Please describe the project you are requesting funding for.
The South Wheatland Fire Department is requesting that the FIRE act fund a continuation of last years program, the South Wheatland Fire Department Preparedness and Response Improvement program. In continuation of last years award, under the communications activity, we are seeking to replace and upgrade our outdated mobile radios and base station. The mobile radios are over 20 years old and are no longer reliable to work properly when needed and the remote base station radio is over 30 years old and has also been having severe mechanical problems. We would purchase newer, more technologically current radios and a base station with paging and recording capabilities. The South Wheatland Fire Department will also enhance the communications capabilities of our firefighters while en-route to, at, and returning from, calls for service by installing headset systems on our fire apparatus that have been identified as prohibiting effective communications and hearing among our crews and dispatch. We also would build upon last years training award by purchasing a smoke generator and rescue mannequin. We would use them, and training materials from last years award, to train our firefighters, and neighboring departments, in rapid intervention and firefighter self-rescue techniques. Some of the departments in our area do not have the resources to provide their firefighters with this type of training and we would be able to pool our resources to provide such training. Lastly, we would like to replace our SCBA that does not meet current NFPA, NIOSH, and OSHA standards. We would also retrofit SCBA that do not need replacement. We will provide each firefighter with a personal face piece to alleviate health concerns with unsanitary facepieces. To compliment our RIT team concept, all SCBA, new and current, will have integrated PASS devices. To ensure that all bottles are filled with air that meets breathing air standards, the South Wheatland Fire Department will also purchase an air compressor system with a cascade bank and enclosed fill station.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will spend $14,202 to purchase four mobile radios at a cost of $2,768 each, a remote base station at a cost of $1,480, a paging encoder at a cost of $850, and a digital recording system at a cost of $795.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will spend $9,675 to purchase four intercom/headset systems for our fire apparatus. ENGINE 4 WILL COST $?, Engine 3 will cost $3,045; Engine 2 and Squad 1 will cost $2,210 each, and Rescue 1 will cost $4,080.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will spend $2,475 to purchase a rescue mannequin at a cost of $975 and a smoke generator at a cost of $1,500.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will spend approximately $93,836 to purchase SCBA equipment including 9 new SCBA with integrated PASS devices, personal face pieces, and a rapid intervention crew connection at a cost of $4,310 each. We will also purchase 8 additional face pieces at a cost of $350 each, and upgrades for nine of our current SCBA that are feasible to upgrade (including integrated PASS and rapid intervention crew connections) at a cost of $2,615 each. We will complete the purchase with an air cascade system with cascade bank and enclosed fill station at a cost of $31,780.
How will this program benefit your department and/or community?
Without equipment that can be relied upon to work in the event that it is needed, and spare parts available in the event that it needs repaired, what good will it do the firefighters that have to operate that equipment? The current mobile radios operated by the South Wheatland Fire Department are over twenty years old and are showing signs of age. We are experiencing transmit and receive problems with the radios that are intermittent, making it difficult to pinpoint the problem and implement a solution. Serviceability and repair issues have also become very complicated. It has become clear that, in order to fix the problem, replacement of the radios is necessary. New radios funded through the FIRE act will benefit our firefighters by solving the communications problems that we have experienced. We have experienced multiple safety issues involving the Incident Commander not being able to raise firefighters over radio due to faulty equipment. The firefighters will also be safer because they will be able to communicate more effectively with dispatch. This will benefit the public because we will not have to worry about whether or not the radio will work if we need to get additional information from dispatch concerning the nature of the call, the location of the call, or other incident-specific information.
