The Huntington Fire Department put a new truck in service in late 2016, but it's a smaller piece of equipment acquired at about the same time that has Chief Tim Albertson excited. Fifteen of the firefighters are now using breathing masks that have built-in thermal imaging cameras.
That means the firefighters can enter a smoke-filled room and scan it for sources of heat — coming from a person or a flame — and still have their hands free to handle equipment or make a rescue.
Neither the self-contained breathing apparatus nor the thermal imaging camera is new; the HFD has been using both for years. But the camera built into the mask has been on the market only since April. Albertson bought 15 of them last fall, enough for about half of the city’s firefighters. If they work out like he thinks they will, he plans to buy more for the rest of the department.
Firefighters have already used the combination mask/camera at one house fire.
“They knew no one was in the house,” Albertson says. “But when they walked in and looked around the room, they could see exactly where the fire was and put the fire out.”
Seeing a fire isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
“It will get so black and smoky you can literally put your hand in front of your face and you can’t see it,” the chief says.
A high-powered flashlight will light up an area about two to three feet in front of the firefighter, he says, but the thermal imaging camera gives the firefighter a view of heat sources in the entire room.
A stand-alone thermal imaging camera is large and occupies the firefighter’s hands. The new Scott Sight camera fits inside the breathing mask without obstructing the firefighter’s natural view. The dual-purpose equipment replaces air packs that were more than a decade old and becoming obsolete.