What if your local fire chief was the reason your community still felt like a community? What if the fire department wasn’t just answering 911 calls — but filling in where town halls, parades, and summer camps disappeared? In this episode, I sat down with Cleveland Fire Chief Chris Ellington, a man who quietly rebuilt the heart of a town that technically doesn’t exist. From saving lives to saving traditions… how far would you go for the place you call home?

We talked to 'em a little bit about the creation of the county fire tax, why it was necessary, and things you can do to make your home safer from fire. So listen in.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to this edition of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden, and on today's episode, we have our second interview, sit down with the Cleveland Fire Chief Chris Ellington, and on this episode we're gonna talk to him a little bit about all the community service and involvement that the Cleveland Fire Department has.

We'll go back over his history of how he got into the fire department and a little bit about what the fire department does that you might not realize that they do for our community. If you would like to hear him talk a little bit about his childhood and growing up in the Cleveland community and how much it's changed, as well as the training requirement that the firefighters have to go to the shifts they work and how many firefighters work.

So please give us a five star review down below. We, we really enjoyed bringing it to you and we hope you'll enjoy this episode as well. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Ellington: Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Breeden: All right, no problem. So this is the second episode, but not everybody listens to every episode. So let's start with, state your name and what you do.

Chris Ellington: Alright. My name's Chris Ellington. I'm the fire chief of the Cleveland Fire Department.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. And how long have you been the chief at the Cleveland Fire Department?

Chris Ellington: 20 years. This July was 20 years.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely. Absolutely. And had a 2-year-old son

Jonathan Breeden: and had a 2-year-old son. That, that is wild. I don't, I don't guess you got a whole lot of sleep back then.

Chris Ellington: No, no.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, that was crazy. I think you you, well you worked for the school system, were like facility services, right?

Chris Ellington: I worked for facility services as a plumber.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. Did you enjoy doing that with the school system?

Chris Ellington: I did. I was not far outta high school. Enjoyed doing that and worked with him several years and it was a rewarding career as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So what brought you in to firefighting? Like why did you become a firefighter?

Chris Ellington: Like I said in the other episode, probably peer pressure and, that was probably the best peer pressure I've ever been under. But my friends were doing it. I knew a lot of people on the department. And they, they were talking about how much fun they were having, so I decided to give it a try.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, man. You decided to give it a try. All right, well, and you I mean, obviously you enjoyed it.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and, you're helping your community.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: And you grew up right here in the Cleveland community.

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: You go to Clayton High School?

Chris Ellington: I went to South Johnston High School.

Jonathan Breeden: You went to South Johnston High School.

Chris Ellington: We had the option to go to Clayton or South Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: And I chose South Johnston.

Jonathan Breeden: You chose South Johnston. Alright.

Chris Ellington: I kind of polled everybody that was going to high school that year saw how many friends were going, which way? And decided to go that way, so.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. You went to South tosa. Well that's cool. So, so let's talk a little bit about community involvement. I mean, this fire department does a whole lot more than just fight fires.

Chris Ellington: Sure.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, I mean, and, and now, I mean, fires are probably a very small percentage of the calls.

Chris Ellington: Sure.

Anybody can show up golf carts, dogs, horses, floats, whatever you want. No fee. Show up, get in line to be in the parade. And then there's a. You know, it was music and, and, and food trucks at night. And then they shoot off a bunch of fireworks. About nine 15, I think Celebrate Cleveland started back in like 96 or 97 with Cookie Pope.

Chris Ellington: I think 96 was the first year.

And everybody wanted to dunk the lawyer. And of course, I could talk enough junk for anybody to entice kids to pay $5 and the fire department would come fill up the Dunking booth for us.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely not.

Jonathan Breeden: We did not. Okay. All right. Well, we, we had a good time over the years. We're doing that. And then the you know, mean Cookie started to take a step back. And then I tried to stay on the committee. It was me and, and guy Robert Underwood and, and Denley III who's now I guess doing all that stuff with the, with and, and so we tried to do it along with a few other community members for a couple years, but we didn't have time to know we were doing, and, and then the Chamber talking about trying to do it and that that didn't really go that well.

And finally. After it had just about completely fallen apart. You stepped in and the fire department took it over. So why did you do it? And all that stuff.

So we wanted to keep it going. I got an email and it said, you know, I'm not gonna do it this year. Somebody needs to take it over. And I'll never forget that. And I thought, let me let this lay for a couple days and see if anybody's crazy enough to jump on it. And nobody was. Nobody was. Nobody was me.

Jonathan Breeden: I knew I couldn't do it anymore. And I mean, I was a small helper on the committee. I was not the one that was knocking on doors trying to raise money for fireworks and all that. I mean, I did what I could do, but I had a growing business too, you know?