The remote base station the South Wheatland Fire Department operates is over 30 years old, and merely consists of a telephone line connected to the dispatch center. We have had numerous problems with this system and it is becoming unreliable for radio communications. As with our mobile radios, the mechanical problems have become difficult to pinpoint, and resources to repair those problems are becoming increasingly scarce. The remote base station we would purchase will benefit the department by improving our communications with the dispatch center when requesting vital information, or when relaying vital information to our firefighters. We will also be able to record and store radio communications to enhance our capabilities to replay information that could be vital to the call, legality issues, and to critique our calls during debriefing and training sessions, as well as being self-sufficient to dispatch ourselves in the event of an equipment failure at the dispatch center.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will purchase headset/intercom systems for our trucks that we have identified as needing such equipment. In researching what trucks would “qualify” for the headsets, we looked at the location of the sirens and air horns, the locations of the firefighters riding on the vehicle, and the pump panel location. We found that all of our front-line engine companies would require some sort of headset system, our brush truck would require a system, and our rescue/service company would require a system under these factors.
When riding our engines, our crews have air horns overhead, sirens on the roof and bumper, and the noises of the engines either below them or right next to them. These factors, as well as the unreliability of our radios, present communication problems among our crews and with dispatch. One of our engines has two rear-facing jumpseats next the engine that is separated from the officer, the other engine has air horns and sirens less than one foot from our crews ears and the engine right below them. By installing headsets, our firefighters will benefit through enhanced communications capabilities with the officer and with the dispatch center. Our officers, and the public, will benefit because information will be able to be passed along more reliably rather than trying to listen to the speaker in the cab, while trying to ignore the sirens and air horns.
Our brush truck is equipped with a riding position on top of the vehicle, next to the pump and auxiliary engine that powers the pump, for firefighting purposes only. The only way for the firefighter to communicate with the driver is by leaning over the side of the truck to shout at the driver. The headset system would benefit the brush truck by eliminating having to endanger the safety of the firefighter when communicating with the driver. The firefighter would use the headset/intercom system to communicate with the driver without having to shout over the noise of the engine.
Our rescue vehicle seats two people in the cab of the truck, while the rest are seated in the rear box of the vehicle. This seating arrangement makes for difficult communications, as well as sirens and air horns located above the driver/officer seats. The headset/intercoms would benefit the firefighters in the rescue squad by allowing the officer to talk directly with the firefighters without having to shout into the box. The officer will be free to concentrate on assisting the driver in looking out for traffic and other visual distractions as well as making tactical decisions for the incident.
We feel that a headset/intercom system will benefit the pump operators because it will eliminate the background noise of incidents, leaving the pump operator able to concentrate on his job.
The South Wheatland Fire Department will enhance our training award from last year with the purchase of a rescue mannequin and a smoke generating machine. We will be focusing on the creating, training, and implementing rapid intervention teams and training in firefighter self-rescue/saving our own drills. We will be utilizing materials received through last years award in providing this training. This will benefit our department because we will be able to direct deliver this training to our firefighters, teaching rapid intervention techniques, allowing our officers to establish RIT teams at incidents, and enhanced search and rescue techniques for victims. We feel this will benefit neighboring departments because we will be able to extend our training resources to them, so they can direct-deliver training to their own members without having to go outside their department for training. Our personnel will be able to assist them in presenting training in RIT and advanced search and rescue techniques. We feel the community will benefit because the firefighters will have advanced training in search and rescue techniques that will assist in removing victims from dangerous situations.
The majority of our SCBA is either semi-compliant or not compliant at all. We still have pressure demand air-packs that we converted to positive pressure 20 years ago. These are frontline air packs that our firefighters regularly use at a fire. The SCBA is not in compliance with NFPA 1981, NFPA 1500, NIOSH or OSHA standards, and must be replaced. When replacing our SCBA, we will be working to enhance the safety of our firefighters by purchasing air packs with integrated PASS devices. We have found that this is a very important component of an SCBA system in the even of a fallen firefighter. Integrated PASS is especially important because firefighters either forget to turn them on, or knowingly don’t do turn them on. The integrated PASS device will benefit our firefighters, and enhance their safety, by eliminating the need to turn on a PASS device, as it will be done when the SCBA is turned on. This will bring us into compliance with NFPA 1500, which requires a PASS device on all SCBA used by the fire department. This will also benefit all firefighters by assisting in locating fallen firefighters.
