Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 8/3/2018
EAST LONGMEADOW – A fire station never stops, not even when your congressman comes to bestow a prestigious grant.
Chief Paul Morrissette and his station crew had just finished preparing for Congressman Richard Neal’s July 30 visit – the podium was staged with the department’s most impressive engine in the background – when the alarm rang out for a fire call on Maple Street.
As Neal and his staff, FEMA Fire Program Specialist David Parr, the chief, invited guests and various members of the media looked on, the station crew rushed to the truck, removed their dress shoes, donned boots, then coats and helmets as the engine screamed to life and they headed out.
Morrissette replaced the engine with his red Fire Chief’s SUV, and the ceremony – marking the department’s receipt of an Assistance to Firefighters Grant of $132,404 to purchase new personal breathing apparatus for the town’s firefighters went on as planned.
“The East Longmeadow Fire Department is very fortunate to participate in the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program,” Morrissette said as he introduced Neal, praising the congressman as “a great supporter of the program” since it was initiated by congress in 2001.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’ (FEMA) website, the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program, funded by congress and administered through FEMA, provides fire departments with financial assistance to purchase “critically needed resources to equip and train emergency personnel to recognized standards, enhance operations efficiencies, foster interoperability, and support community resilience.”
Neal gave some brief background on the origins of the grant program, citing a “horrific fire in Worcester” in December of 1999 in which six firefighters died due to lack of updated breathing and other equipment as the genesis, adding that four of those firefighters were his constituents at the time, making the deaths doubly important to him.
Parr explained to Reminder Publications that the scope of the Worcester tragedy prompted Neal and other menbers of Congress – and the nation’s Fire Service – to begin exploring how the government could help firefighters across the nation make certain they had the necessary tools and equipment to do their jobs as efficiently and as safely as possible.
Two years after the Worcester fire, the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program – administered through FEMA with oversight by the United States Fire Administration – was approved by Congress, with the first grants presented to fire departments in 2001.
In his remarks, Neal praised the diligence and attention to detail displayed by Morrissette and his staff in completing the application for the 2017 grant cycle, which resulted in East Longmeadow receiving its award during the first and second rounds of distribution.
“East Longmeadow’s applications are near the top every year in obtaining these federal partnership dollars,” Neal said, noting the department has received nearly $1 million in Assistance to Firefighter monies through nine grant applications since 2002.
Parr, who oversees the grant program for the six Northeast states emphasized how highly structured the annual grant application process – which includes three rounds of review by peer fire personnel to achieve a ranking for grant application acceptance – truly is.
Parr said he was pleased to be invited out to Western Mass., where “East Longmeadow was being awarded one of the first” of the grants for the 2017 award cycle.
“I want to congratulate the chief and his staff. This is an extremely competitive grant program. We receive over 10,000 grant applications each year, but only about 2,000 of those applications are funded, and as the congressman just mentioned being in the first and second round, as the chief is, that indicates that his application was one of the highest scored applications submitted this year.
“Congratulations on a job well done,” Parr said, adding he wanted to also thank Neal for his continued support of the Assistance to Firefighters grant program over the years. The program, Parr said, was just reapproved by Congress for another five years.
“We were really concerned this program was sun setting or going away, but we’re thrilled this program is continuing because it’s a grant program [where] the grant applications are scored by other firefighters and it’s a grant application where we’re really touching the needs of fire departments around the country with breathing apparatus, protective gear, fire apparatus – the kinds of [equipment] that can keep them safe.”
Parr then presented an oversized, ceremonial check to Neal, who in turn presented the check to Morrissette and Town Manager Denise Menard. Morrissette then retrieved an example of the department’s current personal breathing apparatus to show to Neal and the media, explaining how the equipment was now outdated according to new National Fire Protection Association standards.
Following the presentation, Morrissette told Reminder Publications his department expected to begin reviewing demonstrations of new self-contained breathing apparatus the first week in August, with a bid to replace 20 of the outdated units going out shortly thereafter. Morrissette said the goal was to have the new self-contained breathing units in-house and in use by department personnel by October.