As part of an effort to keep IAFF members serving overseas in the Reserve Forces and National Guard safe, the IAFF is supporting Operation Helmet, a program to provide soldiers with potentially life-saving upgrades to ballistic helmets – free of charge. These upgrades are currently only issued to the military’s most elite forces and do not filter down to Reserve and National Guard forces. Therefore, these and the many other soldiers who make up half of the nation’s military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are serving without the proper equipment to ensure their safety.
“It is a disgrace that our government continues to send troops into combat without the proper equipment to do their jobs and come home safely,” says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger, who has made a $5,000 donation to Operation Helmet to help pay for these desperately-needed helmet upgrades for the 407th Air Expeditionary Group based at Ali Base, Iraq, the unit in which former Attleboro, MA Local 858 President Paul Jacques, members of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts and other IAFF members are now serving.
John Garran, a senior corpsman for 165 members of a Marine Corps weapons company and a member of Barnstable, MA Local 3276, is serving is Fallujah with other IAFF brothers and sisters from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut. He reports that the helmet project has donated 90 helmet liners this year, with more on the way. “We’ve already experienced one situation where the helmet upgrades have made a difference between a mild concussion and one that would have taken the marine out of the fight,” says Garran.
The helmet upgrades replace the 1930s-era helmet support system, are more stable and decrease G-force transmission to the head and brain on impact.
The IAFF encourages its affiliates and members to help their brothers and sisters serving overseas by making a donation to Operation Helmet. Upgrades are $98.69 each.
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