An Excellent Solution

Currently, firefighters in the FDNY have to sign in and sign out of fire responses. Someone keeps track of the firefighters in and out of the buildings on paper. That situation means that there are times when firefighters may not know where all firefighters are because of a lag between the time a firefighter is out of the building and roll call.

Some of the problems were highlighted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Firefighters responded to the towers and many showed up without even signing in. It took quite some time before the FDNY could figure out who had even arrived on scene, let alone who were in the towers and where within the buildings they were located.

Although GPS devices are now common, officials said the technology is just now being developed that would allow firefighters to log in and be tracked as they battle blazes.

The U.S. Navy Research Laboratory is working under contract with the FDNY to find a way of installing tiny chips capable of withstanding the rigors of smoke, fire and water.

"It's a small chip that would go inside the bunker gear, and it would be read by equipment installed on the [fire] apparatus," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said.

"It weighs almost nothing."

Initially, the chips would replace the roll call now used to make sure all firefighters are accounted for.

"You've got 200 firefighters at a fire. You're getting out of the building. You want this automated roll call. They go near the rig and that's it," one official said.

Added Scoppetta: "We've had periods of time when we didn't know immediately if a person was in or out of the building."

Ideally, officials hope any firefighter could walk over to a "reader" on any firetruck to log in.

By the time the program's in full swing, officials intend to transmit the data back to the FDNY operation center in Brooklyn, where top brass could trace the movements of every firefighter inside a burning building.

The FDNY already has the capability of displaying the schematics of virtually every building in the city.

This new technology may go a long way to improving the safety and emergency response. Firefighters will eventually be able to use the tags to sign in electronically while firefighters outside a scene would be able to track where the others are located by the tags. It could then help get people out of structures or locate them should there be structural failures.