Bay Area firefighters develop game-changing wildfire technology

SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. – Due to the fact the 1st major firestorms of 2017, substantial technological know-how has been improving upon equipment for firefighters, who continue to generally operate on the floor and usually with small details about how the general battle is likely.

Two Bay Location firefighters have formulated an general problem awareness application that other firefighters adore — and say really should spread to other departments.

Regardless of whether on an iPad or other pill, the Bay-Space-made “Tablet Command” technique is practically nothing significantly less than a technological activity changer for firefighters, by firefighters.

Contra Costa County firefighters William Pidgeon, who is also a personal computer science skilled, and Andy Bozzo, a functioning firefighter, applied their real world encounters to occur up with the Pill Command computer software.

The software package is now utilised by 265 hearth departments across North The united states, and its consumer number is increasing day by day.

“I wasn’t organized to establish a mission vital application. So we raised some cash with close friends and loved ones, developed a business and partnered with a application improvement enterprise to produce the 1st variation of the application,” mentioned Pidgeon.

The app is all about the situational awareness of the overall fire incident, featuring details offered to all incident commanders and initially responders.

“The good point about this, it is really on an iPad, which, for most departments, they can manage to obtain,” claimed Main Costa.

In advance of Pill Command, laptop computer pc methods that did fifty percent as substantially ended up, at the very least, 2 times the charge. To this day, any departments even now have only paper notes, paper maps and a radio, with minor entry to the huge image.

Two Sonoma County firefighters saw the computer software do the job even though they had been on mutual assist incidents, and they fought tricky to deliver it to the Bay Area.

“I was blown away. I was like, ‘Wow, we definitely need to have to provide this to Sonoma County,’” reported Petaluma Hearth Section Assistant Main Chad Costa.

“It is, by considerably, fingers down, a single of the ideal technology tools I have ever used,” added Sonoma Valley Hearth Battalion Chief Spencer Andreis.

Tablet Command involves any area’s hearth historical past, all streets statewide (like back again streets and fire streets), the location of each individual piece of products and hundreds of cameras (which includes remote utility cameras), local hearth weather conditions and is infinitely expandable.

From the subject, firefighters can enter information and facts in actual time, radically rushing up and increasing responses.

If there is certainly any weak spot to this method at all, it occurs in distant locations in which there’s minor or no Wi-Fi. But, with industrial, world-wide-web satellite Wi-Fi presently on the market place, that trouble will probable be cleared up as nicely.