Yazoo County fire officials reported momentum with the county’s newest formed volunteer fire department in the Pea Ridge community in rural Yazoo County.
Jack Willingham, the county’s emergency management director, said the Dover Volunteer Fire Department has been incorporated as an individual department. And with the county’s purchase of a property on Dover Road last year, the Yazoo County Board of Supervisors approved for estimates to prepare the building for the department’s future.
“We are going to have to draw a map line to incorporate which area the department would be responsible for,” Willingham said. “The chief is in the position now that he would want to close in that building to make an office. We have a truck stationed in the area for the residents to get used to it.”
David Parker has been appointed as the department’s fire chief.
“We are on the right track,” Willingham added. “We have received a lot of interest in it, and we are moving forward.”
Supervisor Lee Moore got the ball rolling in 2023 to establish a volunteer fire department in that area.
“When we created our fire districts, it became obvious that there was a wide area in the middle of the county on the east and west end of Highway 49,” Moore said, in a 2023 Herald article. “It is a big area with a lot of houses. The east side of Highway 49 is probably more populated than the west side. This could cover a lot of District 1 and go down into District 2 as well.”
