More Than Firefighting: How Cleveland’s Fire Department Keeps the Community Together

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] On this week’s episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. Our guest is Cleveland Fire Chief Chris Ellington, and this is the second episode we’ve done with him and this episode we’ve talked to him about all the different community service the firefighters and the fire department do in the Cleveland community, including Celebrate Cleveland, the Cleveland Christmas parade, and Camp Blaze for elementary school kids, and this year also middle school kids at the fire department.

We talked to ’em a little bit about the creation of the county fire tax, why it was necessary, and things you can do to make your home safer from fire. So listen in.

Welcome to another episode of Best of Johnston County, brought to you by Breeden Law Office. Our host, Jonathan Breeden, an experienced family lawyer with a deep connection to the community, is ready to take you on a journey through the area that he has called home for over 20 years. Whether it’s a deep dive into the love locals have for the county or unraveling the complexities of family law, [00:01:00] Best of Johnston County presents an authentic slice of this unique community.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to this edition of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden, and on today’s episode, we have our second interview, sit down with the Cleveland Fire Chief Chris Ellington, and on this episode we’re gonna talk to him a little bit about all the community service and involvement that the Cleveland Fire Department has.

We’ll go back over his history of how he got into the fire department and a little bit about what the fire department does that you might not realize that they do for our community. If you would like to hear him talk a little bit about his childhood and growing up in the Cleveland community and how much it’s changed, as well as the training requirement that the firefighters have to go to the shifts they work and how many firefighters work.

Every day in the Cleveland community. Go back a couple of weeks and listen to the first interview we had with him. I think you will find that interesting. But before we get to this second interview, [00:02:00] please like, follow, subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re seeing it, whether it’s on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, or any of the other social media channels of the best Johnston County Podcast.

The best Johnston County Podcast comes in every single Monday. It has now for 21 months, so please go back and listen some of our previous episodes. We’ve had a lot of great guests from Johnston County on over the almost two years we’ve been bringing you this podcast. It is hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since Raena Burch, my social media coordinator, and I started this podcast best of Johnston County in November of 2023.

So please give us a five star review down below. We, we really enjoyed bringing it to you and we hope you’ll enjoy this episode as well. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Ellington: Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Breeden: All right, no problem. So this is the second episode, but not everybody listens to every episode. So let’s start with, state your name and what you do.

Chris Ellington: Alright. My name’s Chris Ellington. I’m the fire chief of the Cleveland Fire Department.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. And how long have you been the chief at the Cleveland Fire Department?

Chris Ellington: 20 years. This July was 20 years.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh my goodness. That’s, that’s a long time. And I think real won’t [00:03:00] when you became the chief. There were three employees and you were a volunteer and you worked full time for the school system.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely. Absolutely. And had a 2-year-old son

Jonathan Breeden: and had a 2-year-old son. That, that is wild. I don’t, I don’t guess you got a whole lot of sleep back then.

Chris Ellington: No, no.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, that was crazy. I think you you, well you worked for the school system, were like facility services, right?

Chris Ellington: I worked for facility services as a plumber.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. Did you enjoy doing that with the school system?

Chris Ellington: I did. I was not far outta high school. Enjoyed doing that and worked with him several years and it was a rewarding career as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So what brought you in to firefighting? Like why did you become a firefighter?

Chris Ellington: Like I said in the other episode, probably peer pressure and, that was probably the best peer pressure I’ve ever been under. But my friends were doing it. I knew a lot of people on the department. And they, they were talking about how much fun they were having, so I decided to give it a try.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, man. You decided to give it a try. All right, well, and you I mean, obviously you enjoyed it.

Chris Ellington:I did. I did. It was like I sit in the first [00:04:00]podcast. Once you start and you start doing it, it’s contagious. You know, you can’t get enough of it. Some call it a adrenal in a rush or whatever, butit was just fun.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and, you’re helping your community.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: And you grew up right here in the Cleveland community.

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: You go to Clayton High School?

Chris Ellington: I went to South Johnston High School.

