The four fire districts of San Juan County have received a regional Federal Emergency Management Agency grant to replace aging personal protective equipment for firefighters and increase compatibility between agencies, maximizing mutual aid throughout our islands while reducing costs to our taxpayers.
FEMA awarded $923,115 from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant to the fire districts for Orcas, Lopez, Shaw and San Juan Islands to fund replacement; testing; training; and maintenance for Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus, critical for firefighter safety and fire operations. Much of the islands’ fire districts’ respiratory equipment is in need of increasingly frequent and expensive repairs. As the system’s age, replacement parts become harder to locate and sometimes obsolete.