PARIS – The need for instant communication and locating firefighters at a fire scene will be served with new communication equipment that the Paris Fire Department is buying

It will be paid for with the latest Homeland Security grant, which totals $29,878.

Nearly $21,000 of the grant was used to buy 55 new two-channel pagers. Paris is giving 10 pagers each to its mutual aid towns of Oxford and Norway, and keeping 35, said Paris Fire Chief Brad Frost.

The department will also keep the older pagers so there will be plenty to go around.

More than $8,000 is being spent to buy a computer system that creates picture ID tags for Fire Department personnel who go on fire calls.

Frost said the tags keep track of every emergency responder, and must be turned in when a call is cleared. If a tag is not returned, that person is considered missing until he or she can be accounted for, he said.

The Homeland Security grant is also funding a Rapid Intervention Team Bag, which includes an air bottle and a mask to give life-saving oxygen to fire victims or firefighters who succumb to smoke inhalation while fighting fires.

Paris, the county seat of Oxford County, received $28,000 in Homeland Security Grant funds last year, along with a $49,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.