The funding will allow for purchasing of 70 sets of wildfire prevention gear as well as training.
BEVERLY, MA — The Beverly Fire Department will purchase 70 sets of wildfire protective gear to help with training and fighting outdoor wildfires through a grant from the FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Program.
The gear will be bought with the $251,120 in funding announced in conjunction with Massachusetts Fire Prevention Week.
The equipment comes one year after Beverly crews assisted neighboring communities in battling brush fires throughout the North Shore in one of the most prolific wildfire seasons in the region in recent years.
“We’re primarily a structural firefighting department,” Beverly Fire Chief Peter O’Connor told the City Council Committee on Finance and Property this week. “All of our gear is geared toward structural firefighting. With a little bit of climate change and some issues that are going on — everybody remembers last year with our response. We spent a lot of time fighting fires — a little bit in Beverly but a lot outside of Beverly. We still have a lot of woods here in Beverly.”
O’Connor said the grant will help provide training land firefighting, which he said is “completely different from structural firefighting,” as well as to provide all fire crews with wild land firefighting gear.
“We don’t want our firefighters using structural gear out in the woods. It’s a hazard. It’s designed for a completely different environment. So this will provide from top to bottom, boots to helmets, and everything in between, the gear that our firefighters need to be working in the woods.”
He said the federal grant will pay most of the $276,000 cost of the overall project with the remaining $25,000 spread out over two years of the Beverly fire budget.