National Park Service Provides Wildland Fire Grants to Local Fire Departments

Date: December 12, 2008
Contact: Scott Warner, 207-288-8782

(Bar Harbor, Maine) - Acadia National Park’s Fire Management Office began distributing firefighting supplies purchased under the federal Rural Firefighting Assistance Program. Wildland fire equipment grants have been awarded to thirteen Maine fire departments.

The primary purpose of the Rural Fire Assistance program is to increase wildland firefighter safety and wildland fire protection capabilities for rural fire departments. These are departments that protect communities of less than 10,000 people and which play a cooperative role in protecting federal lands such as Acadia National Park and Saint Croix Island International Historic Site. The grants being awarded this year are based upon requests submitted by the departments in 2007.

Local fire departments provide valuable assistance to the parks and help us achieve the National Park Service's mission of protecting the lands and visitors of Acadia National Park and Saint Croix Island International Historic Site. This is the sixth year of this very successful program, in which almost $230,000 in grants have been awarded to our cooperating fire departments in Maine.

The fire departments receiving grants this year are Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Calais, Great Cranberry Island, Gouldsboro, Isle au Haut, Islesford, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Swans Island, Tremont, Trenton and Winter Harbor.