A couple of weeks ago, one of the resources I used to keep track of the goings on in Page County closed down - the Page County Watch blog. I truly found the dialog there and the additional insight that Alice, the "watch blogger," offered to be part of a great overall experience being involved with the County. It's my opinion that by raising tough questions for community dialog, she built a mini-community of people who made well intentioned contributions with the desire to make things better.
Since that blog ended, Alice has kindly left a link to Hawksbill Cabin on the old blog page, and we have been receiving a number of visitors from there. If you are a reader who's been referred from Page County Watch - welcome! I definitely appreciate having the chance to get to know more of my neighbors!
As weekenders, it can be challenging for Mary and me to get the full story on a lot of the current issues in Page County. It's just a fact that during the course a week or month, many news cycles come and go between our visits. With a weekly newspaper as one of few news outlets, we may or may not get follow-up information to the information I pass on through the blog.
As a result of the referrals from Alice's blog, I did receive additional information about the Stanley Volunteer Fire Department as a follow-up to two posts I made back in April 2008, just after a wild land fire had taken place near Stanley. Chief Terry Pettit of the Department saw my posts and offered some clarifying comments, so I went back and revised the earlier posts to include the additional information.
The text of Chief Pettit's comments is below, and the two original post links follow:
"Jim, I was looking at your website and noticed a correction that needs to be made reference to the brush fire in 2008 outside Stanley. The Stanley Volunteer Fire Department is an all volunteer department and receives no payments from any call we respond too. Donations are accepted. The Virginia Forestry Department by law has the right and will charge you for the cost of bringing a wild land fire under control and extinguishing it. The money goes to the State of Virginia. During the 30 hours the Stanley fire department was on the scene of the Lucas Hollow fire the 25 members that responded all as always donated their time and the cost of fuel and supplies came out of our budget. The department’s budget is $125,000.00 per year and the county of page supplies $45,000.00 of that total, we have to raise the rest through donations, meals, events, etc. I hope that the people that read your blog understand that we did not receive any money and get the wrong idea that we do on calls. Terry A. Pettit Stanley Fire Chief"
Original posts:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2008/04/stanley-fire-update.html and
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2008/04/moving-on-wildfire-in-stanley.html
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