Feds Respond to Nantucket Hazmat Needs
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 – The Nantucket Fire Department will clean up with the help of a federal grant aimed at creating a new hazardous materials team.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program has awarded the department $356,117. The announcement was made Monday by Rep. William Delahunt..
“This is a great opportunity for the Nantucket Fire and Rescue and a significant event in the community as it pertains to public safety,” said Nantucket Fire Chief Everett Pierce.
The grant will enable the department to purchase hazardous material detection, salvage and containment equipment and personal protection suits and breathing apparatus.
Part of the money also will go to train eight firefighters to be HAZMAT technicians. An additional four will be trained to operate in the decontamination area of a spill site. Nantucket will kick in $18,000 to the effort from a reserve fund.
With the airport and the harbor, Nantucket has potential hazardous issues, said Steven Broderick, legislative aide for Delahunt. “They need to be prepared.”
Currently the department has limited HAZMAT capabilities and must call in a state response team, a practice that will continue even with the new capabilities. But according to Chief Pierce, there are several potential hazardous material threats on and around the island that warrant a self-sufficient, island-based HAZMAT team.
“We’re pretty remote; it’s a two-hour voyage to getting any equipment or people over here,” Pierce said. “Getting somebody over here is predicated on the weather. If the weather is bad, nobody comes.”
Besides oil and gasoline incidents, the pesticides and chemicals used by cranberry and other farmers pose potential risks. The department also wants better terrorism preparedness resources.
This year the federal grant program had 15,000 applicants and expects to portion out 5,000 grants nationwide. Forty-nine of those have been awarded to Massachusetts towns, for a total of more than $7 million. The Brewster Fire Department received $570,000 to purchase a ladder truck.
Delahunt held a briefing earlier in the year to help local fire departments write their grant proposals.
“A tip of the helmet to him and his people,” Chief Pierce said of Delahunt. “They’ve never left us in the lurches.”
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