MACON, Ga. — "Expect the unexpected." That's what they say, but no amount of training can prepare you for a car crashing into your living room.
"It had almost looked like a bomb exploded in the living room. At that point, another firefighter of mine who had also heard the crash from the other side of the building came into the living room. We both said, 'We have to go to work,'" said Corporal Brandon Teague.
Teague was on duty at Macon-Bibb County Fire Station 12 at 3 a.m. January 2nd. That's when a stolen SUV with seven teenagers inside crashed into the fire station. The Bibb County Sheriff's Office was chasing them.
"I was sleeping on the side of the room where they made contact," Teague said. "The living room was in shambles."
They did what firefighters do, and rescued the people inside.
"I found the four door sedan crashed into our chief's office. There was light smoke coming from it at the time," Teague said.
A fire broke out too, and Teague had to call other fire stations for backup. Three months later, the wall still isn't fixed. A large brown tarp hangs over the wreckage. Tuesday, the Macon-Bibb County Commission took the first steps toward repairing it.
"We've been needing to get that repaired. So the purpose of us appropriating the funds is so that we can get started on the process of getting that fire station fixed," said Fire Chief Shane Edwards.
Edwards also asked commissioners to fix up the roof at Fire Station 7.
"The roof's been leaking for quite a while. Facilities has been doing a fantastic job of going over there and patching where they could and holding this off as long as they could," Edwards said.
Tarps are strapped to the roof, blowing in the breeze after last week's storms; but Edwards says it's time to fix that, too.
His final ask was for money to replace equipment lost when a fire engine caught fire on I-475 in 2020. Edwards says it would cover fire hoses, computer equipment, a new defibrillator and more.
Commissioners also moved forward on a plan to buy seven new squad cars for the Bibb County Sheriff's Office. The price tag on that is about $171,000.