Wheeler County Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD)

Wheeler County
Request: $45,000

Wheeler County had an unprecedented wildfire season in 2024, like many other areas. A total of approximately 147,675ac burned (~14%) amongst 7 separate mega-fire incidents, not including the smaller fires responded solely by local volunteers. Funding through this proposal will be used for the high-priority need of purchasing forty Bendix King (BK) Radios to be immediately used across fire response agencies in Wheeler County. Some of these agencies currently have used/refurbished BK radios, while others do not have any – solely relying on basic radios that are sometimes unprogrammable/unclonable at remote incident command areas. BK is the standard radio utilized by emergency response persons. The particular model SWCD is looking at is known for its extreme durability in harsh conditions, long battery capacity, and field programming/cloning ability. Each radio costs approximately $1,000 and WCSO has a contractor who programs radios on an as-needed basis and has agreed to program all 40 radios for a flat fee of $500. Wheeler SWCD will be the fiscal and administrative sponsor for the project for a flat rate fee of $5,000.