NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — A pair of federal grants totaling more than $2.8 million will help Narragansett to hire eight more firefighters, increase training and buy new equipment.
The fire department celebrated the receipt of the grants Friday with a short ceremony at the fire station. Joining Chief Scott Partington and several firefighters were U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse (both D-R.I.), U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), State Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee and local officials.
“This is certainly exciting for the Narragansett Fire Department and for the town overall,” Partington said Friday.
Money for the eight new hires comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant program.
The funding is a three-year performance period that covers 100% of salaries and benefits for the new firefighters. It will bring the department’s complement of firefighters to 40, Partington said.
“The goal is to enhance fire departments’ abilities to comply with staffing, response and industry minimum operational standards,” Partington said. “This additional staffing would provide upwards of two additional firefighters per shift.”
Partington said chiefs around the state were particularly concerned about how to manage personnel during the pandemic.
“There’s a saying that ‘Many hands make light work,’” he said. “Certainly the more hands we have here makes it easier to respond to emergencies and the tasks we have to do.”
In addition to the new $2.8 million SAFER grant, the department recently received a $112,857 federal Assistance to Firefighters Grant to purchase a new air compressor and to be used for firefighter safety and survival training.
The air compressor will fill the department’s self-contained breathing apparatus bottles with clean, high quality safe air, Partington said.
The current on-site compressor was manufactured in 2007 and lacks required safety and air filtration monitoring and shut-offs, plus alarms for carbon monoxide and high temperature.
“Clean breathing air is critical to firefighter safety and cancer prevention,” Partington said.
The firefighter safety and survival training will teach techniques such as rapid intervention, mayday, ropes, self-rescue and tools and equipment skills, Partington said.
The grants are competitive among departments across the country. It’s the 11th grant Narragansett has received, bringing the total to $4.4 million.
The funds will go to the Town Council for approval, Town Manager James Tierney said.
“Over the years the town has seen a considerable increase in demand for emergency medical services from our firefighters,” Tierney said. “This grant will increase the staffing of our fire department … and place additional professionally trained EMS and firefighter staff on the road. That will almost certainly decrease response time, and that saves lives.”
Members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation said that securing grant funds for local departments is a unified effort, and noted that the announcement came just a day before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which claimed the lives of many first responders.
“We all remember the images of firefighter rushing into those burning buildings, putting their lives on the line,” Langevin said. “Every day it’s a difficult job for all of you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
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September 17, 2021 at 06:00PM
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