Greetings FFAM members. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. 2021 is upon us now, and many of us are glad to see 2020 gone. 2020 brought many challenges to the fire service. The year brought us the COVID-19 pandemic, treating numerous patients, budget shortfalls, not being able to train in person, attending zoom meetings, and social distancing. The Missouri Fire Service overcame these obstacles and still provided a professional service to our citizens. 2021 will be no different. We will have COVID-19 to deal with, patients to care for, fires to fight, but we, the Missouri Fire Service, as our fire marshal has said, will have boots on the ground and overcome any obstacle that comes our way.
At the December meeting, the FFAM board of directors approved the budget for this year. Some of the highlights are scholarships for winter and summer fire school, equipment grants for departments to purchase the necessary equipment to keep them safe, and promotional items when the FFAM is attending conferences or meetings across our great state.
The FFAM has plans to attend several events throughout the year, including the Missouri Chiefs Conference, Missouri Fire Districts Conference, Missouri EMS Conference, Missouri Public Safety Communications Conference, Revolutionary Fire Tactics at the Lake, MU FRTI Summer Fire School Expo, the memorial services in Kingdom City and of course the FFAM Convention. If there is an event that you would like the FFAM to attend, whether it be a county meeting, a banquet, a chief’s meeting, or a conference, please reach out to me. The organization is always looking at other events to attend.
In closing, I recommend our members to reach out to their directors to attend their events to help promote your organization. If you are not comfortable doing that, please contact me or your director. We will be glad to do it for you. The FFAM offers many benefits to its members. They are listed on our website. Please take advantage of them, as your FFAM board of directors work hard to make sure these benefits can be funded. If you need to contact me, I can be reached by email at grant_oetting@yahoo.com or by phone at 660-229-4525. Be safe brothers and sisters, until next time.
FFAM
