NY Times
By JESSIE SCANLON
THIS is our replacement command board," Deputy Chief
Vincent Mandala said, opening an 18-by-4-inch welded aluminum case standing on
folding legs in the 11th Division station in downtown Brooklyn. "The old
one was destroyed on 9/11."
Each division of the New
York City Fire Department owns such a board, which is used by the commander at
the scene of a major fire to track units as they respond. And for all the
technology devoted to public safety these days, it is a decidedly quaint
approach. Magnetic identifiers for each engine, ladder truck, or other unit or
city agency at the scene are stored on the case's inside lid.
To demonstrate, Chief
Mandala sketched a building with marking pen on the board, placed E207 in the
third floor to indicate that he had sent Engine 207 into the building, and
added L122 to a box labeled R & R to show that Ladder 122 had just emerged
from the blaze - information also relayed to headquarters by radio. "It's
just a simple, efficient way for me to know where everyone is," Chief
Mandala said.
But its limitations also
became evident on Sept. 11, 2001, when 343 firefighters perished at the World
Trade Center. It was difficult to keep up with units (including those of the
11th Division) rushing into a critical situation, often without checking in, or
to relay that information instantly to a central command for immediate use or
later review. These and other system failures were laid out in August 2002 in a
report by the management consultants McKinsey & Company that called, among
other things, for a wireless electronic command board.
A few months later, John
Beckman, a former firefighter working in the press office at New York
University, saw something that seemed to fit the bill: a table-like 42-inch
plasma touch-screen display developed by the university's Center for Advanced
Technology. Mr. Beckman put friends at the Fire Department in touch with the
center, and by last June their collaboration had produced a prototype of a
tracking device that the department hopes to have in use by the end of this
year.
Chris Poultney, a research
scientist at the technology center, showed a reporter the ease of calling up an
aerial view of the five boroughs and zooming in until Manhattan and then just
Lower Manhattan filled the screen. Mr. Poultney switched from the photograph to
a street view and panned uptown to Times Square and then back toward Washington
Square. From this virtual height, the street names and building footprints are
visible, but he zoomed in further toward N.Y.U. until the floor plans of the
building he was standing in were evident.
At a fire, icons would be
dragged onto the map in a parallel to what Chief Mandala had done with his
marker and whiteboard: E33 at the corner of Waverly Place and Broadway, E5
around on Washington Place. The software also allows Mr. Poultney to add
finger-written notes, use a roll-over magnifying window to see greater detail,
or superimpose a street map over an aerial view.
But the biggest difference
between old and new is that the information he enters is transmitted wirelessly
to Fire Department headquarters, where it is displayed on an identical board.
For the incident commander,
access to all of that data in a single, visual interface is meant to take much
of the guesswork out of the job. In addition, officers will be able to review
the data and to use it in training.
Officers mention a third
advantage when they talk about the unsettling possibility of simultaneous
terrorist attacks.
"Those of us at the
Fire Department command center will be able to get a whole city picture, and
decide how to allocate resources," said Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph W.
Pfeifer, sitting at his desk at Fire Department headquarters in Brooklyn. Chief
Pfeifer, who lost 20 men in his battalion on Sept. 11, sits beneath a panoramic
photograph of the city, the World Trade Center gleaming in the foreground.
"I want this
yesterday," he said of the new technology. "But that's not going to happen."
A vendor to produce the
system is to be chosen this spring. Eventually, officials hope that it will
integrate live video feeds, information from the police and paramedics, data
from other city agencies, hydrant locations, gas and water lines, and subway
station layouts. There are plans for tablet computers, connected by wireless
network, that will give each battalion chief at a fire both an overview of the
situation and a means to relay updates.
As new technologies become
available, the command board will begin to track casualties and determine the
closest hospitals for treating the injured. As more buildings are wired with
environmental sensors, the board will display information on room temperatures
and other conditions. And most important, it will automatically log in units as
they arrive at the scene.
"If we see a sudden
drop in the X axis," or height, said Mike Uretsky, co-director of the
Center for Advanced Technology, "we know the floor's gone out from under a
firefighter long before he can hit the S O S button." But Professor
Uretsky acknowledges that several problems must be solved before this vision
becomes reality. First, there is the packaging: the command board needs to be
easy to transport, water-tight, chemical-resistant and rugged. Improvements
will also be needed in wireless capability; current signals cannot penetrate
high rise buildings.
After 9/11, when the Fire
Department was first considering an upgrade, Chief Pfeifer visited half a dozen
fire departments in major cities to see the other systems in use. He found
plain old white boards and Velcro setups but, above all, lots of interest in a
digital version. The New York initiative, he said, could become a model.
Putting out a blaze in a
skyscraper is different from fighting to save a wooden house. But Chief Pfeifer
says all fire scenes have this much in common: "It's dark. It's smoky. You
can't see five feet away.'' A high-tech command board, he said, "will make
the job safer."