RUMFORD – When firefighters enter a burning building, look for a lost person, or try to find the source of a fire, they now have an extra set of eyes – a thermal imaging camera.
Scott Holmes, deputy chief of the Rumford Fire Department, wrote a grant request for the thermal sensor from the Galen Cole Foundation in Bangor. The camera, valued at $15,000, arrived last week.
Last weekend, the first four of the town’s firefighters underwent training in Bath on how to use it.
All full-time and call force firefighters will eventually learn how to use the camera.
“This gives us eyes and sight where we never had it before,” said Holmes. “It reads heat, sees infra-red, heat from people and animals.”
An option included with the camera also allows firefighters to see a heat signature of where someone or something may have just been. That could be helpful for finding lost people.
The fire department was required to donate $1,000 to the Cole fund to help with the purchase of other thermal imaging cameras for other departments. That wasn’t a bad deal, said Holmes.
The camera will be placed with other equipment on the department’s new aerial truck. Holmes hopes to write other grants in an effort to get a second thermal imaging camera that will be housed in the Rumford Point substation.
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