Staff Report~ 11/23/2011

The Daisy Mountain Fire Department was awarded $165,500 in grant funding to help sustain vital programs earlier this month.
The department was awarded a $70,000 grant from the Urban Area Security Initiative to help sustain the organizations Terrorist Liaison Officer program (TLO). Daisy Mountain Fire cooperates with other valley Fire Departments as well as law enforcement agencies to increase the awareness of terrorism as well as increase safety for first responders statewide. Currently the Department has three TLO officers that participate in the program. These officers help liaison between fire personnel and law enforcement during day to day operations and emergency scenes alike.
A grant was also awarded to Daisy Mountain from the urban Area Security Initiative in the amount of $64,000. These funds were allocated to support the recent addition of a Hazardous Material Emergency Response Team. This highly trained team is utilized to mitigate emergencies that involve toxic chemicals, liquids or gasses that standard firefighting crews are not equipped to handle. Haz-Mat 141 is stationed at Fire Station 141 and is a valuable resource addition not only to the citizens of the Daisy Mountain Fire District but the entire North Valley. Daisy Mountain Fire participates in the Valley Wide Automatic Aid System along with 26 other departments allowing resources to be dispatched to incidents based on the closest available unit’s location. This allows resources to be shared from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without boundaries. Until the addition of Haz-Mat 141 crews would wait for a unit to respond from Phoenix or Glendale for the specialized resource.
Additional grant funds in the amount of $31,500 were awarded to support the departments Citizen Corp division. The Daisy Mountain Fire Citizen Corp division is made up of mostly volunteers from the community. These volunteers receive regular training on disaster response and are called upon to support community functions as first aid providers, community educators as well as a disaster response team. The Urban Area Security Initiative awarded a grant in the amount of $21,500 to support training and equipment needs for the program. The division also was awarded $10,000 from the State Homeland Security Grant Program to sustain the program.