Dick Kinsey, Commander of the Short Mountain Highway Station was named “2010 County Firefighter of the Year” Saturday night during the department’s annual awards banquet held at the Smithville Church of God annex.
County Fire Chief Donny Green, who presided over the ceremony, said Kinsey met all the department’s criteria in earning this award. “Dick was awarded the firefighter of the year based on his community service, training attendance, and his fire call participation. He was scored on those three factors and he had the highest score. As a result he was awarded the 2010 firefighter of the year.”
Lieutenant Anthony Boyd, for the second year in a row, received the “Officer of the Year” award. Chief Green said the same three elements used to select the “Firefighter of the Year” are also used by the department in honoring the Officer of the Year, training attendance, incident response attendance, and community service. ” Anthony is one of our county wide lieutenants. He is a very active person in the department.. He does a lot of work behind the scenes, washing our turnout gear, etc. He participates in a lot of community service projects, such as seniors citizens events. He was involved at the Jamboree and he participates in other community service things that we do outside the department. As a result of his community service, his training attendance, and his fire call participation, Anthony was awarded the 2010 Officer of the Year.”
The “Rookie” award went to Kevin Adcock of the Short Mountain Station. Chief Green said this award is totally based on hours of training and goes to a firefighter in his first year of service to the department.”We base that award on training hours that they complete during their first year of membership in the department. We feel like that is a very vital part of their membership during their first year and we want to make sure they get good training. We try to recognize those firefighters who put forth the extra effort in making that first year on the department a good training experience. This year Kevin had the most training hours in the department and that’s how he was awarded the 2010 Rookie of the Year. He is from the Short Mountain Station and he has been in the department for about a year now.”
The Git-R-Done award goes to Billy Fuson of the Belk Station, who was unable to attend the banquet. According to Chief Green, Fuson has not only served the fire department but his country as well, having just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. “He was deployed to Afghanistan a little over a year ago and returned in December. We award this to someone who has done something outstanding, not necessarily just in the department but outstanding in the sense that it reflected well on the community. This year we decided that no one was any more deserving than Billy Fuson. He has certainly served his country well and represented DeKalb County well. He has always been a very strong and active member of the department and as a result of his commitment and dedication to our country we felt that no one was any more worthy to be awarded the 2010 Git-R-Done Award than Billy Fuson.”
Two other firefighters, Assistant Chief Roy Merriman, and Lieutenant and Training Officer James Pennington each received a special award for their leadership in helping make the department’s training program one of the best in the state. In fact, for 2010, Chief Green said the county volunteer fire department was tops in the state for training hours. “There’s about 749 departments in Tennessee and we were awarded the number one volunteer fire department out of the whole state. We felt like these men were due recognition for heading up and coordinating our training program. It speaks well of our department and as a result we made a special presentation to Assistant Chief Roy Merriman and Lieutenant James Pennington for their efforts in making our training program such a huge success.”
Meanwhile Jerry Wayne Johnson, Commander of the Liberty Station received a thirty five year service pin. Captain Jeff Williams was presented a pin for twenty years of service. Lieutenant Jay Cantrell and Anthony Johnson and Darrell Johnson both of the Liberty Station were recognized for ten years,each receiving a pin for their length of service, and Lieutenant Bradley Mullinax and Jeff Rankhorn of the Belk Station each received a five year service pin. C.J. Tramel of the Short Mountain Highway Station, who was absent, will also receive a pin for five years of service.
Several members of the department were also presented cash awards, funded through a federal safer grant, which Chief Green said is to help retain and recruit firefighters.”In 2008, we were awarded a Safer Grant from the federal government that is a non-matching local grant and does not require any local funding, it’s 100% federal, to help us recruit and retain firefighters. Some of the things we’ve done is provide these training award incentives for firefighters such as length of service awards, firefighter of the year, rookie of the year, and for firefighters who made 100% of their monthly training or at least 75% of their monthly training. We’ve made those awards and we hope that’s a tool we can use to help encourage our firefighters to stay on board and continue being involved with training in our department.” Firefighters who made 100% of their monthly training each received $400 and those who made 75% of their monthly training took home $200 each.
