The UASI Program assists high-threat, high-density urban areas in efforts to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism. The UASI program is intended to provide financial assistance to address the unique multi-discipline planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs of high-threat, high-density urban areas and to assist these areas in building and sustaining capabilities to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from threats or acts of terrorism using a "Whole Community" approach. Activities implemented with UASI funds must support terrorism preparedness by building or enhancing capabilities that relate to the prevention of, protection from, mitigation of, response to or recovery from terrorism in order to be considered eligible. However, many capabilities which support terrorism preparedness simultaneously support preparedness for other hazards. Grantees must demonstrate the dual-use quality for any activities implemented that are not explicitly focused on terrorism preparedness. Urban areas must use UASI funds to employ regional approaches to overall preparedness and are encouraged to adopt regional response structures whenever appropriate. UASI program implementation and governance must include regional partners and should have balanced representation among entities with operational responsibilities for prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery activities within the region.
The District is seeking approval to apply for the UASI grant to purchase a hooklift modular transport vehicle. This project will provide us with a vehicle that can deliver modularized rescue containers to multiple locations in a large incident with one vehicle. This project is based on a vehicle that Phoenix Fire Department has used for a number of years and has been deployed to multiple major disasters with FEMA USAR AZ TF-1. The vehicle is a three axle commercial chassis truck that has a specialized system built on it that allows it to move up to a fully loaded 20 foot intermodal container. The containers will each be designed for different rescue disciplines (heavy breaching, shoring, etc.). This vehicle would give our department and the region the ability to build multiple caches of equipment and deliver them with one vehicle.