From the Colorado Sun:
— New technology allowing firefighters to “smell” points of origin and locate hot spots or new fires even before smoke can be seen is among the next generation of safety measures the Department of Homeland Security says will help communities and first responders facing longer, more destructive fire seasons in Colorado.
Headlining an event this week at the Boulder County Regional Fire Training Center, the sensor can detect fire-born particulates, volatile organic compounds, chemicals and gases and then send the data to a cloud-based system that updates every 18 seconds and issues geographically targeted notifications to disaster management officials and first responders. Although the sweet spot for detection is a half-mile to a mile away, developers said a sensor once detected a fire 5 miles away.
“If I was barbecuing and burned a steak, or I was baking cookies and forgot to turn the oven off, or even worse, if something caught fire, you would smell that difference, right?” said Debra Deininger, chief revenue officer at N5 Sensors, which created the sniffer. “What we’ve done is kind of emulated a dog’s nose with our sensors…to tell if a fire has started, if it’s burning or if it’s smoldering, often before you can see the smoke.”
Gilpin County was the first place in the U.S. to use the sensor, initially on its own and later partnering with United Power.
The sensors are intended to protect people, homes and evacuation routes, Deininger said, and to get the most coverage in Gilpin County, which has 6,000 people spread across 150 square miles, the former emergency management director asked United Power to place them on utility poles. More than 100 sensor installations later, they have detected three fires, including one that had re-ignited after it was extinguished.
Three of 20 sensors also have been installed in Jefferson County, where they have yet to detect a fire. The additional 17 should arrive in the near future.
Dimitri Kusnezov, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate, said first responders need all the help they can get from new technology, like the N5SHIELD. Another AI-driven fire sensor recently introduced to Colorado can detect fresh fires via satellite images and instantly alert NOAA and National Weather Service officials, enabling them to make more efficient and informed decisions.