Originally Posted By: rescueguru
The most critical times are 6AM to about 2PM,

.....The cost of recruiting, training, and equiping the folks is staggering to the department, but even more expensive is the time and personal expenditures made by the members themselves......



Yes, yes and 1000 times yes.

Let me give you an example of the "staggering" cost (my previous post about the time covers the personal cost).

Here in Bucks County, they installed a 500Mhz digital radio system to replace the "ancient" 46Mhz analog system that was in use (we called it the "low-band" system.)

When the new radio system came online, in the early 2000's (I think 2001, but I'm not sure) let's just say that it didn't meet expectations, but we still got an invoice for $36,000 for the radios. This is for 6 trucks and a few handhelds. Not dozens of radios. We're talking about 12 radios here.

Fastforward to today, and the whole county radio system needs to be replaced with a totally new setup in the 700Mhz band, and it's going to cost $100 Million dollars in the county, of which AT LEAST $120,000 - that's one hundred twenty thousand dollars - is going to be the burden on the little fire company where I used to run, and their entire annual operating budget was only $80,000 or so.

Think about that. That's a LOT of pancakes to flip to make that kind of money. They get a tiny tax allocation, but you try raising taxes on a community. There are no grants.

Here's a good article on this:
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-arti...ost-100-million