{"id":117747,"date":"2014-09-18T20:17:37","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T02:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/firefighters-get-air-pack-grant\/"},"modified":"2014-09-18T20:17:37","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T02:17:37","slug":"firefighters-get-air-pack-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/firefighters-get-air-pack-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighters get air-pack grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kaelee
Kaelee Allmon displays one of the Cortez Fire air tanks. The department just received a grant to replace the tanks.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Breathing should be a little bit easier for firefighters with the Cortez Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n

The department recently learned that it was awarded a $284,050 grant to replace the firefighters\u2019 self-contained breathing apparatus, allowing them to breath easier in dangerous situations and the department to breath easier because they won\u2019t have to pay for the costly devices.<\/p>\n

The grant was part of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and will allow the fire department to replace their self-contained breathing packs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey use them any time they enter a toxic atmosphere,\u201d said Charles Balke, Cortez Fire Protection District assistant fire chief.<\/p>\n

The packs, Balke explained, are very important and have to be functioning properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been facing operational issues with our current packs,\u201d Balke said.<\/p>\n

The packs the firefighters use now are 10 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years doesn\u2019t seem like a long time, but when you are exposing them to 1,100-degree temperatures, that takes a toll,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This is the first AFG grant awarded to the Cortez Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n

The packs typically cost $6,500 to $7,200 apiece. The grant should allow the department to purchase about 40, one for each available seat on the fire engines.<\/p>\n

The department will accept bids for the packs and hopes to have them delivered by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not going to have the concern about the functionality of our packs anymore,\u201d Balke said. \u201cThis will allow us to do our jobs more efficiently. We could not have bought these without this grant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

for breathing in hazardous environments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-117747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117747"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=117747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}