Assistance program
Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER)
$2.7 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 97.083
- What it does
- The goal of the SAFER Grant Program is to assist local fire departments with staffing and deployment capabilities in order to respond to emergencies and assure that communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards. Local fire departments accomplish this by improving staffing and deployment capabilities, so they may more effectively and safely respond to emergencies. With enhanced staffing levels, recipients should experience a reduction in response times and an increase in the number of trained personnel assembled at the incident scene. The authorizing authority for the program is Section 34 of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-498, as amended (15 U.S.C § 2229a). The SAFER Program directly supports Goal 3 of the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan to Promote and Sustain a Ready FEMA and Prepared Nation. Performance Measures: Grant Recipients: • Number of front-line personnel hired • Number of volunteer firefighters recruited • Number of firefighters retained SAFER Program Office • Number of grants awarded • Number of grants completed
- Who benefits
- Local or tribal communities serviced by the fire department including, local businesses, homeowners and property owners.
- Who applies
- This program is restricted to the jurisdictions/organizations described in program guidance documents. In summary, for the purpose of this program, "State" is defined as the fifty States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Alaska Village Initiative, a nonprofit organization incorporated in the State of Alaska, shall also be considered eligible for purposes of receiving assistance under this program on behalf of Alaska Native villages. A "fire department" is defined as an agency or organization that has a formally recognized arrangement with a State, territory, local, or tribal authority (city, county, parish, fire district, township, town, or other governing body) to provide fire suppression on a first-due basis to a population within a fixed geographical area. Fire departments may be comprised of members who are all volunteer, combination volunteer/career, or all career.
- Program site
- http://www.fema.gov/firegrants ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments