WMFD creates non-profit foundation

Firefighters Association expected to streamline donated resources

By DON WILBURN

donaldfwilburn@gmail.com

West Memphis Fire Chief Barry Early proudly announced recently the formation of the department’s _rst non-pro_t organization, The West Memphis Fire_ghters Association which purpose is, among other things, to skirt the many pitfalls of city politics and bureaucracy and in his words “get things done.”

“There are all types of resources out there” says Ealy, “big companies and charities in the community that are set up to donate to _rst responders, but in the past the department had no way of directly using those resources.”

Chief Ealy explained that any donations made to the department in the past had to go the general fund of the city and that often urgently needed _nds could be tied up awaiting approval of the city council. With the department having it’s own non-pro_t to donate to, those funds are immediately available.

“Let’s say we want to have a _re safety day, for example” says Ealy, “We want to have Cokes, hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. Well, that

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has to be taken out of tax payer money. There might be some citizens who don’t think a safety day is important or don’t want to pay for things like free hotdogs. Now, they don’t have to.”

The Fire Chief cited that as a typical example, but said there were much more important things as well.

“Say we need hearing protection for _re_ghters or headsets with microphones. A lot of them are losing their hearing from sirens, those high pitches. It’s too late for a lot of us older guys, but we can help the younger generation by buying that protection as it’s needed, right now. We don’t have to go through the bureaucracy of getting it approved through the council.”

Ealy says that they have essentially opened up a pipeline where he and other members of the department can go directly to willing donors and money can be donated on the spot, basically cutting out the middle man and enthusiastically considers to new non-pro_t to be one of best new resources available to the WMFD.

For more information or to donate, contact Debbie Holmes at Debbie Holmes 870-732-7570.