Representatives from all of the county's volunteer fire departments filled many of the seats for Monday evening's Barren County Fiscal Court special meeting.
At stake, potentially, were lives.
The agenda item for which they were attending was the question of whether the county government should purchase new radio-signal repeaters needed for adequate communication within and between emergency-response departments throughout the county. While all of the repeaters are due for replacement due to age, probably most urgently necessary now is the replacement of the one on Pruitt's Knob, serving the Park City-Cave City vicinity, because it is – as Cave City's fire chief put it – “fried.”
Barren County Judge-Executive Micheal Hale said that all of the repeaters have “about give out on us.” Hale said he has watched as the volunteer departments have struggled to raise money for their basic needs.