Jonathan Breeden: You went to South Johnston High School.

Chris Ellington: We had the option to go to Clayton or South Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: And I chose South Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: You chose South Johnston. Alright.

Chris Ellington: I kind of polled everybody that was going to high school that year saw how many friends were going, which way? And decided to go that way, so.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. You went to South tosa. Well that’s cool. So, so let’s talk a little bit about community involvement. I mean, this fire department does a whole lot more than just fight fires.

Chris Ellington: Sure.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, I mean, and, and now, I mean, fires are probably a very small percentage of the calls.

Chris Ellington: Sure.

Jonathan Breeden: ‘Cause y’all run almost all types of calls. You took over. Thank goodness because I had run outta gas and our committee had fallen apart. Celebrate Cleveland a few years ago. And the Celebrate Cleveland for people that don’t know is the July 4th celebration here in [00:05:00] Cleveland. It includes, has included and still includes a show up community parade.

Anybody can show up golf carts, dogs, horses, floats, whatever you want. No fee. Show up, get in line to be in the parade. And then there’s a. You know, it was music and, and, and food trucks at night. And then they shoot off a bunch of fireworks. About nine 15, I think Celebrate Cleveland started back in like 96 or 97 with Cookie Pope.

Chris Ellington: I think 96 was the first year.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And, and she was a, just becoming a county commissioner then. That’s, we’re going way back and I moved here in 2000 and immediately started going. With the Crossroads Civitan Group, and I would sit in the Dunking booth and we would raise money for Special Olympics.

And everybody wanted to dunk the lawyer. And of course, I could talk enough junk for anybody to entice kids to pay $5 and the fire department would come fill up the Dunking booth for us.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: and so, anyway, you did that one time and I was in there. Did we ever [00:06:00] get you in that Dunking booth?

Chris Ellington: Absolutely not.

Jonathan Breeden: We did not. Okay. All right. Well, we, we had a good time over the years. We’re doing that. And then the you know, mean Cookie started to take a step back. And then I tried to stay on the committee. It was me and, and guy Robert Underwood and, and Denley III who’s now I guess doing all that stuff with the, with and, and so we tried to do it along with a few other community members for a couple years, but we didn’t have time to know we were doing, and, and then the Chamber talking about trying to do it and that that didn’t really go that well.

And finally. After it had just about completely fallen apart. You stepped in and the fire department took it over. So why did you do it? And all that stuff.

Chris Ellington: I had tried to get involved in helping Ms. Cookie, you know, over the years, make it work. And I understand now, after I think this is my 10th year doing it, I understand why she was and I wanted to see it continue. I mean, I told somebody, somebody said, why do you do it? I said, all you have to do is walk down that road and see all those [00:07:00] kids, and that’s why we do it.

So we wanted to keep it going. I got an email and it said, you know, I’m not gonna do it this year. Somebody needs to take it over. And I’ll never forget that. And I thought, let me let this lay for a couple days and see if anybody’s crazy enough to jump on it. And nobody was. Nobody was. Nobody was me.

Jonathan Breeden: I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. And I mean, I was a small helper on the committee. I was not the one that was knocking on doors trying to raise money for fireworks and all that. I mean, I did what I could do, but I had a growing business too, you know?

Chris Ellington: Absolutely. I remember taking it over and now the deciding factor was I was worried about fundraising and you know, is, it’s all donations. And I was worried about fundraising and I finally talked to the association, our firefighters association, and I said, look, I’m thinking about doing something really crazy.

It was kind of my start of my crazy ideas in fire service. But I said, I’m thinking about doing something crazy and taking this over, but I’m worried about fundraising. And they said, well, don’t worry about it. Financially, we got your back. And that’s how it [00:08:00] started. And that’s how it’s continued to this day is they, they’re a big contributor every year.

They don’t like to talk about that, but they are. And that, that’s one of the ways they give back to the community.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So what is the Firefighters Association?

Chris Ellington: So it is a, it is a nonprofit organization separate from the Cleveland Fire Department, and they raise money through fundraisers and things like that.

