High-tech System Keeps Track of First Responders - So Near and Yet so Far
JESSICA L De VAULT, Staff Writer
Published March 25, 2006Imagine several houses are on fire. It started off as a tame residential blaze, but quickly turned into a raging fire that consumed two nearby homes.
There are 20 emergency responders on the scene and each is carrying a badge with a silver button on it. These “Personal Identification Buttons” store emergency workers’ personal information– medical records, emergency contacts and rank.
When responding to a scene, emergency workers place the buttons into a specialized box located in a fire truck or ambulance. In doing so, their personal records and arrival time are logged into the Touch ‘N Track system, alerting supervisors as to who is on the scene….
I’m writing this with some mixed emotions. In one respect I want to offer my congratulations to the county and to Spartanburg for actually doing something to offer some protection to their responders with the massive Homeland Security grants that have in many cases been lying fallow for years now … yep going on 5 years since 9/11 folks and our progress, nationwide, has been PITIFUL. I’m not a Bush crony or even a politician or government employee any longer so I don’t have to hew to the “party” line. A significant amount of the DHS grants that have been used have gone to buying new SUV’s for fire chief’s, 6 man Hazardous Response vehicles for 5 man country fire departments and numerous other boondoggles.
This Touch ‘N Track system at least is out of the millions and millions that the “beltway Bandit” companies are extracting from DHS and unlike their efforts, actually delivers a product that works. And the product is actually concerned with the welfare of First Responders and actually has a potential to help in incident management. Good stuff.
The other side of the coin however is that this system goes no where new and does nothing that isn’t being done today with a pad of paper and a stubby pencil. The principle of each responder reporting to the Incident Commander and logging in has been a “Prime Directive” in emergency management for years. It’s an operational procedure, not a technological one. Responders can write their name on a pad, clip their ID badge on a badge tree, drop their uniform badge in a cardboard box, etc., etc. All of these methods are in use today and they all serve the same purpose … they apprise the Incident Commander who is on-scene and help prevent the tragedy of a responder going missing … trapped by flames, rendered unconscious by poison gasses or left behind in an evacuation. I am a bona fide technology nut so I hate to say this, but the system described here is a $148,000 stubby pencil. Memo to DHS Secretary Chertoff, at current Office max prices the best yellow wooden pencils are a slow as $5 or $6 bucks per hundred, an electric sharpeners is under $10 and you can give each incident commander at fancy spiral bound hand 6 x 9 size steno pad for less than $4. I can equip a lot of emergency responders for $148,00!
The twin problems of every system from the pencil to the Touch ‘N Track is that they rely on the individual responders to remember to log in, and they only tell who is on the scene, not where the individuals are working or where they may be trapped.
One well know firefighter’s motto is, “we fight what others fear”. I fully endorse that, I don’t think I could run into a burning house, and if I somehow did, I wouldn’t be able to do much except hide in a corner and tremble. I have nothing but admiration for the men and women who go where I fear to tread. But thinking about writing your name on a list or placing a little button in a box is hardly going to be the first thing on the mind of people with this kind of courage and mind set. What’s needed is a system that logs their presence or absence from the scene without human intervention.
Secondly, knowing a responder is on scene and not responding to calls must be the nightmare of every Incident Commander. Once the responders presence is confirmed by an accounting system, the system is useless unless it helps other responders find the missing crew member. If the person in trouble can answer radio or voice calls there’s no need for any technology to find him or her … what’s to be done for the person who can’t answer?
GPS was mention briefly in the news article and it’s well known that I am a big GPS advocate. If there was a reliable and useful GPS system for First Responders, I’d be selling it. GPS is essentially useless in the basement of a burning structure or inside a metal storage tank. What is useful is an active RFID system These systems are as simple as a key-fob size tags (run by batteries that last as long as 7 years) and a reader on the Incident Commander’s vehicle. The range on these active tags can be hundreds of feet, so even if a responder forgets protocol and runs onto the scene, his or her presence is automatically logged. No chance of forgetting and no time wasted.. With two or more readers at different locations on the site, the location of individual responders can be tracked to a high degree of precision. With a battery-powered portable reader, rescue personnel can track a victim down to feet and inches.
So why isn’t someone marketing a real system like this instead of an automated stubby pencil? Beats me, the active tags cost $25 or less in small quantities, the readers perhaps a thousand bucks. You could build a lot of these systems for $148,000. Who wants to be first?
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