Grants pay for training, equipment

By Denise Dick

Ellsworth’s fire department received a federal grant for a new firetruck.

BOARDMAN — Fire departments in Mahoning County since 2000 have racked up nearly $11 million in federal and state grants to pay for training and equipment that otherwise would have come from local coffers — or not at all.

Representatives of the Mahoning County Fire Chiefs Association on Friday announced receipt of the most recent grants, including more than $620,000 for computer equipment for all 20 departments in the county.

With the computers, information such as hazardous material stored in a building, locations of entrances and cross streets may be communicated by the dispatcher to the computer in the truck.

The information also will be helpful during mutual aid situations when departments are called to different areas to assist the home department on a call, the chiefs said at a news conference at the township government center.

This year’s cache also included a $475,000 U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant to buy a fire engine for Ellsworth Township’s department.

“We identified the need for a truck to serve the residents of the western end of Mahoning County,” said Ken Hernan, an Ellsworth firefighter. “This replaces a 1976 ladder truck.”

David “Chip” Comstock Jr., chief of the Western Reserve Joint Fire District which serves Poland village and township, said the total grants received over the last 10 years come at a time when local communities are cutting back.

“Fire chiefs are working to save taxpayers money,” he said.

James Dorman, Boardman’s fire chief, said that by working together as a region Mahoning County’s fire departments have secured grant money that they may not have been able to get as individual fire departments.

Poland’s department received a $187,785 Federal Emergency Management Agency grant to buy generators for its station.

Without the grant, “I don’t know that we would have put them in,” Comstock said.

In 2006, all of the county’s fire departments shared a $793,448 FEMA grant for improved communications; that money provided for improved radios.

The radios allow all of the departments to talk to each other via radio — rather than requiring them to go through respective dispatch centers.

denise_dick@vindy.com