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Tusayan FD nets $64K worth of grant funding<br>

Fire Chief Robbie Evans with the department’s new thermal imaging camera.

According to Fire Chief Robbie Evans, before the Tusayan department acquired the thermal imaging camera, which was purchased for $12,000 through a Fire Act grant, the nearest one was in Flagstaff. The department had been testing cameras for the past few months and already used one to find the source of smoke – an overheating compressor – at the Tusayan General Store.

The camera will be available to the Park Service and the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office for search and rescue operations, Evans said. The grant also covers training.

The Fire Act grant also enabled the department to spend $31,000 for eight new self-contained breathing apparatus units which include eight spare cylinders. Evans said these replace eight units that were purchased second-hand from the Phoenix Fire Department and were 20 years old.

Those units were sent to San Luis, Mexico, where standards for such gear aren’t as stringent as in the U.S.

“What they had before this was nothing,” Evans said.

The compressor, which cost $26,000 and was purchased through a Homeland Security grant, will save the department $150 a month – what it currently spends on oxygen tanks to fill the self-contained breathing apparatus bottles.

“It will only cost us the electricity to run it,” Evans said.

The department also received $3,000 from the Governor’s Office for Highway Safety. That was used to buy a hydraulic spreader extrication tool. Evans said the department had a spreader but it had to be powered by the jaws of life.

“It just wouldn’t do the job right,” Evans said.

To qualify for the Fire Act grants, which were submitted last year, the department had to come up with 10 percent of the amount. The grants had to be used for equipment and could not be applied to facilities.

“People have asked why we don’t apply the money to the cost of the building but the grants aren’t for buildings,” Evans said.

He added that the department is seeking another Fire Act grant this year to purchase medical equipment for the EMTs, and will only need 5 percent in matching funds.


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