MINOT – Over the past three years, Minot’s Fire and Rescue Department has tapped grant resources totaling more than $150,000.

This has helped the town purchase equipment such as a cascade trailer and a thermal imaging camera.

“We just sent out letters to all our mutual aid departments telling them this cascade trailer is in service and available to them,” said Fire Chief Steve French.

The trailer, which houses a linked “cascading” series of four large compressed air bottles, is hauled to fire scenes so that the smaller bottles in firefighters’ air packs can be refilled. The cascading system allows air to be drawn more efficiently from the large tanks, and thus more air packs can be filled.

Recently, department members used their latest acquisition, an $8,000 thermal imaging camera, at a controlled practice burn of Bryers’ garage in West Minot.

“Several months ago we had a tragic fire over on Pottle Hill Road. We found a body with a camera – we used Mechanic Falls’ camera – and that inspired us to go for the grant,” French said. In this instance, the grant was a matching one, received from the Galen Cole Family Foundation in Bangor. The grant paid $5,750 toward the camera; the Minot department is raising the remaining $2,250.

“We’ve paid $750 already. So all we need now is $1,500 and we have until December 2005 to come up with it. We are actively accepting donations,” said French.

The Cole grant brought the total raised since 2001 to just over $151,000.

The department received two Fire Act Grants of $54,000 each. That enabled the town to purchase a new forestry truck, as well as 12 pieces of breathing apparatus with spare air bottles and the trailer.

More recently, the department received a $38,000 homeland security grant, through the Androscoggin County Emergency Management Agency, used to purchase the large air bottles, 10 portable radios and a Grace Accountability System.

The Grace system automatically logs firefighters at a fire scene. It also alerts the person monitoring the system if a firefighter stops moving for more than 30 seconds. It would identify the person who isn’t moving, prompting a search.

French noted that grant-writing involves all members of the department. As a group, the department decides what to apply for; the grant-writing itself has been assigned to Deputy Chief Jayme French.

French said the department expects to hear in a few months if a request through the Fire Act Grant program has been approved for $40,000 worth of structural fire attack clothing and other small equipment.

“When I first started, back in the ’70s, we just had the West Minot Station and a cobbled-together pumper truck and four coats and sets of boots that were taken on a first-come, first- served basis. We’ve come a long way,” said French.