On the afternoon of January 20, 2005
a multi-gas meter was presented to FIST
by Mr. Scott Kleppe, President of of
J & N Enterprises of Valparaiso, Indiana.
Continuing a tradition began many years
ago by his late father John, the entire
Kleppe family, as well as all the employees
of J & N Enterprises believe in taking an
active role in the safety of their local
emergency service workers. From the company's
humble beginning outside Wheeler, to the
newly opened, state of the art manufacturing
plant next to the Porter County Airport,
J & N Enterprises provides quality gas
detection and air monitoring equipment on a
world wide basis.
In making the presentation, Mr. Kleppe
stated that he was more than proud to be able
to support FIST in it's efforts in making
Porter County a safer place to live and
hoped that the monitor being donated would
make our mission much safer for all our
personnel.
Our thanks to the entire Kleppe family
and the employees of J & N Enterprises
for their most gracious donation and
support.
The grant program was being managed by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, but during the first few minutes of the hearing process, the Grant Program Chairperson made it quite clear that nearly no further funding would be available for the year 2004.
After sitting through nearly two hours of other funding requests that were denied, the FIST request was finally addressed. After a short presentation by Director Branham, the hearing board granted the request for the funding needed to purchase the 10 Minitor IV pagers the team had requested.
Once the funds have been received, the pagers will be purchased and then all members of the team will be no farther than a single page away from a response to assist local agencies with an investigation.
On Tuesday, February 27, 2000 State Farm Insurance Company presented two laptop computers to the Porter County Fire Investigation Strike Team.
The presentation was made by State Farm Agent Mike Monroe, who is also a member of the Liberty Township Fire Department.
Once the computers have been loaded with the proper software, they will be utilized in the field to gather the information needed to process incident scenes. A CAD drawing program will also allow team members to complete accurate sketches.
The presentation took place at the South Haven Fire Department, which also received several of the State Farm computers. Pictured above receiving the computers are (L to R) FIST Director James Branham, State Farm Agent Mike Monroe and Asst. FIST Director John Kepshire.