by Jill Funke

The last few years have brought much appreciated grant funding to the Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has provided as much as $275,000,000 a year in grants used around the nation. These funds help fire departments like the Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department and other emergency response entities purchase newer equipment, complete necessary training, and take other preparations to help ensure that they will be ready for emergencies as they happen. Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department Chief, Leonard Vanden Bosch, is a regular visitor to FEMA’s website, where he finds the information about the grants for which the Larchwood Fire Department applies. When he becomes aware that the Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department may be eligible for possible funding, Leonard and City Clerk, LaVonne Reinke, work on the application together. Using at least twelve pages of notes, Leonard completes the lengthy grant applications online. Even though he has run into a few frustrations while going through the online grant application process, he says that it is worth the extra effort when their application is selected to receive funding. After the application has been submitted, there is more follow up work including an evaluation process that must be completed after the dollars have been spent. When writing this evaluation, FEMA asks the grant recipients to detail what purchases or activities were funded by grant monies, and how the grant benefited the community. In total, Leonard estimates that he spends as much as twenty hours working on this grant.

With the funds that were awarded to the Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department this year, the department purchased a new 2000 gallon tanker from Crimson Fire located in Brandon, SD. While the number of businesses that sell fire trucks in the United States is low, Leonard says that Larchwood is lucky as there are two of those businesses located within sixty miles. Since many fire calls require the fire department to transport their own water to put out the flames, a vehicle that will handle a large supply of water could be crucial to fully extinguish many fires.

2006 was not the first year that the fire department received grant funding from FEMA. Within the last two years, they purchased a thermo imaging camera that can help them find people through the thick smoke of a fire. Part of the latest fire rescue technology, this device registers heat given off by people, and is so sensitive that it can pick up residual heat left from a handprint on a wall or the recent footsteps of a person walking across the floor. Since 2001, the department has used grant funding as well as tax dollars to purchase an exhaust fan, additional air packs, upgrade their equipment truck and other vehicles, and transition to better personal safety gear for the firefighters. City officials are very happy that funding opportunities from FEMA allow them to make the purchases they need to keep their fire department current without imposing increases in resident taxes.

The Larchwood Volunteer Fire Department as well as many other smaller fire departments across the nation have seen many changes over the past ten years. Federal and state regulations mandate more training for firefighters than in the past, and raising the money for that training is imperative to a prepared department. All volunteer firefighters must complete the full sixty hours of Firefighter I training, which is a nationally recognized class. People who have completed the Firefighter I certification can transfer to any fire department in the nation, and as Fire Chief, Leonard is proud that all of the firefighters in Larchwood have achieved that certification. Many of these dedicated volunteers have also earned their certification in Hazardous Materials Awareness and Operation. Looking at the example that Leonard sets as Fire Chief, the firefighters and other community leaders are grateful to him for his commitment of time and effort that has been instrumental in their ability to keep current in the equipment and training they need to keep the community safe.