The Hindman Volunteer Fire Department received a $10,000 grant from the Fire Commission which will go toward the purchase of new personal protective equipment.

The plan is to purchase new boots, turnout pants, coats, Nomex hoods, helmets, and gloves, reports wkyt.com.

Officials say a set of gear runs about $1,600 to $2,000, depending upon brand. Then, add it up for every member in the department and it gets expensive. More than 230 fire departments also received the grant, the report says.

The Madison Fire Department recently took delivery of its new custom 2022 Typhoon.

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The apparatus comes with a special remembrance to the 9-11 heroes.

The Island Heights Volunteer Fire Co. 1 recently announced that construction on its new firehouse has commenced.

“The IHVFC is excited to announce that we are finally underway in building our new firehouse! After 60 years, our current firehouse, built entirely by our own members, has reached the end of its useful life. We are constructing a new building to meet the current and future needs of the company, such as our growing fleet of larger modern fire apparatus, as well as the needs of the town.

“Over the coming weeks and months, we will be spotlighting the history of our current firehouse and progress of the new construction. As an independent volunteer organization, this is a major undertaking that could not be possible without continued support from our community, mayor and council. We look forward to continuing our over 125 years of dedicated volunteer service to Island Heights and our neighbors.”

Source: TFT, Sponsored Content

Every firefighter knows the smell inside a fire truck or at the station after a working fire. It’s harsh, it’s easily identifiable and, it turns out, it’s deadly for firefighters and first responders.

The burning of any combustible material releases a harmful concoction of smoke and soot filled with cancer causing chemicals that permeates turnout gear, apparatus cabs and the air you breathe. Eventually, that bad stuff makes it back to the station as well, creating toxic living environments, dramatically increasing the likelihood of firefighter illness or death.

Additionally, in recent years, we’ve all become familiar with the need to protect ourselves and our crews from viruses that pose significant health risks to all first responders.

The threats are real. According to statistics published by the Center for Disease Control and The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), between 2002-2019, two-thirds of the line-of-duty-deaths among firefighters were due to cancer. In 2020, one-third of first responder deaths were due to Covid-19. By any measure, those numbers are staggering and unacceptable.

The time has long passed to be proactive in protecting firefighters and first responders and Task Force Tips (TFT) can help you mitigate the health risks efficiently and effectively. In addition to their consultative approach – learning about your unique circumstance and goals – their products named CrewProtect and StationProtect use advanced technologies to filter the air your crews breathe within apparatus and at your station.

Jeff Hicks, OEM/Health Channel Manager for TFT, explains CrewProtect, which is an in-the-cab air filtration system for apparatus and StationProtect, a larger unit for use in emergency services buildings, drastically reduces airborne threats to firefighters and first responders.

“We decided to go after the three major threats that are in the fire service today and that would be particulates, off-gassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and viruses, including the CoV-2 which is the cause of COVID-19,” Hicks says, noting the system also provides mitigation of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Task Force Tips is known the world over as a business that develops innovative water flow management and fire suppression equipment, including nozzles, monitors, ball intake valves and more. At the core of the company, since day one, has been making the world safer, healthier and more productive while helping first responders save lives and protect property. It’s a mission the founders of the company fully embraced decades ago. TFT’s parent company, Madison Industries, has expanded the mission.

One of the companies within the Madison Industries family is Purafil, the world leader in the engineering and manufacturing of air filtration media and equipment.

“We decided to utilize the expertise of our sister company to develop a solution to mitigate those three major threats to firefighters,” Hicks says, noting that Purafil’s technology is used in hospitals around the world to create clean rooms, is used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as well as the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, to protect priceless works of art.

“Our cab decontamination solution uses PuraShield technology from Purafil, which is a patented and proven technology that’s been around for a long time”, Hicks says, noting our system has a four-part filtration system that captures particulates down to n