Everything has a life cycle — especially equipment used during an emergency.
For county fire departments, replacing equipment can be expensive without the help of grants like the ones recently issued from the Kentucky Department of Forestry. Those awarded the grants were Corydon Civil Defense, the Smith Mills Volunteer Fire Department, Niagara Volunteer Fire Department, Robards Volunteer Fire Department and the Spottsville Volunteer Fire Department.
"It's a $5,000 matching grant," said Robards Fire Chief David Denton. "So we spend 10,000 and we get reimbursed $5,000."
The money is to be used for equipment.
"We are going to buy turnout gear," Denton said. "Some of ours is between 12-15 years old. It will cost us about $1,900 a set. We'll spend some of our own money because we need eight new sets.