Community Volunteer Fire Department
2002 FEMA FIRE Act Application
Application Narrative

Brian Vickers


We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at FEMA for the ability to apply for a grant under the FIRE Act. This assistance to fire departments across the country will felt for years to come. We would also like to extend our thanks to those that have volunteered to review applications. Your hard work is greatly appreciated by all.

Department Characteristics

Community Volunteer Fire Department is located on the southwest side of Houston, TX, and protects an area of 25 square miles, encompassing parts of both Harris and Fort Bend counties. CVFD responds to over 3,400 Fire, EMS, and Rescue calls a year from three stations. Staffing is mainly volunteer, supplemented during weekdays by paid personnel. The district consists of heavy commercial and industrial areas, high density residential areas, single family homes, and some rural farmland. Mutual aid is regularly given to and received by over twelve other fire departments and EMS providers.

Project Description

The project that we are seeking to fund is the purchase of a heavy rescue vehicle, outfitted with a cascade system for SCBA fill and prolonged breathing air operations, and capable of carrying hydraulic extrication tools, hazardous materials decontamination equipment, Rapid Intervention Team support equipment, technical rescue support equipment (trench, confined space, etc), and general fire ground support equipment. (See Appendix A at bottom for spec)

Use of Grant Funds Explanation

All of the funds that we have specified on the budget form will be used to purchase the aforementioned vehicle. Our operating budget has already accounted for training in technical rescue, hazmat operations, and RIT operations, as well as the equipment necessary to support these incidents. Our Emergency Services District board has expressed it’s willingness to fund any additional equipment that we deem necessary for these operations.

Department Benefits

The benefits to the department that this vehicle will create are many in number. The most important of which are related to the safety of the firefighters: the ability to properly equip RIT operations, and the ability to refill SCBA bottles on scene

We have been training our members in RIT Operations for some time now. The current problem lies in the fact that we cannot always properly equip them on a fire ground due to the fact that all of the necessary equipment is spread out across multiple vehicles: a light duty rescue, a utility vehicle, and a field unit. The bulk of the equipment is kept in the stations in the proximity of these vehicles, since storage space is limited on the light duty rescue. As our statistics show, the bulk of our responses are EMS-related, with the majority of rescue related calls being motor vehicle collisions. Our calls that we respond to most of the time have dictated that we equip our vehicles for these incidents. Therefore our current light duty rescue is mainly outfitted for vehicle extrication and basic EMS Support. Because of its design and the limitations of that design, we do not have the necessary storage for outfitting it for all types of incidents. A heavy rescue would allow us to carry all of our current equipment, in addition to other specialized equipment that hasn’t been purchased yet, such as a rescue tripod, and building collapse support equipment.

The need for a mobile cascade system has presented itself to us time after time at major incidents. Houston Fire Department has sent one of its cascade trucks whenever available, but it only has two, and many times both have already been committed to other scenes. We are then reduced to using either a department vehicle or a member’s personal vehicle to take empty SCBA bottles back to the station to fill them. This situation is dangerous for several reasons. First and foremost is that this trek could take over 40 minutes depending on the location of the incident, which could leave us on scene with no filled SCBA bottles. Secondly, it is a great risk to have another vehicle making trips back and forth to the scene. The chances of that vehicle being involved in a collision and not returning are not acceptable either, but we have no other timely alternative right now. The next closest mutual vehicle equipped with a cascade system, if it is available, has a 30-45 minute response time as well.
A cascade system will also allow us to perform extended breathing air operations on scenes, such as confined space rescues and hazardous materials responses, that we would otherwise be limited to SCBA bottles for.

Community Benefits

The benefits to the community are numerous as well. This apparatus would allow us to properly handle almost any situation, from major traffic incidents, to supporting a hazardous materials response, which will allow us to be more independent in helping the people we serve.

Year after year, Houston Channel 2 News has reported the most dangerous intersections, and most dangerous roadways in the Greater Houston area. Eight out of the top ten intersections involve the Sam Houston Tollway, and the most dangerous roadways are the Sam Houston Tollway and the I-10 Katy Freeway. These statistics, along with many US Department of Transportation studies show that more severe accidents, fatality accidents, and accidents involving heavy trucks are more likely to occur on limited access highways. We already have long stretches of three high speed roadways in our district, and construction is currently underway to link all of those roadways to the Sam Houston Tollway. The Westpark Tollway will be a high speed, limited access highway that will run from Texas Route 99, our western boundary, right through the middle of our district and into the City of Houston. Currently we rely on mutual aid, primarily Houston Fire Department. But they only have two heavy rescue units themselves. Several times, we have been called to assist them with our light duty rescue because their trucks are tied up elsewhere in the city. This vehicle will enable us to be more independent of the city, and properly equipped for dealing with any major traffic incidents, which studies have shown, will occur on this roadway. We will be able to better help our patients in the “golden hour”.

