Department of Homeland Security: Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER)

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grants seek to provide funding directly to fire departments and volunteer firefighter interest organizations to assist in increasing the number of firefighters to help communities meet industry minimum standards and attain 24-hour staffing to provide adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards, and to fulfill traditional missions of fire departments.

The objective of the SAFER grant program is to assist local fire departments with staffing and deployment capabilities to respond to emergencies and assure that communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards. Local fire departments accomplish this by improving staffing and deployment capabilities so they may more effectively and safely respond to emergencies. With enhanced staffing levels, recipients should experience a reduction in response times and an increase in the number of trained personnel assembled at the incident scene.

Although not required for a SAFER grant, it is preferable that the enhanced staffing levels of all SAFER recipients should ensure that all first-arriving apparatus are staffed with a minimum of four qualified personnel who are capable of initiating the suppression response. Ultimately, SAFER recipients should achieve more efficient responses and safer incident scenes, thereby ensuring communities have improved protection from fire and fire-related hazards.

SAFER offers grants to support projects in two activities:

• Hiring of Firefighters: This activity strives to hire new, additional firefighters to improve staffing levels or changing the status of part-time or paid-on-call firefighters to full-time firefighters
• Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters: This activity seeks to assist fire departments with the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters who are involved with or trained in the operations of firefighting and emergency response

Amount: Approximately $350,000,000 is available to make up to 300 awards for a period of performance of 12-48 months.

Eligibility: County governments; city or township governments; fire departments; and national, state, local, or federally recognized tribal organizations representing the interests of volunteer firefighters.

Link: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=312762

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