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GRANT WRITING … Bob Sperling, Stryker’s Assistant Fire Chief, spoke to the Stryker Rotary at their regular meeting on April 18. Bob has been very successful writing grants for the department for a number of years. The department was able to purchase $186,640 in equipment in 2002 with grant money awarded for that purpose. Most of that equipment continues in use today. Some items have been replaced because they have come to the end of their useful life such as turn-out-gear and air tanks. The next grant awarded to the department was for a truck that cost $266,000. The department was required to come up with 10% of the cost as a qualifier for the grant. This truck is a tank truck that can haul 3,500 gallons of water, and is outfitted with a 1,250 GPM pump. This pump is equal in capacity to most fire fighting pumpers. The tank trucks today are not available with this high volume pump. The Stryker Fire Department has two working tank trucks that are used regularly both in the community as well as to support neighboring departments. Another grant was used to purchase exhaust filters for the trucks to assist in keeping the fire hall clean. The truck exhaust is filtered at engine start-up and not exhausted to the outside until the trucks are out of the fire hall. An additional safety grant provided $3,500 in high quality, long life, smoke alarms that were given to community residents in an effort to insure everyone had a working smoke alarm. Bob said he found it difficult to understand the amount of effort that was required by the department to give away these smoke alarms. The Stryker community supports the local fire department with tax dollars, and up to this point the department has not charged community members for this service. Bob Sperling, on the left is pictured with Stryker Rotarian Mark Allison.