During August of 2002 Missouri Department of Conservation Forestry Division Staff distributed matching funds checks for rural fire departments. One hundred thirty –six fire departments received checks of up to $3000 to help them with the purchase of personal protective gear and fire fighting equipment for natural cover as well as structure fires. The total funding for Fire Departments this year is approximately $220,000. Fire Departments are required to match these funds, which are provided by the US Forest Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation. During the last 21 years, over $3,220,000 has been distributed to Rural Fire Departments to help them increase the safety of their fire fighters and provide them with better fire fighting equipment.

Hardin Fire Protection District was selected and utilized its matching fund grant to purchase 6 new radios. These new radios have scanning capability and are also setup to act as pagers. The radios give our firefighters full communications capability without having to carry both a pager and a radio. We can now do a better job of monitoring several radio channels and communicating with other emergency service providers in the county. Because of the grant, we were able to take our budgeted funds for three radios and turn that into six radios.