And what they do is they will, if a firefighter is sick. Firefighters family is sick. They make donations and they’ve made donations all over Johnston County and Wake County as well to firefighters that are sick or families that lose homes, things like that. Every year at Christmas, one thing that people don’t realize is every year at Christmas, we go to the schools and we get with the guidance counselors and we get a list of products to buy, and we’ve really got something to work out great with polenta where we buy.

Off Amazon and other places and the parents can come in, the less fortunate parents can come in and shop for their children for for Christmas, [00:09:00] and it gives a lot. And it’s not all gifts and toys, it’s necessities. You know, there’s a huge need in the Cleveland community and in Johnston county as well. For, for these less fortunate families?

Jonathan Breeden: Well, there’s no doubt. There’s no doubt. And you know, when I think of the fire departments, I think of barbecue plate sales.

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: And I mean, y’all have done a few of those. I’ve done, I’ve to ’em. But you haven’t done a mini and you haven’t done a whole lot lately. So what are they doing to raise money?

Chris Ellington: So they send out a mailer every year.

Jonathan Breeden: I give money to that every year.

Chris Ellington: And, and that mailer is just a donation, you know, it, it says, you explains a little bit about their mission and what they do. And the community has supported that greatly over, over the years. The barbecue fundraisers are very time consuming and with the amount of calls we’re running now, it all, the last thing you want is all that barbecue on the grill.

We have a house fire somewhere and everybody has to leave it, you know, so it, the barbecue fundraiser becoming increasingly harder to do. We, we enjoyed them and, and we talk about ’em every year [00:10:00] was, and talk about doing wood.

Jonathan Breeden: It was,

Chris Ellington: but just. You know, the logistics of it, we, we can’t do it anymore.

Jonathan Breeden: I gotcha. So now is that separate? There used to be a women’s firefighter auxiliary group, so, but I don’t know if that’s the same group or they’re the same now.

Chris Ellington: No, no,

Jonathan Breeden: but they had a different sign and they had their own fundraisers.

Chris Ellington: Years ago there was a ladies’ auxiliary.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: And a lot of your volunteer fire departments still have a ladies’ auxiliary and they do the same thing that the Firefighters Association do.

Here in Johnston County, I know ladies auxiliaries that have funded trucks. They funded turnout gear and things like that, so, or give large, large contributions for a down payment on truck. And they’re doing the same thing. They’re doing bake sales and fundraisers just to help the fire department now.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well that’s great. That’s great. And then at some point you took over the Christmas parade, and I know Kim Lawter first came up with the Christmas parade idea. When she was the president of the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce.

Chris Ellington: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: Which ended up folding during [00:11:00] COVID. So I guess maybe it was her idea because she created it to start with. I don’t know.

Chris Ellington: We kind of got together after a Christmas parade, and Kim and myself worked really close together at the Chamber. And I had always told her when I had an administrative position that I want her to come work for me. We joked about that for several years, and when that time came, I called her and she jumped on it.

And she’s the person behind all our social media and a lot of our community outreach. But she jumped on the Christmas parade back at the chamber, and I got with her because we, we were doing the 4th of July stuff and really, really poured into that a few years. And when the chamber went.

Went away. We just continued it through Celebrate Cleveland and that that is really the event that you see the kids faces light up going up and down that road.

Jonathan Breeden: So, oh, it’s, it’s great. It’s great and, you know, it gives us, and, and I, you know, and I was one of the very first members of the Cleveland Chamber were Deirdre Jersey back in 2000 and stuff, and I was on the board forever [00:12:00] of the Cleveland Chamber, and I did everything I could and it, and it just didn’t work out with COVID.

A lot of things went away, and so I was happy to see. You pick up, celebrate Cleveland when you did, and then you picked up the Christmas parade with Kim and all the work she’s done, because it is the two things that allows this community out here in Cleveland to have a sense of community. We’re not a town, we don’t have a mayor, we don’t have a townhouse, so we don’t have postal code.

