Rawlins council authorizes FEMA grant application to buy Raman chemical detector
September 27, 2025 | Rawlins City Council, Rawlins, Carbon County, Wyoming
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The Rawlins City Council voted on Sept. 26 to authorize submission of a $103,550 grant application to the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency 2025 State Homeland Security Program to buy a Raman chemical detector.
Council Member Singer moved to approve the resolution; the motion was seconded and the council approved the grant application in a roll-call vote, which the clerk reported as "the motion passes with 7 ayes." The council then invited Fire Chief Alan Robinson to explain the device.
"This is just a grant application for a, Raman spectrum analyzer basically," Chief Alan Robinson told the council. He said the device analyzes solids and liquids and can identify many substances from a library of chemicals. "It has a very large library, of chemicals, upwards to 30,000 different chemicals that we'll identify," Robinson said.
Robinson told the council the department has an older unit manufactured around February 2010 that is outdated and no longer supported by the original maker. He said the proposed unit is portable "no larger than my notebook" and would be kept as a deployable asset in the city's hazardous materials trailer and made available for regional response when needed. Robinson said local teams in Laramie have similar equipment but that waiting on a distant team can take several hours.
When asked how often the machine would be used, Robinson said it is not needed frequently but that there have been "occasions within the last year that we could have used it a couple of times." He said the spectrometer can help classify unknown materials beyond the nine DOT hazard classes currently used to decide immediate safety measures.
The resolution recorded in the council packet authorizes City of Rawlins Fire Chief Alan Robinson as the designated representative to submit the FEMA State Homeland Security Program grant application for $103,550.
If awarded, the grant would fund acquisition of the spectrometer; the council did not adopt any policy changes beyond approving submission of the application.
Council Member Singer moved to approve the resolution; the motion was seconded and the council approved the grant application in a roll-call vote, which the clerk reported as "the motion passes with 7 ayes." The council then invited Fire Chief Alan Robinson to explain the device.
"This is just a grant application for a, Raman spectrum analyzer basically," Chief Alan Robinson told the council. He said the device analyzes solids and liquids and can identify many substances from a library of chemicals. "It has a very large library, of chemicals, upwards to 30,000 different chemicals that we'll identify," Robinson said.
Robinson told the council the department has an older unit manufactured around February 2010 that is outdated and no longer supported by the original maker. He said the proposed unit is portable "no larger than my notebook" and would be kept as a deployable asset in the city's hazardous materials trailer and made available for regional response when needed. Robinson said local teams in Laramie have similar equipment but that waiting on a distant team can take several hours.
When asked how often the machine would be used, Robinson said it is not needed frequently but that there have been "occasions within the last year that we could have used it a couple of times." He said the spectrometer can help classify unknown materials beyond the nine DOT hazard classes currently used to decide immediate safety measures.
The resolution recorded in the council packet authorizes City of Rawlins Fire Chief Alan Robinson as the designated representative to submit the FEMA State Homeland Security Program grant application for $103,550.
If awarded, the grant would fund acquisition of the spectrometer; the council did not adopt any policy changes beyond approving submission of the application.
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