BY STEVE SHUPERT
When thermal imaging cameras (TICs) first appeared, they were hailed as "firefighter radar," a solution for all our search needs. As this technology has grown, we have discovered the advantages and disadvantages of this very powerful tool and developed some standard practices concerning its use. TICs help us search for victims and are a great crew accountability tool for the crew leader. To employ this dual-pronged approach, you need to develop a plan and train on it.
A watershed moment in my learning curve with TICs happened when my department and I were invited to take part in high-rise fire training. The building had a full-blown command structure exercising all aspects of combating a high-rise fire; of course, part of this involved search.
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