KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — Rural Metro is celebrating 75 years of service. Feb. 2 marked the anniversary of when they were first formed in 1948.
They said it was conceived by a then-22-year-old journalist, Lou Witzeman, who watched his neighbors' homes burn down one night, and the fire department never responded. They said the department could not leave the city for insurance reasons, and the home was outside city limits.
Rural Metro then became the first organization in the fire service industry to operate in multiple communities, and they said it created new contracts with municipalities.
They now operate in 17 states across the U.S., including Tennessee. They arrived in Knox County in 1977 and on Monday, they held a celebration to talk about how the community and the organization have changed since then.
Chief Jerry Harnish first joined Rural Metro in 1980. He said a lot has changed in Knox County in the past 40 years, let alone 75 years.
"The technology being one of them, the second is the population growth. I mean, we probably protected fewer than 90,000 people in 1977 and today it's a quarter-million," Harnish said.