100% Training Attendance Awards:
Kevin Adcock—Short Mtn. Station
Lt. Anthony Boyd
Lt. Jay Cantrell
Kelly Cantrell—Belk Station
Billy Crymes—Main Station
Larry Dalton—Austin Bottoms Station
Nelson Davis—Cookeville Hwy. Station
Chief Donny Green
Anthony Johnson—Liberty Station
Bradley Johnson—Main Station
Darrell Johnson—Liberty Station
Donnie Johnson—Liberty Station
Jerry Wayne Johnson—Liberty Station
Richard “Dick” Kinsey—Short Mtn. Station
Lt. Michael Lawrence
Jimmy Martin—Main Station
Kenny Maynard—Cookeville Hwy. Station
Ronald Merriman—Keltonburg Station
Asst. Chief Roy Merriman
Lt. Brad Mullinax
Jason Neal—Short Mtn. Station
Andy Pack—Belk Station
Robert Patrick—Keltonburg Station
Lt. James Pennington
Shawn Puckett—Midway Station
Jeff Rankhorn—Belk Station
Steve Repasy—Midway Station
Jason Rice—Keltonburg Station
Eric Snow—Main Station
Luke Tucker—Temperance Hall Station
Calvin Tramel—Midway Station
C.J. Tramel—Short Mtn. Station
75% Training Attendance Awards:
Lee Ansel—Blue Springs Station
Duncan Block—Austin Bottoms Station
Jacob Bond—Main Station
Gelasio “Marco” Chacon—Johnson’s Chapel Station
Kevin Cripps—Temperance Hall Station
Tyler Cripps—Temperance Hall Station
Bill Fowler—Temperance Hall Station
Gary King—Austin Bottoms Station
Logan Maynard—Cookeville Hwy. Station
Bob Myracle—Austin Bottoms Station
Dale Pack—Short Mtn. Station
Danny Parker—Johnson’s Chapel Station
Tim Pedigo—Blue Springs Station
Brandi Summers—Belk Station
Hugh Washer—Cookeville Hwy. Station
Captain Jeff Williams
Captain Mark Young

A former DeKalb County Sheriff’s deputy, charged in connection with a drug trafficking scheme at a McMinnville clinic in 2009, has been found innocent of the charge against him following a two day jury trial in Warren County Criminal Court this week.
The jury, Thursday afternoon, found Larry Pedigo, Jr. not guilty of fraudulently obtaining drugs (oxycontin) from the Ameri-Care Urgent Care Clinic in McMinnville. He was originally indicted on two counts of delivery of a schedule II narcotic (oxycontin) and two counts of fraudulently obtaining drugs (oxycontin)
Prosecutors alleged that Pedigo had participated in a scheme to obtain oxycontin from Justin Turner, a physician’s assistant at the clinic, only to return some of the drugs to Turner, who was believed to have been addicted to the medications and needed them to feed his habit.
Three other officers, who worked for either the McMinnville Police Department or Warren County Sheriff’s Department, were also charged in the case along with Turner, clinic employee Marcus Northcutt, among others. Some of the defendants in the case have already been sentenced while others still await trial.
Pedigo, who steadfastly maintained his innocence since being arrested, refused to settle the case, preferring to stand trial. By the time his case went to trial, two of the charges against Pedigo had already been dropped by state prosecutors and another charge was dismissed during the trial at the close of the state’s proof after Special Judge Tim Easter granted a motion by Pedigo’s attorney, Hilton Conger for a directed verdict. That, said Conger, left only one charge for the jury to consider against Pedigo, one count of obtaining prescription medication by fraud. “The state (previously) dismissed two of the counts against Pedigo because he had an air tight alibi for where he was on the date that they alleged these (crimes) occurred. The judge dismissed the other one, the charge of delivery, upon my motion for a directed verdict at the close of the state’s proof. The state had not proven that Junior Pedigo had ever delivered any drugs to Justin Turner, the physician’s assistant who worked at Ameri-Care. The charge that went to the jury was one count of obtaining prescription medication (Oxycontin) by fraud, which is a class C felony.”
Conger told WJLE Thursday afternoon that Pedigo always maintained that the prescription he was given was for a medical necessity. “He had injured his knee on May, 20th 2009 while working as a detective in DeKalb County. He was making an arrest and tore a cartilage in his knee. It ultimately resulted in surgery to that knee. He was going to this physician’s assistant at Ameri-Care for his work comp injury. It was always his insistence that the prescription for oxycontin was written to him for a legitimate medical purpose.”
According to Conger the charges against Pedigo and the others was the result of an undercover investigation which began in March, 2009. “An employee of Ameri-Care had contacted the district attorney and reported that Justin Turner was writing prescriptions to patients he was not seeing and for people who did not need them (drugs). There was also an employee, Marcus Northcutt, who was posing as a nurse and dispensing prescriptions. That led to an investigation. During the investigation the names of four police officers surfaced alleging that they were involved in obtaining drugs. The scheme was that the physician’s assistant, who was allegedly addicted to oxycontin, was writing prescriptions to various people, including some police officers in exchange for a return of oxycontin to him. Junior Pedigo just happened to be a patient there for his workers comp case. He was not involved in this scheme but because he was a patient there and because he had been given a prescription for oxycontin, he was implicated. Pedigo always maintained his innocence and that the only time he got oxycontin was for a legitimate medical purpose.”
