Monday nights at the Burt Hills Fire Department are dedicated to training, going over what to do if they find themselves in a life-threatening situation.

“If we have a firefighter call mayday on the fire ground, what that means is that firefighter's now in a situation where they've either become disoriented or they can't find their way out of the structure or their crew," said Captain Christopher Altieri of the Burnt Hills Fire Department. "When a firefighter is fighting for survival, being able to communicate to those on the outside, is most important, so someone can help them."


What You Need To Know

  • The department just received around $120,000 in federal funding for 26 new radios

  • The radios they are working with right now are 15 years old

  • Each firefighter will have a radio in their hand, making them safer and the community safer

  • The funding comes from the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program, which has given millions of dollars to departments across the country

The department just received around $120,000 in federal funding for 26 new radios.

“I think the biggest thing is we are, as a department now, going to be able to put a radio in every firefighter's hand," Altieri said. "And the fact that we didn't have that capability before relied on our crews, making sure they were together. And sometimes things don't go the way we want them to go. And so now every firefighter, no matter what happens, is going to have that radio to be able to call that need to get themselves out of a bad situation." 

The radios they are working with right now are 15 years old.

“Throughout the district, we have a couple of areas where we know our radios," Altieri said. "It's a dead zone for the signal. And these new radios are going to narrow the bandwidth and give us the ability to defeat some of those dead zone, which is going to allow us to communicate more efficiently."

The funding comes from the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program, which has given millions of dollars to departments across the country, as well as the resources needed to ensure everyone is safe.

“It's making us safer, the firefighter safer, and it's making the residents safer because we can react faster," says Greg Bradtke, chief of the Burnt Hills Fire Department.