PHOENIX – Last month the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave $720,000 to San Simon, an unincorporated area about 11 miles from the New Mexico border. It has a population of 273.

That money is all going toward one expense: a firetruck to replace their 50-year-old one.

Fire Chief John Novak said it would be impossible to purchase it without a grant.

“We would have to save 20 years for it,” he said.

Fire districts in rural Arizona, which are smaller than municipal departments and sometimes volunteer dependent, rely on grants to purchase equipment as expenses skyrocket, budgets are stretched thin and service expectations expanded.

But it’s an unreliable Band-Aid to a years-long problem and the approach may put residents at risk, said Danny Johnson, president of the Arizona Fire District Association and fire chief of the Verde Valley Fire District.

According to the National Volunteer Firefighter Council, the cost to prepare and equip a single firefighter can exceed $35,000.  

Fire districts get their annual budgets through property taxes. Johnson said this funding model, which has been around since the inception of fire districts in 1918, is not viable anymore because of what is being asked of the districts. 

“Fire districts look drastically different,” he said. “The responses that we're being asked to do look drastically different as well, but the funding mechanism is the same, and the funding streams are the same.”

Johnson said districts can have a larger jurisdiction beyond properties, like highways and forests, that distract from serving residents who pay for their services.

“The residents that are actually paying through their property taxes to have fire and EMS protection are left uncovered for hours and hours and hours at a time while we're on I-17, while we're doing trail rescues up in the national forests,” he said.

Adding to the price of equipment, the firetruck manufacturing market has few competitors. In fact, only three firms supply the majority of the industry, according to a statement to Congress last year by the International Association of Fire Fighters. The cost of fire trucks also has doubled in the past decade.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation last month into price gouging in the firetruck manufacturing industry. This was in response to increasing costs for firefighting equipment and long wait times for delivery of vehicles. 

In San Simon, the pumper/tanker the fire district is buying with the FEMA grant will replace their 1975 truck. Novak said it is out of date with current standards.

“It structurally was worn out,” he said. “Suspension components were physically worn out, and you can't buy parts for a 1975 truck.”

With the new pumper expected next year, only one employee needs to operate the vehicle, which helps the district with staff shortages.

“One person is not ideal, but sometimes it's our reality,” he said.

For a larger area like the Sonoita-Elgin Fire District in southern Arizona, Fire Chief Marc Meredith said with an annual budget of $2.2 million, purchasing a fire vehicle would wipe out nearly half of that.

“Our job is to provide essential fire and EMS services for our community, but the source of the equipment that we need in order to do that is being manufactured with a strong profit expectation as its base financial model,” Meredith said.

Higher prices are affecting more than fire trucks. FEMA approved a grant of more than $1.8 million to the Santa Rita Fire District in September for equipment, which was split among several rural districts. Sonoita-Elgin was one of those districts.

It paid for self-contained breathing apparatus, face masks attached to oxygen tanks for firefighters to use in smokey or toxic environments.

“SCBAs are critical,” Meredith said. “They're one of the most important pieces of equipment that our firefighters use any time that they are in a dangerous environment where breathing the air would be problematic.”

The Santa Rita Fire District was the lead district in the grant application, that Meredith said is one reason they received funding. The odds of receiving a grant were lower if they applied as a single entity, he said.

“You need to either be a very large agency, or you need to go in on a regional approach in order to get the attention and be more compelling, frankly, as an applicant for what is a limited number of funds,” he said.

He said he expects to see more rural areas work together to make sure communities get adequate service.

Allen Allcott, fire chief for the volunteer Thunderbird Fire District south of the Phoenix area, is already working with a nearby rural fire department. 

For the past decade, his district in Pinal County and the North Hidden Valley Fire Department in Maricopa have cooperated on certain calls. But in the past six years, they have worked on everything together.

“Collectively, we're able to provide a lot better service than either one of us could do individually,” Allcott said.

The time lag when equipment is ordered and when it is delivered is another source of frustration for rural districts. 

The three main firms who manufacture fire trucks also have billions of dollars in backlogs, leading to long wait times in certain areas, according to the statement to Congress by the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Meredith said his district sees long wait times for equipment and other materials to arrive, sometimes months or years after a purchase.

“Not only is the cost really prohibitive for small agencies like ours, but then the time to actually get the equipment is years in most cases,” Meredith said. “What we paid for a fire truck a few years ago is what it would cost to buy an ambulance now.”

Johnson said his district purchased a fire vehicle three years ago, and they are yet to get the truck delivered.

“It's a business model that doesn't really have public safety and the firefighters in mind,” he said.

Fire districts can only use equipment for about 10 years because after that it’s often no longer compliant with National Fire Protection Association standards, which Mary Dalton, executive director of the Arizona Fire District Association, said could open districts up to potential litigation that could drain funds. 

There are no specific legal consequences in Arizona for equipment that’s used longer than the recommended lifespan, but Dalton said the safety of personnel and residents could be put at risk.

Novak said he tries to replace equipment, but it's not realistic for items still in good condition. He said the San Simon district takes only a few calls a year compared to larger departments, meaning their equipment sees less action.

“They tried to one-size-fits-all everybody, and ended up creating a monster,” Novak said.

For single-item purchases, Meredith said, his district may consider used equipment until pricing stabilizes. His county is undergoing an emergency services audit to better understand gaps in funding and service. He said he doesn’t foresee any increases in grants or other funds that don’t already exist.

“As we go forward doing this service, we have to be more deliberate about how we validate the value of what we do and how we make the best use of limited resources,” he said.

The Arizona Fire District Association said it plans to approach the state Legislature about issues with the current funding arrangements, Johnson said. 

“We're putting together that data to … not just have an emotional story but have a factual story that comes along with dollars and cents and true data (so) that we can truly quantify the problem and then work towards a solution,” he said.

Novak said he will continue to try to follow National Fire Protection Association standards, but manufacturers taking advantage of the system will continue to be at the expense of local communities like his. 

“If these grants ever dry up, these rural communities are going to go without,” he said.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.