Pedigo resigned from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department after the case came to light in August, 2009.
In a brief statement to WJLE Thursday night, Pedigo said “I’d like to say a special thanks to all my friends and family and my attorney who stood by me through this ordeal.”

The contractor on the Hurricane Bridge rehabilitation project may start moving in equipment as early as next week in preparation for the beginning of construction.
Officials of OCCI Incorporated of Fulton, Missouri were among those present at a pre-construction conference held Thursday morning at the TDOT building on Armory Street in Smithville where details of the project were discussed. Representatives from TDOT’s regional and field offices also took part in the discussions along with consulting engineers.
Milton Greer, resident engineer for Modjeski and Masters, a consultant for TDOT on the Hurricane Bridge project told WJLE that OCCI is expected to begin preparation work within a few days. ” The contractor is planning on doing some mobilization starting this next week and possibly get some traffic control items set up. Hopefully around the first of February, they’ll start doing some of their preparation work, putting up some shielding, etc to protect the river so that they can start doing some repair work underneath the bridge, such sandblasting and repainting the sub-structure.”
Among the issues discussed during the pre-construction conference Thursday morning was the traffic control plan for the bridge during construction. Greer said posted weight limits on the bridge will continue to be enforced, however school buses and fire trucks will be allowed to cross. Otherwise, loaded trucks over the posted weight limits will have to detour via State Highway 96 (Dale Ridge Road). “Local traffic including light trucks and multi-axle trucks 18 tons or less can continue to use the bridge as well as 10 ton trucks with two axles. Any vehicle in excess of that will need to take a detour which will be around highway 96. There will be traffic signals when we have alternating traffic on the bridge (one lane open) to control the direction of traffic. A fair amount of the time there will be two way traffic maintained on the bridge but there will be short periods where we will have to have alternating traffic on the bridge. As far as traffic control on the bridge, that probably will not go into effect until the actual construction starts. At some point in time when they start getting ready to take the deck off, we’ll have to start doing alternating traffic in order to set up the required portable barrier rails for the protection of the public and the workers on the bridge.”
The county ceased flagging operations January 1st but officials said flaggers may be needed again at some point during construction.
Greer also described the scope of the work to be done on the bridge “We’ve got a certain amount of strengthening to do to the steel truss members and some additional stringers which actually support the concrete deck. The existing rails and deck will eventually be removed from the bridge and replaced with a lite weight concrete deck.” The bridge will also be repainted .
In October, TDOT awarded the bid to OCCI Incorporated at $26.9 million.
The contractor has until October 31st, 2013 to complete the project. OCCI officials said Thursday that they plan to finish the project in less tme.
County Mayor Mike Foster, who was present during the pre-construction conference, said he was pleased to hear that construction work will be starting soon. “I’m glad to know that they’re not going to interrupt traffic, except for loaded trucks. But the fact that traffic can still go across the bridge including school buses, fire trucks, and empty trucks is a big, big relief. I was also encouraged to hear the contractor say that he thought he could cut a year off the contract time. That’s big for us. This is important to all of our industries and all the people who work there, as well as tourism. That’s our life blood.”

“What’s your location?” is one of the first things dispatchers need to know to get help quickly to you in the event of an emergency.
If you’re using a cell phone, rather than a landline, to make an emergency call for help and are able to give your address quickly and accurately, that’s fine. But if you can’t give the address because of a medical condition or some other reason, the dispatchers have to rely exclusively on technology to locate you and that poses a greater challenge if you’re using a cell phone.
Brad Mullinax, Director of the DeKalb County 911 Center, urges all residents to keep this in mind as you consider whether to drop your land line phone service and go exclusively with cell phones at home. “Over the past several years we’ve had a growing trend of folks disconnecting their home telephone service and going to cell phones. Cell phones have become a great thing and they are convenient for everybody but they do pose somewhat of a problem to 911. When 911 was first set up back in 1994 and we went to enhanced 911, it was set up in such a way to where we’d get caller ID information such as location and subscriber information when you call 911. But with cell phones we don’t actually get that type of information. It’s not really location based. We do have GPS on the cell phones but we don’t get that exact location like we do with a landline. It often presents a problem for 911 dispatchers because we’re not able to pinpoint exactly where you are so if you’re having a heart attack and you can’t talk to one of our 911 dispatchers, it sometimes delays the amount of time to get someone to you because we have to make an attempt to try and re-query that call and locate it by GPS which is not 100% accurate. Whereas with a landline call, we can get your address information and it pinpoints right on our map when you call 911.”
