The Daily Courier- Advances in Firefighting Equipment

30/2014 6:00:00 AM GEARING UP High-tech equipment helps firefighters battle blazes

Joanna Dodder/The Daily Courier Will Bingman and Chris Stalzer from Juggernaut Defense show off FLASH field kits Thursday during a demonstration of the technology in Prescott. Patrick Whitehurst/The Daily Courier Phoenix Fire Department Capt. John Shumaker, Prescott Fire Department Division Chief Don Devendorf and Prescott Fire Department Capt. Kevin Keith use wearable FLASH kits which can aid crews with on-the-spot firefighting. PRESCOTT, Arizona - Thanks to U.S. Department of Defense officials who heard about the tragic loss of 19 Prescott firefighters, the Prescott Fire Department will be the first fire agency in the nation to test state-of-the-art field communications equipment originally developed for the military. Officials from the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and their contractors demonstrated the new technology Thursday in the field for the Prescott Fire Department, even bringing along a plane to provide real-time aerial images of a simulated wildfire and firefighters. They plan to stay for several days to train first responders. They gave Prescott Fire $225,000 worth of equipment including a dozen field kits consisting of hand-held mobile radios and android touch-screen tablets. The equipment fits into a jacked-up chest radio carrier featuring a waterproof tablet holder designed by Juggernaut Defense LLC of Scottsdale. The new software kit is designed especially for wildland firefighting. It's called FLASH for Fireline Advanced Situational Awareness Handheld. Several portable electronic networking devices can be placed on mountaintops or in planes to connect firefighters with a self-contained mobile 4G network in remote locations. The entire network is called MANET for Mobile Ad-hoc Network. Prescott Fire Department Capt. Kevin Keith clearly was a fan of the equipment after testing it in the field Thursday. "It's an honor" to be the first firefighters to use the system, Keith said. "It has a lot of possibilities for use with not only wildfire, but also search and rescue. It allows us to have situational awareness and personal accountability." For example, he can use the tablet to calculate the distance to a safety zone and how long it might take to get there based on the terrain. While the time calculation doesn't include vegetation, a firefighter still can look at real-time images of the vegetation and terrain. One firefighter can hike an escape route and then transmit that route to other firefighters, Keith added. The loss of the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots on the Yarnell Hill wildfire June 30 got the attention of DARPA, with the help of a Navy Special Operations member who spoke with one of the rescuers who tried to save the hotshots. "It's cutting-edge technology, and the tragedy helped motivate DARPA to get it into people's hands faster," said contractor Chris Kluckhuhn, president of Avwatch who has used the equipment in disasters around the world. DARPA and its contractors made an extra effort to get the equipment to Prescott in time to use for this fire season. MANET already has proven its worth in the military as well as in disasters from Hurricane Sandy to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Kluckhuhn said. The FLASH application is newer. The feedback from Prescott will help refine the system, DARPA officials said. And if it receives a strong reception in Prescott, DARPA might spread it around the country to help jump-start the technology for firefighters and other first responders. DARPA and its contractors already are experimenting with its use on structural firefighting. And Prescott firefighters already were talking Thursday about how they could share the equipment with other first responders. Chris Stein from the Navy's Special Operations showed Prescott firefighters Thursday what the system can do. Incident command officers can use the system's video screens to display the exact locations of firefighters wearing the kits. In the Yarnell Hill wildfire, the IC team and other firefighters thought the Granite Mountain Hotshots were in another location. And firefighters facing an emergency can override others on the radio system to announce their situation. Firefighters on the ground access the same video feeds as the supervisors. They can zoom in on their location, then zoom out to gain situational awareness. They have access to the Internet and its weather information. Fire managers can add the locations of the fire perimeter, spot fires and safety zones on the maps for all to see. Map layers include terrain, roads and structures. The system can even tell when firefighters are about to go out of the range of communication. "This is game-changing technology," Kluckhuhn said. "What you are seeing now didn't exist a year ago." Each firefighter kit costs about $9,000 so it's accessible for fire agencies, and the U.S. government owns the FLASH software so that's free, Kluckhuhn said. "This is the way you're going to be doing business in the future," Kluckhuhn told Prescott firefighters. A former Coast Guard helicopter pilot, Kluckhuhn said he located a sailboat in distress during Hurricane Irene and instantly shared video that relayed its location so rescuers could get there much faster. It can shorten a decision cycle from minutes to seconds. "The technology has already saved lives," he said. Follow Joanna Dodder on Twitter @joannadodder