McComb firefighters hope to get new turnout gear after the city board agreed Tuesday to apply for a U.S. Fire Administration grant.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will fund the grant through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with McComb expected to pay a 5% match, if approved.
Fire Chief Gary McKenzie said there are 43 firefighters in the department and turnout gear costs approximately $2,500 per set.
“It’s long been known the materials they encounter, the soot and the smoke, the things produced in a fire, get on those uniforms,” McKenzie said. “If you don’t decontaminate them, then it gets on the firefighter’s skin. It causes cancer. That’s why cancer is now a presumptive illness in the fire service.”
McKenzie said the U.S. Fire Administration grant program was put in place shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The federal government realized that fire departments across the nation were under-equipped and undertrained for events of that magnitude with the rise of global terrorism and finally making it to American shores,” McKenzie said.
He said fire departments can only apply for one type of grant at a time.
Last year, McKenzie said the city applied for a grant for a new fire truck but it was not approved.
“Last year, I know the chief put in for this grant and it took a long while before they told us no,” Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said. “However, they did provide the chief some explanations as to why they weren’t approved for the grant.”
McKenzie said the U.S. Fire Administration is providing more than double the amount in grants than it did in 2020. He said there could be $10 billion in grants for fire departments throughout the nation.
“Because of the COVID pandemic, this year the federal government has put more funding into that program than ever before,” he said.
The fire department is also applying for a smaller grant than it did in 2020. The grant for the fire truck would have been worth $675,000, but the turnout gear would only be worth approximately $100,000.
“They’re going to award more in that category because the costs are usually lower,” McKenzie said. “The apparatus grants are the most competitive because that’s your big ticket item. Everybody wants the federal government to buy the new fire truck, and when they cost a half million dollars apiece, they only put a certain percentage of the total funds into that grant.”
McKenzie said the fire department wound up getting a new demonstration model fire truck for around $485,000 last year.
“The trucks, they get old and wear out, bottom line,” McKenzie said. “But, in the state of Mississippi, for a department to maintain its rating, which is a number that is assigned by the rating bureau, which is affiliated with the Mississippi Department of Insurance, frontline apparatus are not supposed to be more than 20 years old.”
McKenzie said a fire truck in reserve was 24 years old. He said a new fire truck should be purchased every five years.