Chris Ellington: Absolutely. I remember taking it over and now the deciding factor was I was worried about fundraising and you know, is, it's all donations. And I was worried about fundraising and I finally talked to the association, our firefighters association, and I said, look, I'm thinking about doing something really crazy.

They don't like to talk about that, but they are. And that, that's one of the ways they give back to the community.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So what is the Firefighters Association?

Chris Ellington: So it is a, it is a nonprofit organization separate from the Cleveland Fire Department, and they raise money through fundraisers and things like that.

And what they do is they will, if a firefighter is sick. Firefighters family is sick. They make donations and they've made donations all over Johnston County and Wake County as well to firefighters that are sick or families that lose homes, things like that. Every year at Christmas, one thing that people don't realize is every year at Christmas, we go to the schools and we get with the guidance counselors and we get a list of products to buy, and we've really got something to work out great with polenta where we buy.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. And you know, when I think of the fire departments, I think of barbecue plate sales.

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: And I mean, y'all have done a few of those. I've done, I've to 'em. But you haven't done a mini and you haven't done a whole lot lately. So what are they doing to raise money?

Chris Ellington: So they send out a mailer every year.

Jonathan Breeden: I give money to that every year.

Chris Ellington: And, and that mailer is just a donation, you know, it, it says, you explains a little bit about their mission and what they do. And the community has supported that greatly over, over the years. The barbecue fundraisers are very time consuming and with the amount of calls we're running now, it all, the last thing you want is all that barbecue on the grill.

Jonathan Breeden: It was,

Chris Ellington: but just. You know, the logistics of it, we, we can't do it anymore.

Jonathan Breeden: I gotcha. So now is that separate? There used to be a women's firefighter auxiliary group, so, but I don't know if that's the same group or they're the same now.

Chris Ellington: No, no,

Jonathan Breeden: but they had a different sign and they had their own fundraisers.

Chris Ellington: Years ago there was a ladies' auxiliary.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: And a lot of your volunteer fire departments still have a ladies' auxiliary and they do the same thing that the Firefighters Association do.

Here in Johnston County, I know ladies auxiliaries that have funded trucks. They funded turnout gear and things like that, so, or give large, large contributions for a down payment on truck. And they're doing the same thing. They're doing bake sales and fundraisers just to help the fire department now.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well that's great. That's great. And then at some point you took over the Christmas parade, and I know Kim Lawter first came up with the Christmas parade idea. When she was the president of the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce.

Chris Ellington: Yes.

Chris Ellington: We kind of got together after a Christmas parade, and Kim and myself worked really close together at the Chamber. And I had always told her when I had an administrative position that I want her to come work for me. We joked about that for several years, and when that time came, I called her and she jumped on it.

And she's the person behind all our social media and a lot of our community outreach. But she jumped on the Christmas parade back at the chamber, and I got with her because we, we were doing the 4th of July stuff and really, really poured into that a few years. And when the chamber went.

Went away. We just continued it through Celebrate Cleveland and that that is really the event that you see the kids faces light up going up and down that road.

A lot of things went away, and so I was happy to see. You pick up, celebrate Cleveland when you did, and then you picked up the Christmas parade with Kim and all the work she's done, because it is the two things that allows this community out here in Cleveland to have a sense of community. We're not a town, we don't have a mayor, we don't have a townhouse, so we don't have postal code.

You know, what we have is the fire department, you know, and, and I think. That matters a lot. And I think that your commitment to that being a Cleveland lifer

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: You know, has allowed us to continue to try to create a sense of community in a boom intersection basically off of I 40, you know, and, and, and celebrate Cleveland. And that parade really is what we have now that we don't have the Strawberry Festival anymore.

And that scale, I guess you would say. Right?

Jonathan Breeden: But you also run summer camps for kids.

So talk a little bit about that.

Chris Ellington: That was a and they reminded me this morning as our last camp was winding up and I was talking to the parents and kids, they reminded me that was my crazy idea about three years ago.

I saw a fire department somewhere in the country that was doing it, and I said, well, if they can do it, why can't include them? And it started out as let's try this and let's see how many kids sign up. Well, the first year was about 25 kids, elementary aged kids that came for three days and they saw all aspects of public safety from forestry service, EMS, police, fire, everything all the way down to Duke Life Flight.

So we said, Hey, let's do two, let's do two and let's do 50 kids at a time. They remind me every time we talk about camp, that was my idea, to do two camps and do 50 kids at a time. Well, this year we expanded to three camps and the need for junior firefighters, we want those junior firefighters again and get exposed.

So I said, why don't we tap into the middle school age kids? So we held a two day middle school camp for middle school aged kids. It was very successful. We had about 25 kids. Learned a lot. Help them with a career path. They're, they're going to high school soon and trying to get into public safety and whatever, whatever form of public safety they get into, I think it's important that we, we push that.

