The Town of Greenville seeks federal funds to fully equip our volunteer firefighters with the necessary personal protective turnout gear, air packs, communications and related equipment to adequately and safely perform their duties. We have sufficient funds to pay for our portion of this project. These funds will come from our FY2003-2004 fire department operational budget, along with a generous donation from the volunteer firefighters themselves, who have held numerous fund-raisers for new equipment. Without these funds, only a small fraction of these items will be purchased this year, and many items will be delayed indefinitely. Considering the decline in municipal and state revenue and the subsequent increase in the local tax rate (likely over $3.00 per $1,000 property valuation INCREASE in this coming year), it will be impossible to even set money aside for these large purchases, let alone to purchase them outright this year. To safely operate our department, protect our firefighters, and provide adequate service to the public, we need to have the equipment outlined for purchase through this grant request.

Greenville Fire Department

The Greenville Fire Department is a volunteer department of 25 firefighters, including the chief and the other officers, who cover a service area of 207 sq. miles. We service directly our municipality and indirectly township after township of under-developed backcountry territory, surrounding a lake which is the largest freshwater lake east of the Mississippi (roughly the size of Rhode Island). The department offers fire protection services, as well as rescue, extrication, and EMS First Responder Services. Our operational budget (excluding capital expenses) is only $60,000 per year.

All rural fire departments, including Greenville, are finding it more and more difficult to retain volunteers to work as firefighters. Between the training, the administrative work, and the actual firefighting and rescue work, volunteers find they are torn between these functions and time at work and with family. Even when our volunteers are paid minimum wage for their time on a call (such as we do here), the difficulty in getting people to respond continues to grow.

Our hope in securing this additional equipment is not only to protect our firefighters, but also to make their job easier and to make their efforts more efficient. An injured volunteer firefighter will not only be unable to participate in fire-rescue activities while injured or recuperating. S/he may decide that the risk of injury and subsequent loss of income or time from family is too great to volunteer his or her time any more as a firefighter. Equipment such as new jaws or new thermal-imaging cameras will work more efficiently than the equipment we currently use. Improved radio communications will make logistics work more efficiently. If, as a result, a 60-minute chimney fire call can be reduced by 20 minutes through the use of a thermal-imaging camera, or a 120 minute rescue call can be completed in 90 minutes due to better communications, then our volunteers can make it back to work or back home much quicker. If we can get our volunteers home and back to work quicker, they are more likely to respond to each call.

Below is a brief description of the equipment requested in each of the two listed categories. We have also explained why this equipment is necessary.

Firefighting Equipment

The equipment we are requesting can be broken down into four categories: Cascade Air Filling System, Hydraulic Rescue Tools, Thermal Imaging Devices, and Communications Equipment.

Cascade Air Filling System - This equipment will allow us to fill our air packs quicker and easier than we do now. The Greenville Fire Department does not have a cascade system now. Rather, it has an agreement with the Sangerville Fire Department to utilize their cascade air system when necessary to fill our storage tanks and our air packs. The Sangerville Fire Station is 28 miles from the Greenville Fire Station (one way). When our storage tanks run low on air, it is easy to be caught with not enough compressed air to fill the number of air pack bottles necessary to fight even a chimney fire, let alone a structure fire. The new composite bottles are lighter and therefore will not overwork our firefighters and will decrease their fatigue, yet increase their efficiency.

Hydraulic Rescue Tools – The Viking “Jaws of Life” hydraulic extrication tool set the Greenville Fire Department owns and operates is no longer practical for use. The tool set includes a large set of jaws, a cutter, and a ram. The set is over 15 years old. The company – Viking – has gone out of business and no longer produces even spare parts for their equipment. There are no “after-market” parts applicable to this tool. The Greenville Fire Department is running life-saving extrication equipment under the hope that it will hold together and not break prior to our raising enough money to replace it. It is this tool replacement need in particular which has been the focus of raffles, concession stand sales, and car washes to raise funds toward the replacement of the current tool system. The nearest fire / rescue department with comparable extrication tools is the Guilford Fire Department 26 miles to our South. Considering that our contracted service area extends over 25 miles north of Greenville, it is very conceivable that if our current tool set were to break, the nearest back-up tool would be over 50 miles, or about an hour away.

Thermal Imaging Camera – The Greenville Fire Department currently owns a hand-held thermal imaging camera, and finds it to be an invaluable tool for both property salvage and for life-safety when needed. When used in primary attack of a structure fire, the camera directs firefighters to hot spots in the building when they are not readily apparent. However, if these firefighters were to become injured or trapped, the backup team would not have this technology to direct them to those down or trapped. A second device would better equip the backup crew when they are needed the most. Also, this singular device is sometimes requested by mutual aid to respond to a fire scene, taking our only camera out of our service area. We are seeking a second camera as a back-up to the first in such an instance. We are also concerned about the durability of the current camera, which “blanks out” its image from time to time, even when receiving only very minimal heat. The camera works, but is less than pristine. This additional camera may become our primary camera before long.

