On top of destroying the Carl Baker family home and reviving thorny questions about city-county fire response protocols, a blaze earlier this month on Oakwood Drive also led to smashing a decades-old brick-and-concrete sign marking the entrance to Oak Park subdivision.

Michael Baker, Carl Baker’s son and also a member of the Culkin Volunteer Fire Department, said he hit the marker in his father’s Ford F-350 pickup while heading to the fire. He has paid out of his own pocket for repair of the sign, which had stood for nearly 40 years at the Indiana Avenue and Blossom Lane entrance to the county neighborhood of about 250 homes. Masons hired by Michael Baker did the job last week.

Baker said he was Christmas shopping at Pemberton Square mall on the afternoon of Dec. 8 when he received a dispatch about the fire in his neighborhood. Warren County outside Vicksburg is divided into multiple regions and volunteer firefighters respond to alarms via pagers or cell phones activated by 911 Dispatch Center staff. Most travel in their personal vehicles and others are designated to bring pumper trucks from their individual stations.

Trying to reach the scene as quickly as possible, Michael Baker said he pulled around another vehicle paused near the stop sign, and made a wide right turn onto Blossom in front of the Oak Park sign.

“It had just rained, and the back of the truck slid around and hit the sign,” he said.

The marker was broken into pieces.

Baker said he began looking for the right person so he could self-report the damage, but found no one. “I haven’t even had someone call me to say anything about it,” he said. So he decided to pay for repairs himself.

While Oak Park’s sign is repaired, the Bakers have been forced to seek housing elsewhere. Carl Baker, known as the Hot Dog Man for the restaurant he operates on Monroe Street, said he and his wife, Julia, are renting a place. Michael Baker, 23, a technician at Waterways Experiment Station, said he is staying with friends.

Still unresolved is whether the Oakwood Drive fire and similar blazes will prompt Vicksburg and Warren County officials to talk about allowing Vicksburg firefighters to serve Warren County homes located near city limits. At one point, an agreement was near under which the closest personnel and equipment would be dispatched in exchange for a per-run fee.

The Bakers’ Oak Park home was located one mile from the Vicksburg Fire Department’s Memorial Station. Michael Baker passed it on the way to his house. But under the existing protocol the VFD is not allowed to respond to any county brush or residential blaze unless its help is requested by the county volunteer fire service dispatched to the scene. Culkin’s truck drove at least five miles to the scene, from its station at Culkin and Freetown roads. It is about the same distance from Fisher Ferry Volunteer Fire Department equipment.

On the day of the fire and since, the Bakers have said they are perfectly comfortable with the situation and that they knew and understood they would not receive municipal services while living in a nonmunicipal area.

“They don’t come out here,” Michael Baker said, “because we don’t pay the taxes.”