You know, what we have is the fire department, you know, and, and I think. That matters a lot. And I think that your commitment to that being a Cleveland lifer

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: You know, has allowed us to continue to try to create a sense of community in a boom intersection basically off of I 40, you know, and, and, and celebrate Cleveland. And that parade really is what we have now that we don’t have the Strawberry Festival anymore.

Chris Ellington: Yeah, you’re you’re right. And, the Strawberry Festival was another huge event. It was huge for the chamber. And we had thought about doing that, but we’re just too busy. I mean, we, tackling July 4th and tackling the Christmas parade is all we [00:13:00] can handle.

And that scale, I guess you would say. Right?

Jonathan Breeden: But you also run summer camps for kids.

So talk a little bit about that.

Chris Ellington: That was a and they reminded me this morning as our last camp was winding up and I was talking to the parents and kids, they reminded me that was my crazy idea about three years ago.

I saw a fire department somewhere in the country that was doing it, and I said, well, if they can do it, why can’t include them? And it started out as let’s try this and let’s see how many kids sign up. Well, the first year was about 25 kids, elementary aged kids that came for three days and they saw all aspects of public safety from forestry service, EMS, police, fire, everything all the way down to Duke Life Flight.

And it was a hit. I mean, everybody wanted to get in. It was three days packed of just excitement for kids. They come at eight o’clock in the morning and leave by the lunch, thank the Lord. But and the last day is kind of a water day, you know, it was a great thing. [00:14:00] And we saw how many kids we were reaching out to, and the response we got year two was even bigger.

So we said, Hey, let’s do two, let’s do two and let’s do 50 kids at a time. They remind me every time we talk about camp, that was my idea, to do two camps and do 50 kids at a time. Well, this year we expanded to three camps and the need for junior firefighters, we want those junior firefighters again and get exposed.

So I said, why don’t we tap into the middle school age kids? So we held a two day middle school camp for middle school aged kids. It was very successful. We had about 25 kids. Learned a lot. Help them with a career path. They’re, they’re going to high school soon and trying to get into public safety and whatever, whatever form of public safety they get into, I think it’s important that we, we push that.

We’ve not really been good stewards of that in the county of, of pushing kids towards public safety. I, I wanna, I wanna change that. Like I said, this week, [00:15:00] Tuesday and Wednesday there were 50 kids. Thursday and Friday was an additional 50 kids. We saw, so we’re reaching out to a hundred children in a week, and that doesn’t count with siblings and parents.

And this year when we opened up that camp at the Elementary Edge kids, the registration was open for 11 minutes and we had 72 people sign up. And I begged Kim to shut it. I said, please cut it off. I said, cut it off. And we, we were only gonna have one, one camp and only have about 20 to 25 kids. And she said, what are you gonna do now?

I was like, well, we need to try to fit ’em all in. And, and we did. We, we did that. And, you know, it was a big success. Parents love it. Kids love it.

Jonathan Breeden: You charge for this camp?

Chris Ellington: We do not charge.

Jonathan Breeden: You do not charge for this?

Chris Ellington: We do not charge.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: Last year we were able to receive a grant through OSFM Fire Marshal’s office for the state, and we received a can grant to do that this year with the western part of the state being [00:16:00] devastated that grant was not offered.

Rightfully so, and that funding just goes through our, our fundraising. Not fundraising, I’m sorry, fire prevention. Okay. Of our budget. So,

Jonathan Breeden: well, I mean, I saw ’em out there this morning. We recorded this at the end of July of 2025 and they had the ladder truck up and they were spraying the water off the ladder truck and all the kids in their bathing suits in the middle, in front of a big bounce house.

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: And they were having a, the best time, I mean, I kinda wanted to put my bathing suit on and go out there and let them spray the spray, the spray spray me from the ladder truck.

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Jonathan Breeden: So, so I mean, you know, a tremendous amount for the community. Let’s talk a little bit about the funding [00:17:00] of the fire department.

Chris Ellington: Okay.

Jonathan Breeden: We all Cleveland residents and everybody in Johnston County, you have to pay what is now the county fire tax.

