Sullivan West VFD gets weather monitoring system
"The Sullivan West Volunteer Fire Department soon will have a state-of-the-art weather monitoring system from Columbia Weather Systems, thanks to a grant from Home Depot..."
-Kingsport Times-News, 11/10/05
This lead from the local newspaper gratified volunteer firefighter Danny Baines who emailed Columbia Weather with this message:
This is what the local newspaper ran on Thursday. They are going to come out and do a front-page news article on the weather system after we get it in. The two local TV news stations are planning to come out and do a news article on the system also.
From my understanding no other fire department in northeast Tennessee has the capabilities to do what we are doing and we are getting ask a lot of questions on this.
I never dreamed that our little project would turn into something big like this. It has got a lot of people very excited down here and they are taking notice of our department. Thanks.
In 2004 Sullivan West Volunteer Fire Department celebrated 30 years of service to Sullivan County, Tennessee. The department serves an area 41 square miles with a population of 12,000. It is staffed by 40 volunteers and averages one call per day.
They purchased their Capricorn 2000 fixed-mount weather station and WeatherMaster software with the help of a grant from their local Home Depot. Using WeatherMaster, their weather data is posted to their website and updated every five minutes.