Officials from Lamar County fire protection organizations are looking for help in the form of more than three-quarters of a million dollars in grants to put toward the purchase of a new truck, training materials and a rescue airbag system.
The highest-dollar request on that list, which was discussed at Monday’s meeting of the Lamar County Board of Supervisors, is the application of a $740,000 Assistance to Firefighters Grant that would help buy a ladder truck, which would be housed at the Purvis fire station. The grant, which is an initiative of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would include a 10 percent match of $67,272 that would be paid from the Purvis station’s budget over a period of five years.
“We’ve applied for this before, and aerial apparatus (ladder trucks) are inherently difficult to get, so you usually have to apply several times before you get it,” Lamar County Fire Coordinator Kyle Hill said. “A lot of people ask why we need a ladder truck, but this truck is a pumper – it just happens to have a ladder on top of it.
“All of our pumpers in the county have ladders on them now; they’re from 35 feet down to six feet. This one happens to have a 75-foot one, and the only way you can carry that is on the top. So we’re really not buying it for the ladder; it’s for the purchase of the pump itself.”
The truck also will help to meet certain state guidelines, as many of the buildings in the Purvis service area – such as the courthouses and other government buildings – are two stories tall.
“If you start talking to the Mississippi Rating Bureau, there’s some standards there, that once you get past so many two-story buildings or above so much square feet, then this apparatus could be required to maintain a rating,” Hill said. “We’re not at that point yet, as far as the rating bureau hasn’t come in and said that this is a requirement, but you don’t want to get to that point where you have to make an emergency purchase of something like this. So it’s a way of planning ahead as well.”
Lamar County does have a ladder truck operating out of Northeast Volunteer Fire Department, but that truck is on automatic mutual aid throughout the county.
“So if we get a fire alarm in the courthouse (in Purvis), it starts heading this way,” Hill said. “The key word of ‘heading this way’ is the fact that at 60 miles an hour, it takes some time to get from Northeast down here.
“So this one would put one in the middle of the county to take care of the government entities that you’re responsible for here. If there’s a roof fire at one of the courthouses, the firemen are not going to be able to safely get to that roof on the outside of that building without an apparatus like this.”
Supervisors also approved the application of a $24,605 Assistance to Firefighters Grant for training materials, which would include a 10 percent match paid through fire coordination funds. A third grant, in the amount of $5,000, will be requested from Plains Pipeline for the purchase of a rescue airbag system to be housed at the Southeast Fire Department. The estimated cost of that system is $5,185; any excess cost would be paid from Southeast Fire Department funds.
In addition, supervisors approved the appointment of Andrew Pylant as assistant fire coordinator, as well as the appointment of commissioners for several fire protection districts. Those districts include Southwest Lamar, Northeast Lamar, Oloh, Oak Grove Central Lamar.
