With wildfires becoming both more frequent and larger in scale, fire fighters are looking for new tools to help assist them in their efforts, and with their safety. Tablet Command, an app created by Will Pigeon, assistant fire captain for Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, and Andy Bozzo, Contra Costa County Fire Captain, seeks to address this issue by offering navigation-and-response tools to fire fighters in the field, according to The East Bay Times. Says Pigeon of the need, “these megafires, extraordinary fires that devastate a large area, are the new normal. While it’s devastating to the environment and to the people who live there, it also has become more and more dangerous for the firefighters combating these infernos.”
The app is hosted in the iPod environment, and provides an interface that allows for the manipulation of units on a screen, to track fires, personnel, and equipment in active events. Differing from many other incident management tools, the app is also designed to function without Internet connectivity, which can be critical in environments where Internet connections are intermittent or unreliable.
Says Bozzo of the importance of the app, “Our goal was to create an incident navigation tool that would help to save lives as fire conditions rapidly deteriorate. When fire crews have been operating for a certain amount of time, it’s like an hourglass. If you don’t make progress before the sands run out, you’ve got problems.”
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