And this year when we opened up that camp at the Elementary Edge kids, the registration was open for 11 minutes and we had 72 people sign up. And I begged Kim to shut it. I said, please cut it off. I said, cut it off. And we, we were only gonna have one, one camp and only have about 20 to 25 kids. And she said, what are you gonna do now?

I was like, well, we need to try to fit 'em all in. And, and we did. We, we did that. And, you know, it was a big success. Parents love it. Kids love it.

Jonathan Breeden: You charge for this camp?

Chris Ellington: We do not charge.

Jonathan Breeden: You do not charge for this?

Chris Ellington: We do not charge.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Rightfully so, and that funding just goes through our, our fundraising. Not fundraising, I'm sorry, fire prevention. Okay. Of our budget. So,

Chris Ellington: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: And they were having a, the best time, I mean, I kinda wanted to put my bathing suit on and go out there and let them spray the spray, the spray spray me from the ladder truck.

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Chris Ellington: Okay.

Jonathan Breeden: We all Cleveland residents and everybody in Johnston County, you have to pay what is now the county fire tax.

Chris Ellington: That's great.

Jonathan Breeden: Prior to two years ago. Each individual fire district had a separate tax rate that was set by the commissioners at the recommendation of the local county fire board.

These individual fire departments are still run by a local county fire department board that is appointed by your county commissioners, and that's who employs your chief or our chief, Chris Ellington. He's not a county employee. He's not a state employee. He's an employee of his local fire department board.

And that, that is unique now you know, 'cause you have the city of Raleigh you have to compete with for talent. Yeah. And, and you know, and they get state retirement and county retirement, I mean city retirement. So, you know, that's unique. I don't think a lot of people realize that. It's kind of the bastion going back to the volunteer days where maybe the benefits and, and what we're doing has not caught up.

Work with the commissioners to try to change that. So talk a little bit about that and that process. 'cause I give you complete grief about that fire tax all the time because ours went up out here. Absolutely. But I mean, I understand it, but it still didn't make me happy

Chris Ellington: and, and rightfully so. And, and living in the Cleveland community, mine went up drastically just like yours did.

But they were facing the same dangers that we were here in Cleveland. We were the haves and they were the have nots. They were not providing a pro a excellent service, but they just could not update their equipment like we could. So that was a problem. And with Cleveland, the growing call volume and the need for, for staffing here, we, we would get inundated with calls.

We were having to call people in to come help us and there was other departments and I gotta thinking about it, I said, you know, are those departments equipped like they need to be? The answer was some of 'em were not. They were making do with what they had and providing a good service, but they deserved the same protection and their citizens deserved the same protection that we got here in Cleveland.

One thing that I talk about a lot in the volunteer world was you, you have a, a individual that is a full-time employee. If they make $50,000 a year, but they're volunteering, if they get hurt at that volunteer job, workers' comp's not gonna pay 'em based on what they were making. So that, that type of insurance, that gap insurance, if you will, that was important.

So that, that was the purpose behind it. We knew going in that someone would have heartburn, you know, someone would have heartburn, that in theory the Cleveland money was going to to Bentonville.

Jonathan Breeden: That's what I kept saying.

Chris Ellington: Yeah. But, and when you look at it as a grand scheme, as a county, and they we're all one team.

It's not really one fire department against another. It's, we're a family and, and we wanna help one another. And that's how I had to really look at it too, because there's a lot of money going from Cleveland to other parts of the county and. Yeah. It, it is all for the greater good. The greater good of the fire service.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, it, it, I mean, it is, it is. And I mean, I, and I've, I gave the commissioners a hard time and I gave you a hard time, but I mean, I understood right what needed to happen. I understood that these departments had trucks that were 30 and 35 years old and a fires a fire and somebody needs to come but out the fire.

Chris is gonna be fine. Why don't you just call him, you know, like, and so I would then feel better about it because they were like, look like he's on board with this. Like it's going to be okay. Jonathan.

Chris Ellington: There's 23 Fire Chiefs in Johnston County. And when we came up with this idea, there was a committee of us that was, we conducted a fire study and it was right around COVID first fire study ever been done in Johnston County.

I knew that we were, we were, we were tapping into what we needed to.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Chris Ellington: So,

Jonathan Breeden: well, and now there's gonna be a, you know, not all fire departments are as. As well run as others. Sure. And so next year the county is gonna impose sort of this county budgeting where the fire departments are gonna have to bring their budgets to the county.

The commissioners and the fire commissioner are gonna look at those budgets and they may be more, some more scrutiny on what's going on. Some of the departments have fund balances that they could be using.

