When New York City firefighters and police officers rushed into the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, their commanding officers on the street had little knowledge of where they were, the condition they were in, or the best way for them to escape.
Hundreds of emergency workers died when the twin towers collapsed, and the aftermath left safety officials looking for ways to improve communications.
As the 10-year anniversary of the attacks approaches, researchers are working to perfect technology that tracks first responders so they can rescue others more safely.
On Tuesday, a group of Massachusetts firefighters crawled into a three-story brick laboratory building at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to test one of the new devices.
They carried plastic axes, but otherwise donned full gear including oxygen tanks strapped on their backs. They wore blacked-out masks to impair their vision, but also carried tracking devices the size of walkie-talkies that allowed their commander outside to follow their movements.
The chief saw his men as moving red dots on a computer screen as he talked them through the building. In less than five minutes, they found a “lost” fellow firefighter.
“The technology is getting much easier to use,” Worcester Deputy Fire Chief John Sullivan said.
His department and WPI have been working together for over a decade, spurred by the deaths of six Worcester firefighters who entered a 100,000-square-foot abandoned building during a Dec. 3, 1999, fire to look for homeless people they believed were inside.
“Essentially now we’re going in on our last known location of the firefighter and our training,” said Sullivan, who helped search for the men killed in 1999. “We’re trying to cover all the bases more than anything else.”
No devices are on the market yet, but over the past decade several companies and researchers, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, have developed programs and devices that are getting closer to meeting the needs of first responders.
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