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For the third year in a row the Johnson City Volunteer Fire Department and the Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department have received grants from the National Park Service's Rural Fire Assistance Program to purchase wildland fire equipment. Both fire departments are located near Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and assist the park with wildland fire suppression.
The Johnson City Volunteer Fire Department received a $6,000 grant to purchase fire resistant clothing, two hand-held foam units and a portable pump. The department has twenty-three members and is equipped with four wildland fire engines, one structural truck, one water tanker and one rescue truck.
The Stonewall Volunteer Fire Department received a $8,000 grant to purchase a high volume portable pump, six hand-held radios, five sets of fire-resistant clothing, and several bumper nozzles for the department's wildland fire engines. Stonewall VFD has thirty firefighters and operates two structural fire engines, two wildland engines, one tanker and a rescue truck.
The Rural Fire Assistance program allocates funding for training and the purchase of wildland firefighting equipment to rural fire departments that provide suppression assistance to National Park Service areas. In addition to the wildland fire suppression assistance provided to Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park , these departments are the primary responders for structural fires in the LBJ Ranch and Johnson City Districts of the park. There are 120 historic structures associated with the heritage of the 36 th president of the United States which are preserved within approximately 700 acres managed by the National Park Service in Blanco and Gillespie Counties .
If Rural Fire Assistance grants are available in 2004 both departments hope to acquire additional personnel protective equipment for their firefighters and receive training in the Incident Command System, Basic Air Operations, Wildland Urban Interface firefighting and firefighter safety.
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