Monday, September 29, 2014

High Tech Storm Shelters

 Good Morning from Blazing Embers! Do you live where there are a lot of tornadoes or natural disasters in general? Wouldn't it be great if you would be able to find some of the people stuck in the shelters a little easier even if it's covered in rubble? That is what Firefighter Shonn Neidel thought when he experienced a tornado last May in Moore, Oklahoma. He had found that their old shelter listing just wasn't enough. They had the home numbers for the places that have the storm shelters but that doesn't help when the house isn't much of a house anymore. They went looking at the different places that they assumed had shelters because the house was leveled to the ground or they were too badly damaged to actually show what house it was. They then though of an app that will show you physically where the shelter is and it will show them geographically instead of usuing land marks that may  not be there in a week. I personally (if I were to live in an area with multiple disasters) would love to have an app that would show me where to look for someone if they needed me. It would make life so much easier than going house to house with an outdated book trying to figure out where someone was instead of saving the ones that truly need you. Let me know what you think! Is the app a good idea or should they try to keep thinking?

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Sometimes we have to play with trains...

Saturday morning around 9:45 a.m. a train derailed in Altoona, Pennsylvania. There were in total 107 cars that were on the train itself. 17 were derailed and out of them 9 were completely smashed. Luckily, no one was injured during the incident. The train cars were hauling white vans that had minimal fuel on all the vans. Overall it took a little over 20 hours to complete the clean up process. In total, there were 4 rail lines that were damaged, a road on the side of the tracks, and a car that was smashed after the derailment.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Firefighter's can see it all!

A few inventors are trying to come up with more and more ways now to keep us firefighters safe while in the chaos and destruction of a burning building. Their latest invention is dealing with the self contained breathing apparatus better known to us as SCBA. They are trying to make it so we have "bionic" vision. We would be able to get a lot of awesome features from it like the external temperature the rooms were in or be able to pull up little videos of our other men that are inside the building. We would also be able to see if there are any contaminants that would be harmful to us if we were to proceed. It gives information of battery life of the equipment your carrying, how much air you have left, your heart rate, and your body temperature. Last but not least, what I believe would be the best safety feature of the new SCBA would be it's ability to detect rapid changes within the
building. It is able to show you the waves of flames in a room that you are about to go into.

New SCBA technology gives firefighters 'bionic' vision (must see!)