At the closing of its May meeting, the Macon County Board of Commissioners heard an update on the state of Burningtown-Iotla Fire and Rescue from Chairman Mike Yacks. The chairman discussed deficiencies in leadership and service that led to the department’s probation in July 2024 and the steps Burningtown-Iotla has taken to remedy the situation.
A representative of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the department is under an active, ongoing investigation that was opened in the spring of 2024. Whether the investigation is connected to the present issues faced by the department is presently unknown.
Burningtown-Iotla Fire and Rescue (BIFR) was put on an eight-month probation by Macon County on July 9, 2024, after the county Fire Marshal’s Office received a complaint that the department had “fallen below the minimum staffing level of 19 members with 36 hours of training each, according to a Burningtown-Iotla summary presented to the board at the meeting. Due to changes in staffing, the department’s chief, Josh Blanton, was elected and assumed the position on June 28, just before the inspection. The department is volunteer based, except for a full-time facilities manager position.
Though the department was able to get its membership up initially, it again fell below the required levels in December and a follow-up inspection revealed that the department had failed to submit fire reports to the state.
A Jan. 5, 2025, letter from BIFR Chief Josh Blanton and Yacks said the department was successful in its efforts of recruiting the requisite 19 members and training them with the requisite 36 hours of training.
Additional failures followed after the original July inspection, as outlined in reports from Cowee Fire and Rescue. On July 17, BIFR personnel were unable to operate their own equipment and had to rely on Cowee Fire and Rescue personnel. On July 31, only one member responded to a structure fire, and without a truck. A similar incident occurred on Jan. 21, 2025.
On Dec. 31, BIFR failed to respond to an emergency medical call. This incident led to a Jan. 2 letter from Fire Marshal Jimmy Teem mandating that Cowee Fire and Rescue respond to all calls in the Burningtown district until the end of BIFR’s probationary period.
On Feb. 11, BIFR members at a vehicle fire struggled to operate their equipment and again required help from Cowee Fire and Rescue. Members struggled with their equipment again at a Feb. 28 vehicle fire, as corroborated by a letter from the homeowner, Phaedra Bishop.
“Cowee Fire Department arrived shortly after,” the letter read, “remarkably, just two minutes behind Iotla despite being much farther away. The contrast in readiness was stark and concerning: Cowee’s team arrived fully equipped, immediately took control, resolved the pump issues and extinguished the fire efficiently.”
“The potential consequences of these inadequacies are too severe to ignore,” Bishop continued. “We were lucky this time — the fire was contained to the vehicle and no one was injured. But luck is not a reliable safety strategy … Our community deserves and requires a fire department that arrives prepared, equipped and ready to act immediately in any emergency situation.”
On April 7, BIFR failed to respond to a medical call from an 82-year-old woman complaining of chest pain.
As of an April 17 inspection, 38 reports remained incomplete. Yacks said in his update that most of the incomplete reports had since been completed and membership levels had since returned to the required level. However, he could not identify the failures in leadership, organization or conduct that allowed the issues to arise in the first place.
An unidentified representative of BIFR said that nonresponses were caused by technical issues with communications in the mountainous area. Macon County 911 Director Todd Seagle said that, though the area is “geographically challenged,” county communications has systems in place to compensate for gaps in coverage. Seagle said he had personally confirmed that pagers in the BIFR district had been paged during non-response incidents. In addition, a report from Cowee Fire and Rescue regarding the April medical non-response confirmed that BIFR equipment was receiving notifications.
According to Seagle, county personnel are always looking for ways to improve on the quality of emergency communications.
“There are some things we are never going to be able to fix, but that doesn’t mean we stop trying,” Seagle said.
In part because the organization could not identify a failure in leadership that caused these issues, and in part because members of both organizations see the shift as inevitable, Cowee and Burningtown-Iotla were instructed to discuss what a potential merger between the two organizations would look like to “ensure adequate protection for the residents of the Burningtown/Iotla community.” The plan is to be presented to the Board of Commissioners during the May 22 budget work session.