On Saturday, our department completed a live burn training exercise on the house at 1216 St. Mary's Road near Hillsborough. During the training, our personnel were able to learn about fire behavior, flow path management, teamwork, hose line operations, overhaul operations and a host of other topics ranging from how their gear works to protect them to how long their air supply will last. During that training, Our Technology Captain took temperature readings inside the building using a thermocouple and outside the building using a drone outfitted with thermal imaging. One of the new topics we are focusing on includes an expanded use of UAV's during emergency response operations. The attached pictures back up what we tell new firefighters in that smoke is fuel and often times more dangerous than the fire itself. One picture shows what the human eye sees and the other shows what thermal imaging adds. The interior walls of the home were covered with gypsum and the outside was covered with brick. You can see in the thermal images that the gypsum board did a good job of containing the heat. This reinforces the need to close your bedroom door while you sleep. Firefighters often use thermal imagers to locate hot spots, hidden fires and victims. This time we used it to demonstrate that what we can't see might be the real hazard. If you are interested in learning me about these photos or anything else about our department, contact us.
