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Safety professionals may not have paid much attention to FEMA this year, but some of the largest manufacturers of safety products and the entire U.S. fire service tuned in all summer for news from the agency. They weren't tracking hurricanes or flood compensation. They were raptly interested in the Assistance to Fire Fighters Grant Program.
Beginning in late July, the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded millions of dollars in grants every Monday to help fire departments buy vehicles, PPE, training, wellness gear, or other firefighting equipment such as thermal imaging cameras. FEMA even made a mid-week presentation August 23 of what it called "special FIRE Act grants," giving $2 million to three "major fire and life safety organizations" for fire- and injury-related programs emphasizing children. The International Association of Fire Fighters Burn Foundation got $750,000 for burn prevention, treatment, and general fire prevention programs; the National Fire Protection Association received $500,000 for the "Risk Watch" fire prevention program for schoolchildren; and the National Safe Kids Council accepted $750,000 for its fire prevention programs.
Rarely has fire safety, or any kind of public safety for that matter, been funded on such a wide and lavish scale. The law that accomplished it-the Firefighter Investment and Response Enhancement Act-- specified $100 million...