We will also work to retrofit our existing SCBA that can be retrofitted. This will enhance our firefighter’s safety by providing them with integrated PASS devices. This will also bring us into compliance with NFPA 1981 and NFPA 1500, as well as OSHA and NIOSH standards.
We will also be able to provide each firefighter with a personal face piece. This will benefit our firefighters by providing them with their own personal face piece to use at an incident scene. They will no longer have to share face pieces and will eliminate a firefighter having to pick up a used, sweat-ridden face piece on a hot summer day, put it on and have to breath in it.
In addition to bringing us into compliance with OSHA, NIOSH, and NFPA standards, the purchase of the nine SCBA will allow us to come into full compliance with ISO recommendations for SCBA on a service company. Our service company, Rescue-1, only has three air packs and needs six per ISO recommendations. Replacing and retrofitting our SCBA will allow us to add three additional SCBA to our service company. This will benefit our community by allowing us to work closer to lowering our ISO rating, saving our taxpayers money. We are currently a rated a 5/9.
The South Wheatland Fire Department does not own a system to fill our air bottles. We have to travel to a neighboring community to fill our bottles. This seriously restricts the amount of live training that we can do with an SCBA (i.e. going on air). When updating our air bottles, we will purchase an NFPA approved compressor system to fill our bottles and produce our own breathing air, making us compliant with NFPA 1500 when filling and recharging our air bottles. This will benefit our firefighters by increasing the amount of live training they can do with SCBA, and we will be able to ensure that our firefighters are receiving high-quality purified breathing air. This will benefit our community because we will not have to take a company out of service for a period of time to refill bottles in a neighboring district. South Wheatland will also be joining the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) in the near future. MABAS is a mutual-aid coordination program throughout the state of Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa. Mutual aid requests are channeled through the MABAS system, and can provide a resource to the department that would not strip the area of local resources. Having an air system available to the MABAS departments will benefit them when returning to service. They will be able to recharge their SCBA here and return to their district ready to be placed in-service. The South Wheatland Fire Department will be solely responsible for maintaining the system and ensuring that the breathing air meets standards for purifications. All necessary and applicable records will be kept on file.
The South Wheatland Fire Department has a mutual aid agreement with every department in our county, as well as with departments in surrounding counties. Through this agreement, we would be able to make our training materials available to hundreds of firefighters every year. We would be able to use the smoke machine and rescue mannequin, as well as our materials awarded last year, to enhance the RIT, search and rescue, and firefighter self-rescue skills of many firefighters. This would assist departments in achieving compliance with NFPA 1001 and 1002. If funds are awarded, we will be able to enhance training that we are now offering to our firefighters and we can build upon our grant award from last year. We would also be able to enhance our communications capabilities so our firefighters can be assured that, when they key up on the microphone of the radio, that they will have working equipment
With the expanded threat of terrorism in our country, it is vitally important to be able to fill our own air bottles, and provide assistance to area departments in filling bottles also. Macon County is in the process of forming a countywide decontamination team and, with South Wheatland’s close proximity to the City of Decatur, we would be able to enhance our participation and support in that team by having capabilities close by to refill bottles for the hazmat team, especially since Macon County has already experienced two anthrax scares in eighteen months. South Wheatland would be able to offer air-replenishing capabilities to area departments that do not have SCBA refilling systems. In the event of a large fire in the middle of the night, or even during the day, we would not have to rely on neighboring departments to allow us to use their systems. South Wheatland also has multiple bodies of water within our district and we have experienced drowning and recovery incidents in the past. An air system would be beneficial to the dive team in allowing them an available and convenient source to re-supply their air systems. Air quality will be tested at least twice a year. We will also be solely responsible for maintenance of the system, as well as training all of our personnel and neighboring departments in the proper use and care of the system.