“It looks like I am asking for additional funding. However, this is a good news story.”
That’s what Jared Cayley, the director of fire and emergency services/fire chief for the Town of Gravenhurst, told councillors during the committee of the whole meeting on Jan. 21 when presenting a request for $10,000 in funding to help combat cancer among the Town’s firefighters.
Here are the facts
- In his report to council, Cayley said the Province opened applications for the fire protection grant three years ago. This program is planned to be three years in length, with fire services eligible to apply for three separate projects over those three years.
- The focus of the first-phase projects is cancer prevention practices in fire services. Applications could be made for a myriad of equipment and building renovations to improve individual services ability to mitigate the propagation of cancer in their firefighters.
- The project the department has chosen is the installation of air scrubbers in all three of the fire stations, and personal protective equipment in dressing rooms.
- Cayley said in the report the equipment can contain many contaminants, all of which are released at various rates post-incident. The addition of the air scrubbers would ensure that these particulates, many of them cancer-causing, would be removed from the air in these rooms, thereby greatly reducing the risk of exposure to firefighting personnel.
- The entire cost of the project for the 2025 budget year, is $34,200. This included the cost of the scrubbers and the installation of each at the three fire stations.
- The Town has received $24,691 from the Ontario Fire Service Grant. However, Cayley reported this is not enough to complete the project as described in the grant application. To utilize these funds from the Province, the Town will need to provide the additional $10,000 to complete the project, as stipulated in the grant agreement.
- “We need to complete the project as defined when we requested the funds. And in order to do that, we need the additional $10,000 to complete it,” the chief told councillors.
- Coun. Sandy Cairns expressed strong support for the request, which she called it “really near and dear to my heart.”
- “A lot of my family in London, Ontario, are firefighters, and my uncle passed away from a cancer caused by the gases or whatever the chemicals that come from the improper types of protection and things like that. So I full-heartedly was excited to see this and fully support pulling from our reserve to put this in place. Our firefighters are some of the most amazing people in our community that go out every day and risk their lives for us, for all of us, and I think this is well needed,” she said.
- Councillors approved taking the $10,000 from the municipal fire and emergency services reserve.