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Firehouse.com News
ROUND 3 WINNERS: The Full Round 3 List -
All Rounds: State by State
The United States Fire Administration (USFA) has announced nearly 400
departments Monday who will receive some $30 million in the third
round of grants.
Some of the recipients learned of their grant awards Thursday and Friday from their
Congressional representatives, like
Chief Tom Tisdale of the Riverside County Fire Department in
California.
"I was very happy today to get the call that we got it," he said. "It
was a very pleasant surprise."
The department received a grant for $334,537 for EMS training.
"It's all for training," Tisdale said. The minimum EMS standard for
firefighters in Riverside County is First Responder, but the fire
department wants to upgrade their first responders to EMT.
The chief said they have about 250 people to train. He expects it to
take a year to schedule in all the training while remaining fully
staffed. At that point, 85 to 90 percent of the department's paid
firefighters will be EMTs or paramedics.
The department operates out of 90 fire stations, has a paid staff of
900 and a volunteer force of over 1,100.
At the same time as hundreds of calls were being made letting Departments know they
received their awards, the first wave of some 7,500 turndown notifications was
also going out.
"Dissappointed, yes, upset, no ... We will try again next year if the
program continues," said West Collingswood
Heights Fire Co. Fire Chief Bob Krupinski, Jr., whose department
applied for a grant to replace its 27-year-old mini-pumper, the oldest vehicle in its fleet.
Krupinski and other users in the Firehouse.com forums said they received the notification
via e-mail late last week.
Round Three Nears $30 Million
In this round 387 departments received grants totaling $28,406,983.
Broken down, the categories included:
- Fire Operations and Firefighter Safety, 277 grants, $18,414,007
- Firefighting Vehicle, 72 grants, $8.109,240
- Fire Prevention, 36 grants, $1,449,449
- Emergency Medical Services, 2 grants, $434,287
More than 19,900 fire departments applied for grants this year, submitting
requests totaling approximately $2.98 billion.
The next list of grant awardees should follow in two weeks. USFA plans to
continue announcing a new list every two weeks thereafter and complete the
program by the end of the year.