Chris Ellington: That’s great.

Jonathan Breeden: Prior to two years ago. Each individual fire district had a separate tax rate that was set by the commissioners at the recommendation of the local county fire board.

These individual fire departments are still run by a local county fire department board that is appointed by your county commissioners, and that’s who employs your chief or our chief, Chris Ellington. He’s not a county employee. He’s not a state employee. He’s an employee of his local fire department board.

And that, that is unique now you know, ’cause you have the city of Raleigh you have to compete with for talent. Yeah. And, and you know, and they get state retirement and county retirement, I mean city retirement. So, you know, that’s unique. I don’t think a lot of people realize that. It’s kind of the bastion going back to the volunteer days where maybe the benefits and, and what we’re doing has not caught up.

[00:18:00] And I know that. You were instrumental in this sort of prat Fire Protection Council for the county where you were gonna look at a way to sort of equalize the funding around the county because Cleveland had all these houses and commercial buildings and we had, we had brand new ladder trucks and all this stuff, and some fire departments had trucks that were 30 and 35 years old and, and you saw that that wasn’t right and wanted to.

Work with the commissioners to try to change that. So talk a little bit about that and that process. ’cause I give you complete grief about that fire tax all the time because ours went up out here. Absolutely. But I mean, I understand it, but it still didn’t make me happy

Chris Ellington: and, and rightfully so. And, and living in the Cleveland community, mine went up drastically just like yours did.

And you know, I, I saw benefit to that though, and the reason, purpose behind it, we’ll talk, we’ll talk about purpose behind it. We saw that, you know, fire gear, turnout gear, fire trucks, [00:19:00] SCBAs, all cost the same thing no matter where you’re at in this county or where you’re at in this state or the country and departments were having to run with subpar gear, if you will, or subpar trucks, air packs, things like that.

But they were facing the same dangers that we were here in Cleveland. We were the haves and they were the have nots. They were not providing a pro a excellent service, but they just could not update their equipment like we could. So that was a problem. And with Cleveland, the growing call volume and the need for, for staffing here, we, we would get inundated with calls.

We were having to call people in to come help us and there was other departments and I gotta thinking about it, I said, you know, are those departments equipped like they need to be? The answer was some of ’em were not. They were making do with what they had and providing a good service, but they deserved the same protection and their citizens deserved the same protection that we got here in Cleveland.

So it was kind of a way [00:20:00] to equal the playing field, if you will. The first year we supplemented. Those, those departments with smaller budgets, just to get ’em to a standard. We created a standard, supplemented their budgets to get ’em to that standard. And when I’m talk about a standard, it’s not talking about firefighting, it’s talking about being able to provide their members that are mostly volunteers with, you know, physicals with the needed gear that they, they should have, that needed insurance.

One thing that I talk about a lot in the volunteer world was you, you have a, a individual that is a full-time employee. If they make $50,000 a year, but they’re volunteering, if they get hurt at that volunteer job, workers’ comp’s not gonna pay ’em based on what they were making. So that, that type of insurance, that gap insurance, if you will, that was important.

Being able to test their fire pumps, their hose, their ladders, their SBAs, some of those were not being able to be able done because just the funding was not [00:21:00] there. There was departments operating off $140,000 a year, and I don’t know how they were doing it. Frugal and fundraising. Fundraising was paying their way.

So that, that was the purpose behind it. We knew going in that someone would have heartburn, you know, someone would have heartburn, that in theory the Cleveland money was going to to Bentonville.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s what I kept saying.

Chris Ellington: Yeah. But, and when you look at it as a grand scheme, as a county, and they we’re all one team.

It’s not really one fire department against another. It’s, we’re a family and, and we wanna help one another. And that’s how I had to really look at it too, because there’s a lot of money going from Cleveland to other parts of the county and. Yeah. It, it is all for the greater good. The greater good of the fire service.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, it, it, I mean, it is, it is. And I mean, I, and I’ve, I gave the commissioners a hard time and I gave you a hard time, but I mean, I understood right what needed to happen. I understood that these departments had trucks that were 30 and 35 years old and a fires a fire and somebody needs to come but out the fire.

