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This posting was updated on November 14, 2021
On August 1, 1979, the Nahunta Volunteer Fire Department in Wayne County became the first rural fire department in both North Carolina and the nation to receive a municipal fire insurance rating, because of a pioneering rural water supply system that used mutual aid tankers and portable dump tanks to provide a sustained and consistent flow of water for firefighting.
As recounted in the Goldsboro News-Argus on February 26, 1980, the department’s rating of “Municipal Class 8” was “traditionally reserved for fire departments in cities and towns with fixed water supplies, fire hydrants, police forces, and other reserves not found in reserve areas.”
The department’s new rating took effect on August 1. Then on December 1, neighboring Polly Watson Volunteer Fire Department became the second to win the rating. (The county’s other rural departments were “working for it,” added the story.”) PWVFD was instrumental in NVFD’s rating, as the “fast-dump” water supply system relied on the participation of tankers from neighboring rural departments.
Insurance officials conducted inspections of Polly Watson, Fremont, Little River, Belfast, and Fork Township fire departments, in order to make their determination for Nahunta’s insurance rating.
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