A Summary Report of the 2025 Shutdown of the

Ruckersville Volunteer Fire Company 

A Product of the Greene County Republican Committee

Following the County’s action to remove Ruckersville Volunteer Fire Company (RVFC) from emergency response, a review of the events was conducted by Steve Fitch on behalf of the Greene County for the purpose of seeking truth, identify missteps for all relevant parties to learn from, restore RVFC’s reputation and build a bridge to improving the Greene County fire service as a whole. 

FINDINGS OF FACT

Prior to any issues raised by Greene County, a complaint was filed in April 2025 on the Greene County Emergency Manager by the Chief of RVFC.  This complaint was regarding the handling of a hazmat incident on Rt. 33 near the community of Lydia. 

On May 15th, a list of issue issues was raised by Greene County and sent to the RVFC, with the announcement of a “Due Diligence Review” by the Board of Supervisors.  This Review coincided with the County decision to take RVFC “offline”, thereby not calling them for any emergency response. Below, we examine the issues raised in that DDR.

1.)   Alleged Reckless Driving by an RVFC member: Charges were filed against RVFC Assistant Chief Cameron Hord under Virginia Code Section ~46.2-852 (Reckless Driving) while operating RVFC fire apparatus on April 12, 2025. Evidence indicates RVFC has allowed him to continue to operate emergency vehicles despite awareness of the seriousness of the charges in the criminal complaint. These charges were adjudicated in court in July 2025, resulting in a DEFERRED DISPOSITION which may be reduced or dismissed in one year provided there are no further violations. RVFC maintains they took appropriate action on this matter according to their bylaws.

2.)   Allegations of operational deficiencies at the Judges Road multi-family dwelling fire on April 1, 2025, requiring an after-action review (AAR):  This AAR revealed issues and concerns with ALL COMPANIES at the incident. In the AAR, The Independent Moderator, Chief Bailey, shared his concern that the county mishandled aspects of the incident, and that their overall approach made the situation worse by creating more animosity between the Greene County Fire Companies.  Our investigation finds that this incident should have been dealt with while allowing continuity of RVFC operations and active online status.

3.)   In initiating this AAR, three fire chief officers from outside the county were selected by the Greene Emergency Manager. In an email, the request for the chiefs outlined the request, it was found that there was a statement in that request that asked these chief officers: “Determine if evidence exists of any fire company personnel purposefully attempting to cause harm to other personnel on scene. Note: we are not asking you to investigate a potential criminal matter per se; if needed, we will notify VSP based on information contained in your report”.

This tainted the objectivity of the report. Additionally, if a complaint was received that there was an intentional act to harm a person, this should have been immediately turned over to the Sheriff’s Office for investigation and resolution. 

4.)   Review of the taxpayer funded fire apparatus replacement program disbursements: Initially included in the DDR, this matter boiled down to a mishandling of a receipt of purchase by the County, and the matter was resolved quickly.  We conclude that at no time should this matter have been a factor in a shutdown of RVFC.

5.)   In the DDR, the County represented that it had a need to review and address unsolicited internal organizational concerns by an active RVFC member shared with the Board of Supervisors May 13, 2025, in closed session. On the contrary, this individual was NOT an active member of RVFC and had recently had their submission to join RVFC declined.  RVFC leadership states that THIS WAS NOT AN ACTIVE MEMBER AT THE TIME OF THIS COMPLAINT, and the individual was only ever a member on a brief probationary status. 

It should be noted that RVFC President Richardson states that he was asked by the Board of Supervisors if RVFC would consider removing the chief and assistant chief from their present leadership roles as a condition of reopening no less than three times. The answer was no.  One could conclude that the DDR was only constructed, and its assertions only brought forth, as a means to pressure RVFC into leadership changes.  If true, his would be highly inappropriate of the county.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall concerns regarding RVFC's ability to respond to emergency calls: The “shutdown” was counterintuitive, as shutting down the RVFC limits the response by the county as a whole to at best 2/3rds of its response capabilities.  Furthermore, certain pieces of life-saving equipment housed solely at the Ruckersville firehouse were also forced offline and therefore unavailable to assist in an emergency.   We conclude that the shutdown, lasting from May 15th to July 18th, placed the general public, citizens and visitors alike, at greater risk for their safety, while unnecessarily further straining the resources of the remaining two county fire stations.