So I mainly [00:22:00] was just gesture with y’all. But my fear was given Cleveland’s lack of political clout in this county, in my opinion that we would not then have what we needed when we had what we needed before they went to the countywide tax. And many commissioners are like, well, Chris thinks this is a good idea.

Chris is gonna be fine. Why don’t you just call him, you know, like, and so I would then feel better about it because they were like, look like he’s on board with this. Like it’s going to be okay. Jonathan.

Chris Ellington: There’s 23 Fire Chiefs in Johnston County. And when we came up with this idea, there was a committee of us that was, we conducted a fire study and it was right around COVID first fire study ever been done in Johnston County.

And that committee came up with this idea, and I’ll never forget sitting down in front of 23 Fire Chiefs. Trying to get to agree to this program and it was to help the other departments. And I was astonished when [00:23:00] all 23 Fire Chiefs said, that’s a great idea. We’ve gotta help these departments. And I knew we were on to something.

I knew that we were, we were, we were tapping into what we needed to.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Chris Ellington: So,

Jonathan Breeden: well, and now there’s gonna be a, you know, not all fire departments are as. As well run as others. Sure. And so next year the county is gonna impose sort of this county budgeting where the fire departments are gonna have to bring their budgets to the county.

The commissioners and the fire commissioner are gonna look at those budgets and they may be more, some more scrutiny on what’s going on. Some of the departments have fund balances that they could be using.

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: So I do think it’s gonna be, there’s gonna be more oversight. Coming as we sort of move into this countywide fire protection as we’ve kind of moved into this countywide EMS protection,

Chris Ellington: right

Jonathan Breeden: and away from the individual departments.

Chris Ellington: Well, and the, the biggest thing I would say is the departments are gonna hold their identity. They’re still gonna be their own, they’re still gonna develop their own budgets, things like that. There [00:24:00] will be more oversight now, but I think through the policies we’re developing on apparatus replacement, staffing compensation, so we can be competitive, you know, even talking about some cost share stuff now with the towns make sure everybody’s paying their fair share. I think what you’re gonna see is everybody is gonna be brought up. Even the, even the haves are gonna continue to grow. And we saw that in this last budget cycle there was an increase across the county in fire funding.

Much needed fire funding to, to be increased. There’s a lot of needs out there. There’s a lot of needs that we’re, we’re trying to systematically attack now,

Jonathan Breeden: right

Chris Ellington: before there was no system or no policy. Now we’re getting these policies down that’s gonna dictate when you need to add staffing and when you need to replace the apparatus and things like that.

So. I think you’re gonna see good things come out of it.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, and we’re getting ready to get another, the new Novo plant, $4 billion of a b. It’s gonna be paying fire tax too.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: And that’s gonna help a lot.

Chris Ellington: Yes, most [00:25:00] definitely.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. That’s gonna help a lot. Well, as long as you’ve got, you know, I’m a little selfish Cleveland, you know, you’re my chief. I, I’m like, as long as he’s got what he needs, but I, you know, I’ve seen too many times where Cleveland has sent money to Smithfield and it hasn’t come back. Charlotte has the same argument in North Carolina and, and I’m not even that big a Charlotte fan, I’m just telling you.

I worked at the legislature and Charlotte was sending a whole lot in and not getting nearly what they were sending in, getting back. And I thought, well, here we go again with Cleveland, with this fire thing. But you’re saying that that’s not what’s happened. You got a third station, so you’ve got 35 employees.

Your employees are being well compensated, and I think that’s what’s important.

Chris Ellington: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing we’re doing now is we’re. We’re kicking off a fire station study for Johnston County, not Cleveland, but for Johnston County. That’s gonna tell us where we need fire stations or where better locations are and just do a whole analysis of the fire service of Johnston County as a whole.

Fire station locations.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Chris Ellington: That, that is a big thing [00:26:00] as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright

Chris Ellington: look, looking, looking to the future, Cleveland could use a Ford station.

