Provided/Ventnor firefighters battle a blaze in Ventnor Heights.
VENTNOR – Fire Chief Michael Cahill Thursday, Aug. 9 told commissioners the $619,091 Assistance to Firefighters grant recently awarded to Atlantic City will help bring the Ventnor City Fire Department up to par with latest safety equipment.
The collaborative grant, which also includes funding for the Margate City Fire Department, will allow all three fire departments to replace air packs with the latest technology, which is important when offering mutual aid anywhere on Absecon Island, Cahill said.
“We are the only ones on the island that uses a different system than everybody else,” he said. “We’re still using Scott packs that go back to 2002. We’re way behind the curve with equipment upgrades.”
Margate Fire Chief Dan Adams said the grant would replace air packs that are more than 10 years old.
The new air packs will be safer for Ventnor’s firefighters and reduce the cost of training on the four different versions of air packs currently being used, Cahill said.
“We will all be the same, we can interchange equipment and do a lot more functional interaction,” he said. “It’s a much safer system we will be using.”
The equipment will require firefighters to undergo training and be available for use by November, he said.
“We have a big training curve to hit on that,” Cahill said.
All three communities will collaborate on maintaining the equipment and firefighters in all three towns will be trained to repair the equipment when needed.
“If my people are not available or Margate’s people aren’t available, I can call Atlantic City to fix our stuff and they can call us and we’ll fix their stuff,” Cahill said. “It will allow us to interchange if they have a major event, we can give them our air pack equipment. And if we have to go up there and work, we’ll be working on the same tools they are.”
The department had budgeted $260,000 for the new equipment, but the grant will cover most of the cost, Cahill said. The grant reduces the city cost to about $35,000 he said.
“Police and fire are the best examples of shared services,” Commissioner Lance Landgraf said.
Cahill said the Police and Fire departments are currently in the process of evaluating future medical equipment needs, including defribulators, which will be standardized as well.
The department also recently completed a periodic Insurance Services Office inspection of the city’s fire safety infrastructure, the results of which will be available in September, Cahill said.
“They said we would be very happy,” Cahill said. “If we drop to an ISO Level 2, there will be a nice reduction in everybody’s fire insurance in the city.”
Cahill also said the department and Office of Emergency Management are in Phase 2 of obtaining an editable online GIS system made available through the county at no cost to the city.
The system, estimated to cost about $150,000, allows firefighters responding to a fire to utilize a computer on the fire engines to immediately locate fire hydrants, he said.
“The officer will climb on the engine, type in an address and a map comes up with all the information about that address, and it costs us nothing,” he said.
In other public safety news, Police Chief Doug Biagi said the Police Department would soon be equipping officers with body cameras and patrol vehicles with video recorders.
The $80,000 investment will protect officers and the public and cut down on internal affairs investigations, Biagi said.
“It will be money well spent,” he said.
The capital expenditure covers the purchase of cameras for eight patrol vehicles and 16 body cameras, Biagi said.
Public Works Supervisor Ed Stinson also said his department is working with police to identify and address traffic safety concerns on Winchester and Monmouth avenues, near Rosborough and Wyoming avenues, where there are sight distance concerns.
Public Works will address visibility by trimming the trees and hedges blocking the view of motorists, and enhance visibility with reflectors on stop signs and striping crosswalks. The city will also extend no parking areas at intersections to ensure they are a proper distance from the corners, he said.
Future improvements could include blinking red lights, he said.
