Topsail Beach Fire Department concerned about overgrown driveways

TOPSAIL BEACH, NC (WWAY) — The Topsail Beach Fire Department wants to change a town ordinance after 40 years of driveway concerns.

The fire chief says they have been sending letters to 25 residents for two years and now they’re having the town’s attorney look into the problem.

“I’ve sent several letters,” Humphrey said. “Myself and the town staff have sent several letters to these people requesting that they trim these driveways and widen them out to 12 feet wide by 12 feet high.”

Right now they have a list of these houses posted on the wall in the fire department. Humphrey says, if they get a call from one of these houses, they know that the fire truck will have to park on the highway instead of the driveway.

“Sometimes over 400 or 500 feet away,” Humphrey said.

Humphrey says that causes concerns for their response times.

“That slows things down to a crawl,” Humphrey said.

Which he says could even cause problems for the neighbors.

“If their house gets out of control and sets the neighbors house on fire, then I see it has somewhat their problem or they caused the problem,” Humphrey said. “We couldn’t get their house under control, therefore it spread to the neighbors’ house.”

Humphrey says they’ve gotten about a third of the people to comply, but now their letting the town handle it.

“To see if they can either pass a resolution and enforce something they’ve got on the books,” Humphrey said. “Then the attorney is looking into it to see what we have to do to make this happen.”

We tried talking to some of these residents, but they either did not want to go on camera, said they didn’t have a problem, or were not home.