More Obama Stupidty

From Firehouse:  Rural fire department struggle to get by.
Faced with increasing costs and limited if not decreasing tax bases, many Indiana departments are merging as a way to share crews and equipment.
Many departments have been lucky enough to receive tankers, trucks and other crucial equipment from the U.S. military. The Department of Defense would give about $150 million in surplus equipment to needy rural departments.
In Madison County, three mostly volunteer departments -- Frankton, Adams Township/Markleville and Lapel/Stony Creek -- have been recent recipients of equipment through the program.
The Department of Defense recently announced it was ending the program. Then, local fire departments across the nation, as well as the federal government, raised objections, prompting an about-race and re-institution of the program.
The engines in these vehicles did not comply with government air pollution control guidelines. The Department of Defense decided to enforce a 25-year-old agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency. The agreement would have barred the sale, donation or loan of equipment with engines that fail to meet EPA standards.
The initial decision to end the program was alarming.
Most rural departments rely on volunteers to respond to emergencies. Without them, rural residents would have little protection from fires that can, as an example, spread quickly across dry farmland.
And that scenario makes the situation even more of a dilemma. Is the emission from an older engine more damaging that the loss of farms from fire? Indeed, aren't there harmful emissions from fires -- particularly those that blaze out of control? Those are probably questions that can only be answered by wondering whether some environmental standards go too far. This one standard certainly does.  http://www.firehouse.com/news/11571254/dod-fire-equipment-surplus-program-ends
So, the Obama administration has decided that it is more important that it is more dangerous to the environment to drive a fire truck a few times a year and allow grass, structure and farm land fires to pollute the air.
I've been on 2 fire depts. where they used old military trucks as fire trucks.  Most of the time, they use the trucks as tankers, transporting water to the fire.
And trust me, the rural fire these trucks would have gone to, pollute way more than the engines of the trucks.
Just more stupidity from the Obama administration.
And the IAFF/firefighters union supported this fool president.