Communications Equipment – Considering the very large, backcountry area covered by the Greenville Fire Department, functional communications is essential to proper and efficient operations. Eight of our current pagers are either old Minitor IIs (over ten years old). These older pagers often work sporadically. Every time a Minitor fails to go off when a call signal is issued, the department is potentially shorthanded by at least one firefighter. Some of the Minitor IIIs are also breaking down, more in their switches and dials. These eight new Minitor IVs should have greater reception, improved durability, and will also be intrinsically safe. None of our radio equipment at this time is intrinsically safe, leaving our firefighters in danger of triggering an explosion at any scene with explosive gases present. These new pagers will add greater reliability, efficiency, and safety to the Greenville Fire Department's operation.

In addition to the Minitor IVs, we are seeking funds to purchase 6 new portable radios. These radios would be issued to our officers, improving their ability to command a scene by diminishing the incidence of communication failure from our older portable radios currently in use (over five years old, minimum). Also, these portable radios will be intrinsically safe, adding greater safety to our officers. Many times, officers will respond to a scene directly to assess an emergency. Doing so, the first-arriving officer is in the greatest danger of accidentally triggering an explosion if explosive gases are present.

Finally, the grant request includes funds to purchase a radio repeater for our primary pumper, and a power output booster for a mobile radio in the same truck. We often respond to areas far from our radio tower (located at the Greenville Municipal Airport), with many mountains and valleys between us. The radio amplifier (power booster) will increase the output of our mobile radio from 40 watts to 100 watts. Also, the repeater in the pumper will allow for portable radio operation to trigger the repeater in the pumper, which will then trigger the tower and eventually reach the dispatcher (over 35 miles away). This will allow for more efficient communications during containment of a scene far away from Greenville.

Personal Protective Equipment

The safety of our firefighters takes precedence over any other objective during an operation. The Town of Greenville does the best that it can with its limited budget to properly outfit our firefighters with safe and efficient turnout gear and other safety equipment. However, we are forced, due to budget constraints, to replace worn or inadequate gear incrementally, which typically means that as soon as one set of gear is upgraded, another set has fallen into the “poor” category. Funding through this grant will allow us to bring everyone on the department up to more acceptable safety standard.

The categories inclusive to our request for personal protective equipment (PPE) are as follows: turnout gear, SCBA equipment, and hearing protection.

Turnout Gear – The worst six sets of turnout gear in use by Greenville Firefighters will be updated through this grant, bringing all gear sets up to the current NFPA standard. Without these funds, the Greenville Fire Department would only have enough funding for approximately three sets of full turnout gear.

SCBA Equipment – Much as with our turnout gear, we are currently able to replace our oldest SCBA 2.2 packs at a rate of 1 or 2 per budget year. This grant request will allow us to replace seven of these packs, and to include both the integrated PASS system and the RIT pack connection in each. Also, the carbon fiber bottles will be used with these new packs, with an equal number of additional bottles to hold in reserve. These lighter bottles can hold more air than their older, heavier counterparts. This will lessen the weight on the backs of our firefighters, and increase their air capacity. This alone could lessen the firefighters' likelihood of hart attack during exertion or suffocation during entrapment. The RIT pack with spare cylinder will also provide with a capacity we do not have at this time: efficient introduction of compressed air capacity to a trapped or injured firefighter within an unbreathable atmosphere.

Hearing Protection – In consideration of the long-term affects of exposure to loud, incessant noise, this system will allow the driver and the riders within our new, six-person pumper to be protected from engine and road noise. The system also allows for an intercom system to allow for communication without forfeiting hearing protection.

Conclusion

The Town of Greenville is a service center community in a busy tourist economy located at the base of one of the largest remaining backcountry regions on the east coast of the United States. We have limited funds to offer fire and rescue services to our residents and to the general public, as well as to protect our volunteers. We also are finding it more and more difficult to maintain a roster of active firefighters on a volunteer basis (even with minimum wages for actual hours worked). The funds requested through this federal grant program will allow for the investment in firefighting equipment and personal protective gear needed to bring our department's level of efficiency and safety to an acceptable level in a timely schedule. The Town and the volunteer firefighters themselves have raised sufficient funds to match the federal; grant as required. We respectfully request approval of FEMA Fire Administration Grant Funds in the amount of $115,034 in order to accomplish our stated goals.