A Real Eye-Opener

Smoke and darkness enveloped Joe Cucinotti as the rusty door of a burning warehouse clanged shut behind him.

But for the first time in his career, the veteran Fountain Valley firefighter on Thursday was not blindly facing the danger ahead.

Wearing a helmet equipped with an infra-red sensor, Cucinotti could see walls, obstacles, the fire ahead of him and, most importantly, another firefighter playing the part of victim in this field test of the device.

“It was like daytime,” Cucinotti later said. “You can see these incredible, ghostly images, where usually you would see nothing in an environment like that. Usually, you wouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of your face.”

The device is the CarinsIRIS Thermal Imaging System, a high-tech sensor originally developed for the military. In recent years, it has been added to the arsenal of more than 350 fire departments across the nation, but just a few in California and none in Orange County.

Cucinotti and his fellow firefighters would like to change that. The test Thursday was to give the city’s crews some experience with the device and drum up public support for the purchase of two of the $25,000 devices for the department. The agency, one of the smallest in Orange County, is looking entirely to fund-raising efforts for that.

“It is expensive equipment, we know that,” Cucinotti said. “We couldn’t do it ourselves. We have a lot of ideas for fund raisers, but we’re hoping to see what the public support might be like.”

The opinion of the city’s fire officials was clear Thursday as they gathered to watch Cucinotti and others march into smoke billowing from the deserted Yellow Taxi warehouse on Mount Herrmann Street. The black and white images produced by the device were sent via a cable to a television outside, as firefighters watched.

“I’m really surprised by the clarity of the images,” Chief Bernard F. Heimos said. “I see this as one of the last frontiers in technology that we have not made strides in. Through the years, we’ve seen improvements in apparatus, hoses, turnouts. . . . But the one constant challenge has been visibility.”

Firefighters often must crawl blindly on hands and knees through burning buildings, groping with gloved hands for victims. The dangerous searches take time, which can be greatly reduced by the device, Heimos said.

In the past, other infra-red sensors have been used in fires, but they were large and hand-held, limiting their practicality. The 3-pound device tested Thursday is mounted on the side and front of a helmet, making a “huge difference,” Heimos said.

The images created by past devices also lacked clarity, according to Lee H. Milton, a West Coast manager for the New Jersey-based CarinsIRIS. The Thermal Imaging System, a variation of the device used by soldiers and pilots on the battlefields of the Persian Gulf War, delivered an image Thursday that allowed Cucinotti to see the grooves in the metal walls of the burning warehouse.

The images resemble the hazy black-and-white contours of an X-ray slide. The computer chip in the sensor reads minor heat fluctuations and translates them into the high-contrast video images. Fire reads as pure white, while floors appear gray and black. A person lying against a wall “is clear, but ghostly looking,” Cucinotti said.

For firefighter-paramedic Tim Finucan, the images were especially intriguing. In December 1991, Finucan saved a disabled man who was trapped upstairs in a burning home, but the lengthy search for the semi-conscious man nearly cost the victim and his rescuer their lives.

“I really thought I was going to die,” Finucan said Thursday, recalling how his oxygen tank ran out moments after he found George Smyrniotis slumped in his bedroom. “I thought we were both dead.”

But Finucan roused the man, handed him a flashlight and called for help from his fellow firefighters before climbing out a window. He then grabbed a fresh tank and went back in the house to help carry Smyrniotis to safety.

“With this, well, it might have been a lot easier,” Finucan said, nodding toward the screen showing images captured by the infra-red device. “It’s all about finding the victims, that’s what’s important. That’s what it’s all about.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Vision Quest

Helmets, equipped with infrared cameras and minicomputers, are helping firefighters see through thick black smoke to fight fires and save lives. How the heat reading system works:

1. Infrared sensor measures heat behind surfaces, heat from bodies, and hot gases

2. Image is recorded and fed into thermal video display

3. Thermal video displays images in black and white, with white being hot ****

Infrared Uses

* Find safe route

* Search for and rescue fire victims

* Locate fire behind walls, ceilings, floors and closed doors

Source: CairnsIRIS

Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times