SAFER grant boosts N.Y. volunteer department's recruitment hopes

By Rhoda Amon
Newsday (New York)

EAST WILLISTON, N.Y. — The East Williston Fire Department is looking for a few good men — and, possibly, women — to help protect the one-square-mile village on a daily basis and in the event of a terrorist attack.

The job carries no salary — it's all volunteer — but there's the satisfaction of serving the community, plus a few perks provided by a $50,000 homeland-security-based grant to increase the number of trained, front-line firefighters.

East Williston, one of the smaller fire departments on Long Island, got the grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mount a recruitment campaign and also retain its current staff. The grant, called SAFER (for Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response), is part of a $115-million appropriation to the Department of Homeland Security to help career fire departments hire more firefighters and volunteer departments recruit and retain volunteers.

Over the past year, the savvy East Williston department has brought in $97,000 in federal and state funding designed to bolster smaller departments with state-of-the-art equipment, intensive training and expanded recruitment, "and it hasn't cost the village taxpayer one nickel," said grant coordinator Kevin Mulrooney. "There's no matching requirement."

Tapping into a four-year SAFER grant will enable the department to provide a life insurance program for all members, a U.S Savings Bond for recruits and for members who sponsor a new member and possible reimbursement for out-of-pocket health insurance expenses, Mulrooney said.

"We want to make it very attractive to get people in the door. After four years, we hope they will want to stay on," said Mulrooney, 40, a 22-year veteran of the department, which protects the village's 2,500 residents.

Firefighters do more than fight fires. Often with limited resources and manpower, they respond to a variety of daily emergencies and also need to be prepared for possible terrorist action. The SAFER grant is "an important part of a larger coordinated effort to strengthen homeland security preparedness ... to prevent, protect against, respond to and recover from both terrorist attacks and catastrophic natural disasters," according to FEMA spokeswoman Alexandra Kirin.

Three members of East Williston's first responder team recently received state firematic commendations for their rapid response to a 911 call to aid an unconscious elderly man, Mulrooney said. The responders were Patrick McWhirk, Frank Behan and Richard Abbott.

The department, which includes 47 men and one woman, also recently received a federal award of advanced hazardous-material detection and survey equipment. The award, part of the federal Commercial Equipment Direct Assistance Program called CEDAP, provides "equipment, not money, to small to midsized response agencies who would otherwise not receive federal antiterrorism funding under the Urban Area Initiative," Mulrooney said.

The equipment, expected to arrive in the next few months, will assist in the daily operation of the department, detecting harmful gases such as carbon monoxide. It can also deal with lethal substances in the event of terrorist action.

The equipment, the second CEDAP award for the department in 2007, will require rigorous training but no matching funding from the village, Mulrooney said. The department also received a thermal imager from the federal program and a State Assembly grant for EMS equipment.

"We didn't cry poverty," Mulrooney said. "We said we're a small, efficient, community with high property taxes, high mortgages and, for many, college tuition. The members of the department all assisted in obtaining the grants," he said.

Mulrooney, a police sergeant with the Counterterrorism Division of the New York City Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn, grew up in the village, as did many of the members of the local fire department, founded in 1889.

Tiffany Patello, the only female member, is a second-generation firefighter. Her father, Frank, an active firefighter, serves on the grant committee.

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