Federal Grant Awarded

Several area fire departments received notice that their Regional Grant Project was awarded $231,000 as part of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program. The depts. will team up to cover the required 5% cost share to complete the project. Departments participating include: Avoca, Excelsior, Germania, Hughestown, Jenkins Twp, Pittston City and West Pittston.

The scope of the project focuses on eliminating barriers to our daily operations, including converting all hose, appliances and couplings to use National Standard Thread instead of each dept's custom thread. This will eliminate the need of having different adapters to allow department's to utilize each other's hose and equipment. Additionally, all fire hydrants in each community will be retrofitted to use 5" storz adapaters on the steamer connections.

Representatives from each department will be meeting in the near future to begin defining how the grant award will be managed.

Congratulations to each of the participating departments. Your efforts in making this project successful have been rewarded.