This rescue vehicle will also support hazardous materials responses. We fully admit that our personnel do not have the time nor do we have the resources to maintain anyone at Hazmat Technician level. There are plenty of technicians available through both private industry and mutual aid that we do not see this as a priority. What we do feel is that it is our responsibility to be able to support these teams. We currently have several members trained to Hazmat - Operations Level, and the entire department trained to Hazmat Awareness Level. We will be equipping this vehicle with decontamination equipment and basic spill control equipment to better support these teams.

As stated earlier, we have been training our personnel in RIT Operations. But like many departments, we are feeling the crunch of declining volunteerism. We are currently forming a dedicated RIT team, and we are also forming reciprocal agreements with our mutual aid departments for RIT services. This apparatus would be made available to any mutual aid department as a RIT response from us. We also want to familiarize other departments with it so that they may respond to our incidents in any type of apparatus, and act as a RIT team using our vehicle and equipment. This agreement is going to be involving over a dozen departments in our area, including departments such as Houston, Sugarland, Northeast Fort Bend, West I-10, Cy-Fair, Pecan Grove, Richmond, Rosenberg, and Fulshear.


Local Funding Issues

This rescue truck cannot be funded through local funding for several reasons. The primary reason is that the majority of our budget is tied up in personnel. We are a combination department, with a paid staff of 11 on duty every weekday from 6am to 6pm. There is a pool of about 20 that we pull from since most of them are also full time firefighters elsewhere, and the cost of salaries and benefits is a great portion of our yearly budget. The next major cost is fuel and maintenance of our current vehicles. We respond to an average of 10 EMS calls per day, so the upkeep of our ambulance fleet is a very high priority. We are part of an Emergency Services District, but because of past problems in other areas in Texas and beyond, the contract with the ESD prohibits them from purchasing apparatus for the department. They are more than willing to pay for training and any equipment that we may need, but for legal reasons they cannot assist us in obtaining the vehicle that we are applying for. We have explored several ideas for fund raising, but the time demand on our members just to answer calls is already very high. Family is very important to all of us, and we do not wish to cause any additional strain in anyone’s personal life. We do have the required matching funds of $34,700 readily available should we be honored with the funding for our application.


Additional Information

We have one clear reason for our request: safety.

First, the our primary concern is for the safety of our members on scenes. This apparatus would be fully equipped to support RIT Operations, to make sure that everyone makes it home after each call. The cascade system will allow us to refill bottles on scene, so that we do not compromise the RIT Operations, or the fire suppression effort. The storage capacity will allow us to carry everything we already have in one spot, so that we reduce the number of vehicles that have to respond, as well as reduce the chance that we won’t have enough drivers to operate these vehicles. This will also reduce the number of emergency vehicles responding to an incident, as well as staging at the incident, which brings us to the second (but not secondary) safety concern, the public we are called to help. We will be able to provide at least some intervention into almost any scenario that we may get dispatched to. This truck will be equipped to handle multiple extrications on one scene, hazmat decontamination, as well as trench rescue, confined space rescue, high angle, water rescue, and anything else we may get called to. We have the training, but what we are lacking is a comparable vehicle to support us. Before creating the spec for this truck, we looked at applying for a grant to replace our current light duty rescue. But even though it is old and high mileage, that isn’t our main problem with it. The problem was we couldn’t get enough of the right equipment on a smaller vehicle. We would have needed three smaller trucks to carry what we would need on a major incident. We felt that the fewer emergency vehicles we put on the road, the possibility of being involved in a collision would be greatly decreased. We also felt that the benefit to other departments was great enough to pursue this venture.

Appendix A - Rescue Truck Specifications

Below are listed the basic requirements that we sent out to several manufacturers for pricing for this project.

- 8 man cab with 5 SCBA seats
- 18' rescue body with roll-up doors
- 500HP engine
- 4 bottle/6000psi cascade system with 2 bottle fill station
- 2 150' bumper mounted hydraulic tool reels
- 500gpm PTO powered pump
- 500 gallon tank
- 25kW AMPS generator
- 6000W telescoping light tower

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