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The Fire Board decided to pay $6,000 for the equipment that will allow firefighters to "see" through smoke.
By ANNE LINDBERG
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 14, 2001
LEALMAN -- The Fire Board agreed Monday to give its firefighters one of the hottest new tools for fighting fires and improving the odds of rescuing people trapped in burning buildings.
Board members unanimously agreed to pay $6,000 for an ARGUS Thermal Imager, a cameralike tool that will allow firefighters to "see" through smoke and walls to spot fires and downed victims.
"You're looking for the fire. You're looking for remnants of the fire. You're doing search and rescue," Lealman fire Chief Richard Graham said.
"You could use this at just about every fire."
The machine is produced by Marconi Applied Technologies, which has offices in Elmsford, N.Y., Ontario, Canada, and Cedex, France. Marconi is a $150-million business with 49,000 employees worldwide.
The imaging camera converts infrared radiation, which is invisible to humans, into a picture that can be seen. Because the camera responds to heat, it shows hot and cold places in a room.
The imager can facilitate a rescue by locating "cooler" bodies in a room filled with smoke and heat from a fire. Aimed at a wall, the camera will "see" the hot spots, locating a fire even if the flames haven't yet burned through the wall.
"Yes, it is a good tool," Pinellas Park fire Chief Ken Cramer said. "They got a good price. It's a piece of equipment I would like to have. . . .That's a feather in their hat."
The stumbling block for his department, Cramer said, has been the cost. If Pinellas Park ordered the cameras, it would have to have at least one for each engine, or a total of five, which outstrips the budget right now.
"It's just a case of I've got so much money to operate with," Cramer said. "Yes, it is a good tool. It's a very expensive tool."
Imaging cameras normally cost between $15,000 and $35,000, making them too expensive for many fire departments. Lealman got a lower price because the particular camera was used as a demonstration model.
The only other fire departments in Pinellas County with the technology are St. Petersburg and Clearwater.