“I know times are tough right now, economic wise. There’s a lot of financial problems and a lot of families are under strains, but if there’s any way possible for you to keep your home telephone service I would encourage all citizens to do that because it does greatly enhance the possibility of us locating you in the event of an emergency.”
Meanwhile, Mullinax reminds cell phone users to be sure and remove the battery from any phone you no longer intend to use, even after it no longer has service, before you give it to your children to play with because it may still have the capability of calling 911. “We see this on a regular basis with cell phones that are disconnected, they (parents) give them to their children to play with. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that a non-initialized cell phone or a cell phone that does not have service attached to it like through DTC Wireless or Verizon Wireless or some of the other carriers, if the phone does not have service, it still calls 911 regardless. So if you give those phones to your kids for them to play with, make sure to take the battery out of them because they will still call 911. We get a lot of bogus calls in these type of situations.”
Mullinax also urges you to post your 911 address on your residence where it can easily be spotted by law enforcement, fire fighters, and EMS personnel. “A lot of folks will have it on their mailbox but they will not have it on their house and we have a hard time finding these citizens sometimes in emergencies. Ninety percent of the population does a pretty good job with it but we have several who will not post their 911 address. Ideally, it needs to be posted in three inch letters on the front of the residence and at the end of the driveway either with a 911 marker or on the mailbox.”
When calling 911, Mullinax asks you to please be patient with the dispatchers and give them as much information as you can about your emergency. “We’ve seen a lot of negative publicity in Metro Nashville and other places where dispatchers are on the line for several minutes gathering information before they actually dispatch units out. We don’t operate that way in DeKalb County. We have multiple dispatchers on at one time. The dispatcher that actually answers the phone taking the call, gathering information is not the person who is actually dispatching the call. We have someone else monitoring that call and they’re getting units enroute. We have to ask a lot of questions such as location, whose calling, and what the actual problem is and sometimes citizens get a little frustrated with that but they’re having an emergency and we understand. I’d just like to ask the public to be patient when you’re calling 911 and give us as much information as possible because that helps us get the right units dispatched and it protects our units from any problems.”
Mullinax added “If you should mis-dial and call 911 by mistake, we encourage you not to hang up the phone. Stay on the line with the 911 dispatcher and give us the information. Just tell us basically what happened. If you were trying to call Mexico, California, or somewhere else just let us know that information because that ties us up. We have to tie up a line making a second call back to your residence to find out what’s going on. In addition, if we have a 911 hangup, it’s our policy that we automatically dispatch response units to that location. So if you call 911 and it was a mis-dial, you’re going to get a deputy or police officer regardless if there’s a problem or not so just stay on the line with us and give us a little information. It’ll make things a lot easier for you and us too.”
Finally, Mullinax asks that you only call 911 when there’s an actual emergency. Otherwise, call the non-emergency line at central dispatch, which is 615-215-3000. “A lot of times, we have folks call 911 when it’s not actually a 911 emergency. It may be an emergency in your mind but if it’s not an immediate threat to your life or property, then please use our non-emergency line. We dispatch non-emergency calls for the City of Smithville, DeKalb County, and the City of Alexandria. We encourage you to call if you need assistance but please don’t tie up a 911 line for a non-emergency because our 911 lines in DeKalb County are limited. We don’t have very many of them. Use our non-emergency number at 615-215-3000 if it is a non-emergency.”

DeKalb County has joined over 21,000 communities nationwide that are allowed to purchase federally backed flood insurance. This availability follows the community’s adoption and enforcement of ordinances to reduce flood losses and acceptance by the National Flood Insurance Program.
DeKalb County is now a participant in the NFIP effective on December 21st, 2010. Residents of DeKalb County will be able to purchase flood insurance up to the limits under the Regular Phase of the program. However, there is a 30 day waiting period before flood insurance coverage goes into effect. For single-family dwellings, the building coverage limit is $250,000 and the contents coverage limit is $100,000. Renters can also protect their belongings by purchasing contents coverage. For commercial properties, the building and contents coverage limits are both $500,000.
Lenders must require borrowers whose properties are located in a designated flood hazard area to purchase flood insurance as a condition of receiving a federally backed mortgage loan in accordance with the Federal Disaster Protection Act of 1973.
The NFIP is implemented through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There are over 5.5 million flood insurance policies in more than 21,000 participating communities nationwide.