The County Supervisors stated publicly that this action would do nothing to harm the public as other fire companies were only 5 minutes away.  However, it is known that a person in cardiac arrest dies in 4 to 6 minutes. Second, all of Greene County’s fire companies are volunteer companies.  Their houses are often not staffed, so response times can be much longer. At the Judges Rd Fire after action report meeting, the Chief of Stanardsville VFC arrived at the scene first, then left to go retrieve another fire engine (which is not a common practice).   Asked why he did this; it was reported that he explained that many of the Stanardsville members were paid firefighters that were on duty elsewhere at the time and they were short staffed.  This explanation further underscores the need for all of Greene’s firehouses to remain online.

In the opinion of former Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner, whom the GCRC consulted on this review, none of the issues raised in the DDR rose to the level of such a dangerous action to shut down the busiest fire company in Greene. This was further validated from Nick Nanna, Deputy Director for the Virginia Department of Fire Programs who stated in his report (Commissioned by Greene County) that none of these issues warranted shutdown of a fire company. Each issue could have been dealt with and resolved individually. 

To validate the life safety concerns created by the RVFC shutdown, here are two incidents that occurred during that time period:

On June 21, 2025 there was an auto incident near Holly Hill and Seminole Trail.  With a reported midday temperature of 95 degrees, there was a 45-minute delay removal of a female occupant due to a delay in resources and dependent on a response from Orange County, while RVFC was staffed and only minutes away. Fortunately, the person experienced no critical injuries, but if this had been a person with serious trauma or a medical condition, that delay could have resulted in death. The day before RVFC was restored to respond to emergencies, there was an incident for a child not breathing in Ruckersville and RVFC was minutes away and was not dispatched. We conclude that the assertion of no increase in risk to the public during the RVFC shutdown is not credible. 

Early on in email correspondence with the County Administrator, in an email to Chief Werner, it was stated that RVFC wasn’t singled out. However, Ruckersville was the only fire company shut down from response, subjected to a separate review by the Virginia Department of Fire Programs and was required to sign an agreement to continue operating.

Concurrent with the County returning RVFC to return to online status on July 18th, 2025, a letter  was issued to RVFC. RVFC was asked to blindly agree to terms and conditions not yet defined.  The County position remains that these conditions would take time to create, and we agree.  However, it is a standard and common-sense practice not to sign any agreement without clear terms.  Such a vague commitment should not have been expected of RVFC, or any of the fire companies.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it was discovered that there was a fire service report initiated by the County in 2020, which included recommendations for improvements that were never acted upon. BOS Chair Catalano shared that report had been done under a previous Board which did not take action and that this report was unknown to this Board but will be used as a basis to move forward.  However, two of the current Board members were serving at the time the report was commissioned.

We find that the Greene Supervisors decision to shut down Ruckersville Volunteer Fire Company responses based on a list of issues and allegations, while not first proactively working with all fire companies to resolves those issues individually, placed the public at great risk.  We further find that the County’s “Independent Investigation” into these matters was biased from the outset, both in the selection of the investigators, as well as the bias within the information shared with them.  

It is important to note that as shared to the GCRC, the Board of Supervisors acted on the information it had. This identifies the need for the Greene BOS to examine this process of information collection to ensure accuracy and eliminate any bias and/or conflict of interest on the part of the person(s) involved in collecting/presenting the information. 

In the future and in similar situations of such magnitude, it is recommended that the County have an outside objective professional with expertise in these matters engaged BEFORE making a decision with such critical implications as to shut down a volunteer fire company.  The GCRC stands ready, willing and able to support all parties going forward to find solutions and ways to improve collaboration among the firehouses and county government. 

We sincerely thank the many stakeholders who assisted us during our investigation.  We also extend our utmost gratitude to Steve Fitch, Charles Werner and our Chair Todd Sansom for their work in assembling this Summary Report.

THE GREENE COUNTY REPUBLICAN COMMITTEE

August 14th, 2025