos abatement among other problems, county officials said.

The county had planned to lease the building from Canton for five years, and officials say that could still happen, but not without the city making significant improvements to the station.

"Per the Intergovernmental Agreement, the downtown fire station was only going to be 'leased' by Cherokee County, with the city of Canton maintaining ownership," Cherokee Fire Chief Tim Prather told the Tribune Wednesday. "In a nutshell, the building is in need of significant repair and updates."

Prather said although there have been some repair/upgrades to the building, it still has some asbestos abatement pending as well as leaks to the building needing repaired.

Town officials plan to present a warrant article at the annual Town Meeting this spring to fund the design of a new Fire Station 2, which would be sited on a small undeveloped parcel near the high school.

Town staff recently held a pair of neighborhood meetings with residents of A Street to discuss plans, which call for a roughly 8,000-square-foot building.

The firehouse would be tucked between a wastewater pumping station on A Street and a parking lot used by high school juniors. Members of the School Committee voted Dec. 6 to relinquish ownership of the land, transferring control of the 2-acre parcel to the Board of Selectmen for municipal use.

"The action allow(s) us to have the confidence to expend further funds in exploring preliminary design and site planning that will form the basis for further engagement with the neighborhood," Town Manager Bob Halpin wrote in a recent notice to selectmen.

Built in the 1890s, the existing Saxonville fire station on Watson Place is home to Engine 2 and rotating crews of four firefighters. Officials have planned since the 1960s to replace the structure, which features a concrete bay floor that is too small to house modern fire trucks.

The town used "Band-Aid" repairs to keep the station running, but the building is reaching the point where it's no longer structurally sound, Fire Chief Joseph Hicks said. Losing the station could significantly hamper public safety, Hicks said, since it would take firefighters more than four minutes to reach destinations in Saxonville from the nearest stations.

So the county has been working on securing money for the rural fire departments.

“They got out, did door-to-door surveys in Furman as well and got the numbers pulled together and we submitted an application through the Lowcountry Council of Governments and it was awarded,” said Hampton County administrator, Rose Dobson-Elliot.

Those numbers showed that there was a need for the new trucks in Yemassee.

“You have to meet a certain income level, in other words, 51 percent or more of the affected population has to be low to moderate income,” said Dobson-Elliot.

The grant will award each department $250,000 to design their new apparatus.

"I’m hoping, if the budget allows, I’ll be able to get this truck set up as a rescue pumper for the interstate. So we'll have more foam, hydraulics on hand, stuff like that,” said Chief Bishop.

The truck holds 2,500 gallons of water. Water always has been the challenge in rural firefighting, Kessler said.

A pumper truck carries a limited amount of water and can be hooked up to a hydrant, and a tanker truck is what is used to carry water. The fire district's new truck is a hybrid: It has a pump that allows personnel to deliver water to a fire, and it still is able to carry water for sustained operations.

The truck, which is to be used as a first-run building firefighting truck, and the department's current tanker, which carries 3,000 gallons of water, will allow the department to deliver 5,500 gallons of water to a fire scene to buy time until a department offering mutual aid comes, Kessler said.

He said that depending on the fire, the department often needs 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of water to fight a fire in a rural setting.

The new truck replaces a 1983 pumper. The fire district's fleet also includes one grass fire truck, an equipment van, an engine and a tanker.