Over the past five years, my department has been awarded several grants from both the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program and private foundations. These grants have helped provide much-needed equipment and training. Recently, I closed out one of our grants and help a neighboring department gather the paperwork to do the same. In doing so, I met several great people who are employed directly by or as contractors with FEMA who don’t just oversee the grants, but who also assist departments struggling with grants, especially the closeout reports.
The most interesting thing that I learned from Lori Smith-Lonbom, our regional fire program specialist, was that the AFG program is constantly looking to document success stories. These success stories help illustrate and reinforce the value of the program and how it has made a difference in the fire service’s ability to handle both routine and extraordinary emergencies.
For example, prior to receiving our communications grant, my department had only a small standalone dispatch center that was run by the police and had radio equipment and consoles that dated back to the early 1970s. The system virtually isolated us from our neighbors, and the radio equipment was subject to storm interference, power failures and equipment malfunctions. If our department needed help or was needed for a mutual aid, the dispatch center had to be notified over the telephone and given the necessary information. Then dispatch would notify the appropriate Wyoming units. In some cases it took more than three minutes for the tones to drop for assistance. Because of this built-in delay, few communities regularly called on us for help.
Part of our grant funds provided new communications equipment that allowed us to become a part of the county dispatch center and a CAD system that placed us on automatic aid to five surrounding communities and direct mutual aid via the extra-alarm cards to other departments in our region. The CAD system simply activates the tones of the closest stations, which are dispatched simultaneously.
I know there are departments where a thermal-imaging camera purchased through the AFG has helped save a life, and there are countless other stories where equipment or training has made a significant difference at an emergency. These are the kind of stories we need to document. Post your story or contact your FEMA regional fire program specialist for further help. This is the least we can do for all the good these grants have done for us and our communities.