Jonathan Breeden: A fourth station.

Chris Ellington: A fourth station.

Jonathan Breeden: We just got a third station.

Chris Ellington: We did, we did.

Jonathan Breeden: Where would the fourth station go?

Chris Ellington: It would go back towards Clayton out Steel Bridge Road, Lee Road area.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: That, that’s where it’s plotted.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So did we really need a, I mean we just got the third station.

Chris Ellington: Yeah, we did. We did.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And then the main reason where the third station was to be on that side of the Interstate 40

Chris Ellington: travel time

Jonathan Breeden: and to be that much closer to the new interstate 42.

Chris Ellington: Well, travel time was the big, big push for that station. Fire trucks coming from station two over here on this side of 40 traveling, trying to get past, you know, the lows,

Jonathan Breeden: overs the bridge, right. Lows, Walmart

Chris Ellington: and the tractor supply intersection.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah.

Chris Ellington: Trucks were calling on the radio and they couldn’t make it right and station one was have to come to a different route. So travel times were, were increased so bad by traffic, so.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright, well the next, the last question on this episode will be. What are the things we can do [00:27:00] as homeowners to protect our family? I know you preach smoke detectors. You are the smoke detector guy.

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Like what are some of the common things we can do? I check your batteries.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: Smoke detectors.

Chris Ellington: I would say check your batteries. If you’re the smoke detectors over about five years old, get rid of it. Go ahead and get another one. They say 10, but I mean. You’re talking about your family’s life, you know, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, get those things changed out, change batteries.

Change batteries when the time changes, that is the time to do it. We actually have a, another kind of outreach program we do as a smoke detector, campusing canvassing thing. And we go out in the community and canvas a whole community and knock on doors on one Saturday or two Saturdays a year and try to install new smoke detectors in houses.

We actually go to a 55 plus community one Saturday a year, and we change out every battery in that community.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man. Okay. That’s awesome.

Chris Ellington: They provide the batteries and our crews go through and change the [00:28:00] smoke detector batteries.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s great.

Chris Ellington: But you know. Outside your home. You know, a lot of people love pine straw a lot.

People love that. I don’t encourage you to use pine straw. If you live in a house with vinyl siding, you basically have a fuel on the side of your house. So I’d urge you to use rock or something non-combustible, but.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. Well that’s cool. That’s cool. Last question we ask everybody on this podcast. What do you love most about Johnston County?

Chris Ellington: I said it in the first one, the small town feel, and it, it, it is here. You know, whether you’re in Cleveland or you’re, you’re all the way in Bentonville. You know, the Cleveland people are, or the, the Johnston County people are still Johnston County people. Salt Earth people wanna help their communities. And I think that’s, that’s, you see that now in the fire service and all. They’re all over the county.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, there’s no doubt about it. No doubt about it. Most everybody that’s come on here for the almost two years we’ve done this have said it’s the people. I think it’s the people. It is what I love most about Johnston County.

They are the best people that [00:29:00] I have met anywhere as I’ve gotten to, to travel around to, I’ve been fortunate to see different parts of the world. Been in a lot of different states. No better place than Johnston County, in my mind. Anyway, we’d like to thank Cleveland Fire Chief Chris Ellington for being our guest on this episode of The Best of Johnston County.

As we mentioned earlier, he was on a previous episode a few weeks earlier where he talked a little bit more about the training involved in becoming a firefighter, how they get that training, some more of his history of how he became a firefighter, and some of the things that they do with the calls they run and stuff like that.

So go back and listen to that episode, particularly if you enjoyed this episode, we’d like you to like, follow and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re seeing. Whether you’re on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, or any of the other social media channels of The Best of Johnston County Podcast, we would like you to, if you would not mind, and do us the favor of tagging us at your Instagram Stories, Best of Johnston County. That is the one way that we can grow the reach of this podcast, so more and more people will know more about why you I and Chris Ellington love [00:30:00] Johnston County. Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.

That’s the end of today’s episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.