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: So I do think it's gonna be, there's gonna be more oversight. Coming as we sort of move into this countywide fire protection as we've kind of moved into this countywide EMS protection,

Chris Ellington: right

Jonathan Breeden: and away from the individual departments.

Much needed fire funding to, to be increased. There's a lot of needs out there. There's a lot of needs that we're, we're trying to systematically attack now,

Jonathan Breeden: right

Chris Ellington: before there was no system or no policy. Now we're getting these policies down that's gonna dictate when you need to add staffing and when you need to replace the apparatus and things like that.

So. I think you're gonna see good things come out of it.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, and we're getting ready to get another, the new Novo plant, $4 billion of a b. It's gonna be paying fire tax too.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: And that's gonna help a lot.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. That's gonna help a lot. Well, as long as you've got, you know, I'm a little selfish Cleveland, you know, you're my chief. I, I'm like, as long as he's got what he needs, but I, you know, I've seen too many times where Cleveland has sent money to Smithfield and it hasn't come back. Charlotte has the same argument in North Carolina and, and I'm not even that big a Charlotte fan, I'm just telling you.

I worked at the legislature and Charlotte was sending a whole lot in and not getting nearly what they were sending in, getting back. And I thought, well, here we go again with Cleveland, with this fire thing. But you're saying that that's not what's happened. You got a third station, so you've got 35 employees.

Your employees are being well compensated, and I think that's what's important.

Chris Ellington: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing we're doing now is we're. We're kicking off a fire station study for Johnston County, not Cleveland, but for Johnston County. That's gonna tell us where we need fire stations or where better locations are and just do a whole analysis of the fire service of Johnston County as a whole.

Fire station locations.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright

Chris Ellington: look, looking, looking to the future, Cleveland could use a Ford station.

Jonathan Breeden: A fourth station.

Chris Ellington: A fourth station.

Jonathan Breeden: We just got a third station.

Chris Ellington: We did, we did.

Jonathan Breeden: Where would the fourth station go?

Chris Ellington: It would go back towards Clayton out Steel Bridge Road, Lee Road area.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Chris Ellington: That, that's where it's plotted.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So did we really need a, I mean we just got the third station.

Chris Ellington: Yeah, we did. We did.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And then the main reason where the third station was to be on that side of the Interstate 40

Chris Ellington: travel time

Jonathan Breeden: and to be that much closer to the new interstate 42.

Chris Ellington: Well, travel time was the big, big push for that station. Fire trucks coming from station two over here on this side of 40 traveling, trying to get past, you know, the lows,

Jonathan Breeden: overs the bridge, right. Lows, Walmart

Chris Ellington: and the tractor supply intersection.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah.

Chris Ellington: Trucks were calling on the radio and they couldn't make it right and station one was have to come to a different route. So travel times were, were increased so bad by traffic, so.

Chris Ellington: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Like what are some of the common things we can do? I check your batteries.

Chris Ellington: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: Smoke detectors.

Chris Ellington: I would say check your batteries. If you're the smoke detectors over about five years old, get rid of it. Go ahead and get another one. They say 10, but I mean. You're talking about your family's life, you know, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, get those things changed out, change batteries.

Change batteries when the time changes, that is the time to do it. We actually have a, another kind of outreach program we do as a smoke detector, campusing canvassing thing. And we go out in the community and canvas a whole community and knock on doors on one Saturday or two Saturdays a year and try to install new smoke detectors in houses.

We actually go to a 55 plus community one Saturday a year, and we change out every battery in that community.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man. Okay. That's awesome.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that's great.

Chris Ellington: But you know. Outside your home. You know, a lot of people love pine straw a lot.

People love that. I don't encourage you to use pine straw. If you live in a house with vinyl siding, you basically have a fuel on the side of your house. So I'd urge you to use rock or something non-combustible, but.

Jonathan Breeden: Alright. Well that's cool. That's cool. Last question we ask everybody on this podcast. What do you love most about Johnston County?

Chris Ellington: I said it in the first one, the small town feel, and it, it, it is here. You know, whether you're in Cleveland or you're, you're all the way in Bentonville. You know, the Cleveland people are, or the, the Johnston County people are still Johnston County people. Salt Earth people wanna help their communities. And I think that's, that's, you see that now in the fire service and all. They're all over the county.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, there's no doubt about it. No doubt about it. Most everybody that's come on here for the almost two years we've done this have said it's the people. I think it's the people. It is what I love most about Johnston County.

As we mentioned earlier, he was on a previous episode a few weeks earlier where he talked a little bit more about the training involved in becoming a firefighter, how they get that training, some more of his history of how he became a firefighter, and some of the things that they do with the calls they run and stuff like that.

That's the end of today's episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.