Grant received to purchase radios for first-responders

By Paul Fallon
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT November 21, 2008 12:44 am

— Marion County officials recently received a grant to help purchase radios for county first-responders.
According to Chris McIntire, director of the Marion County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, formerly known as the Office of Emergency Services, the county was awarded $132,000 in federal money through the Public Safety Interoperable Communications Grant. The money will be used to buy radios for every volunteer fire department in the county.
“We’ll be using the money to buy 40 portable radios and 15 mobile radios,” McIntire said.
The portable radios are handheld and the mobiles are used in vehicles, McIntire said. Local volunteer fire departments are not the only agencies which will receive the new radios, McIntire said. He added that he will be contacting the Fairmont Police Department to see how many of the radios it would like to have. Three of the mobile radios will also be used in his office’s command trailer, McIntire added.
“And the remaining ones will be used for homeland security purposes,” he said.
The new portable and mobile units are trunked radios, McIntire said. The trunked radios are a type of computer-controlled radio system.
McIntire said that since officials with the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has begun writing grants for communication equipment, no volunteer fire department has had to pay out of pocket for radio equipment.
He added that the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has supplied around $700,000 in radio equipment to agencies throughout the county.
McIntire added that his office would help train other agencies on how to use the new trunked radios. Any agency which wishes to obtain training on how to operate the new radios should contact the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
McIntire said he and other officials in the county are out to make sure that every first-responder in Marion County has the best and most up-to-date equipment that is available. He also noted that he will continue to write grants to help the county first-responders obtain this equipment.
“These radios are the wave of the future,” he said. “We’re really on the right track with these.”
E-mail Paul Fallon at pfallon@timeswv.com.