By Rachel Drinkard
Turnagain Times Correspondent
The Girdwood Fire Department recently received notice of a $440,000 grant from the State of Alaska, pushed through in large part by Rep. Mike Hawker, to replace the aging Tender 42, a water carrier acquired by the station in 1978.
The department has been trying to find the funds for a new truck for more than five years. Maintenance and safety upkeep have become difficult for these older models due to the fact that parts are no longer available, a danger vividly highlighted when a similar truck in Anchorage was in an accident due to brake failure.
The new truck will feature a bigger pump, bigger tank, and increased empty and fill rates.
“One of my goals with the new truck with larger capacity is to reduce the ISO fire protection rating in old Girdwood where we don’t have hydrants, and we don’t have a water supply,” said Girdwood Fire Chief Bill Chadwick.
ISO is an insurance industry service that collects information used in many aspects of insurance underwriting such as evaluations of public fire protection, flood risk, and the adoption and enforcement of building codes in individual communities.
Chadwick plans to have ISO re-evaluate the area as soon as the new truck comes through in hopes of knocking the rating down from a nine to around a seven, which could mean as much as a $400 to $600 decrease in insurance premiums for property owners in old Girdwood.
“The rest of the valley where we have hydrants has an ISO protection rating of four which puts us in the top 12 percent in the country, but it’s hard to go below a seven in an area without hydrants,” he said.
Chadwick hopes to be able to donate the old Tender 42 to the Girdwood Board of Supervisors as a water truck for road maintenance and landscaping needs.
“We have a rather small tax base here compared to the size area we cover with a lot of entities within our response district not paying anything at all,” said Chadwick. “This has been one of my justifications for getting the big federal grant, the FEMA grant for $136,000, which encompasses upgraded personal protection equipment, some training materials and a vehicle exhaust extraction system for the fire station.”
Currently, every time the trucks are started they leave a cloud of exhaust that effects an area from the community center to the fire station living quarters, which has become a health concern. The new system involves an exhaust fan and flexible tubing that will connect to the exhaust pipes of the trucks and suck the exhaust up into the atmosphere instead leaving it to linger in the immediate area.
In addition to the state grant another grant from the Department of Transportation Highway Safety Division. The highway safety grant will fund new hydraulic rescue tools, commonly referred to as “jaws of life”.
The previous equipment used on rescue calls was no longer adequate for the newer, stronger materials used in vehicle frames. The new cutters are equipped with 170,000 pounds of force at the cutting tips and can cut through virtually anything. The new spreaders are similarly capable of getting through the stronger materials found in newer cars.
Chadwick also recently received a $220,000 grant from homeland security, as part of a grant for the Anchorage area, to purchase radios for the new Anchorage area municipal radio system, the Anchorage Area Wide Radio Network (AAWRN) system, which is what all public safety agencies in the municipality are going to be switching to.
I’ve had limited success in the past,” said Chadwick of previous grant writing efforts, “but it seems like I’ve just had a real good run of success this year in pulling some outside funds into the department so we can make the response organization better and provide better service to the community.”
On top of the windfall of grant funds coming into the department this year, last year’s budget increase of $30,000 for personnel, equipment costs and fuel increase costs finally came through after a reminder at last month’s GBOS meeting.
“It takes about six months or so for it to work its way down to the department,” said Chadwick. “But it came through and it goes to show that the system we’ve got here with the volunteer combination department and the local control by the GBOS works.”