For firefighters in urgent need of a water source during a blaze, finding that hydrant buried under snow or lost in the darkness of night just got easier.
The Montclair Fire Department has received a $68,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for 10 laptops that will provide, in a matter of 10 to 15 seconds, a wealth of data to firefighters rushing to an emergency.
They will be able to review floor plans, find nearby hydrants and gas shutoff switches, learn whether chemicals or other hazards are inside a building, determine whether construction is being done and more.
Global positioning systems are also part of the package, giving firefighters the best route to incidents, an especially useful feature when the Montclair Fire Department is requested to provide mutual aid to neighboring towns.
The department will be outfitting all its fire vehicles with Panasonic Toughbooks, durable laptops that "can take a beating," said Deputy Fire Chief John Herrmann.
The department eventually hopes to install wireless access points in all its fire stations that will automatically update the information in the in-vehicle computers. Once that technology is set up, "changes I make tonight will be available the next day," said Firefighter Brian Wilde, who was among the personnel who worked to obtain the grant. Data will be updated based on fire prevention officials’ site inspections.
To access that information previously, firefighters had to flip through the pages of pre-incident planning books and rely on the knowledge of senior members.
Officials are uncertain how long it will be before the new software will be installed and the computers will be ready for use.
Montclair’s will be the first fire department in Essex, Passaic and Morris counties to use this new wireless, computer-based preplanning system, according to Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-8).
Pascrell announced the awarding of the grant inside the garage of Montclair Fire Headquarters this past Monday, joined by Township Council members, the Fire Department’s brass and about 20 rank-and-file firefighters.
The congressman is credited with getting the FIRE Act, also known as the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program, approved in 2000. The legislation assists the approximately 32,000 fire departments nationwide, many of which struggle to function in the face of insufficient staffing, inadequate training and "obsolete equipment," Pascrell said.
"You couldn’t find a better use of federal dollars," Montclair Mayor Jerry Fried said during the announcement, adding that the program was "all about the common good."
The Montclair Fire Department has received grants through the program multiple times in past years, and a previous grant went toward training and equipment for rescuing victims who have gotten trapped inside trenches. Special devices are needed to secure the walls and the ground around a trench before a rescue can begin, and the operation needs to be performed properly or the victim can suffer from broken bones, internal bleeding and other trauma, Wilde said.
That grant most recently proved its worth on June 22 at around 5 p.m., when a roughly 40-year-old contractor became trapped in waist-deep mud underground in a backyard on Old Indian Road in West Orange.
The victim had climbed down a ladder into an 8-foot-deep trench to work on a sewer pipeline when the walls, softened by a rainstorm the day before, collapsed. Firefighters, including members of the Montclair Fire Department, freed him without injury.
Before any of these FIRE Act grants are distributed, hundreds of seasoned firefighters spend three or four weeks at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Md., reviewing and grading the applications after they have been vetted by FEMA. A team of four firefighters then grades each application, which is sent back to the federal agency. The projects with the highest marks are selected.
The grant money is deposited straight into the chosen departments’ bank accounts, rather than being sent to municipalities or the state, which could then take their cut of the funding.
