Stephen King Gives Fire Department a Helping Hand

Stephen King has made millions unleashing a myriad of horrors on Maine towns in fiction—and spent millions helping them in real life. In the latest donation from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, the husband-and-wife authors donated $30,000 to help the Bangor Fire Department buy new thermal imaging cameras, WABI reports. According to tax records, the foundation made 150 grants in 2015 totaling around $3 million to libraries, schools, fire departments, health centers, homeless shelters, and many other causes in cities and towns across the state, the Bangor Daily News reports.

The Kings have been particularly generous to Bangor, where they have a home: They donated $3 million toward the cost of the public library's renovation in 2013 and gave millions to earlier projects including Mansfield Stadium and a public pool, the Daily News notes. The Kings "are kind people who want to give back to the community and we are appreciative of what they do," says Bangor Fire Chief Tom Higgins. He says the new cameras the Kings are funding, which help firefighters see objects and identify hot spots through heavy smoke, are lighter and deliver images 10 times better than the older models. (In 2009, King donated an odd amount to help troops go home for the holidays.)