3^rd District Vice President Bennie Ouber with Anita Bailes of the American Cancer Society delivering a petition with 60,000 signatures to the Leesville office of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in support of the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Act. 

Due to the uncertainty of what phase level Louisiana will be and not knowing if we’ll be able to congregate as a large group, we have no choice but to make the necessary decision to cancel the 2021 PFFA of Louisiana Annual Convention scheduled for February 25^th – 27th.

Protecting the health, safety and well being of our members and their families is paramount at all times to the leadership of the PFFA and especially during this Covid-19 pandemic.

Because of the need for Legislative direction we will either have a one-day mini convention, possibly in Baton Rouge or a half day Virtual Convention utilizing a web-based meeting platform such as “GoToMeeting”. Illinois recently held their state convention in this fashion.

We will keep you informed when we know more. In the meantime if any of you have booked rooms at the DoubleTree Kenner, Local-1427 President Mickey Giarrusso has instructed the hotel to cancel everyone associated with the room block. You should receive an email from the hotel within the next 24 hours verifying the cancellation, if you don’t you should contact the hotel to cancel your reservation.

At the end of the year we will still collect the names of our members who have passed away in 2020 and we will honor our members from both years separately at the 2022 Convention.

 

As the significant stress on our economy continues from the actions taken to limit the spread of COVID-19, access to funding and other resources is and will be a problem for many jurisdictions.

There are two things you can do right now to help your local government get access to critical funding dollars going forward.

• Push your departments and elected leaders to coordinate with local and state emergency managers to apply for disaster relief funds under the Stafford Act.

To apply, your local city or county government typically submits a project worksheet for all government entities subordinate to your respective city/county, including the fire department. It's important that your fire department carefully documents costs so it can justify how they are related to the disaster (in this case the pandemic), such as overtime, backfill, equipment, mileage, fuel, COVID-19 testing, etc. Every state and locality is different, so begin asking the questions now to get this process started.

• The application period for the Fiscal Year 2019 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants is expected to begin on or around April 13, 2020.

If your department needs assistance in applying for a SAFER grant, email firegrants@iaff.org. If your department did not previously apply for an Assistance to Firefighters (FIRE Act) grant this year, your department will need to register with the new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) GO system to apply for a SAFER grant.