By Lily Alexander
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — After years of dealing with ailing equipment, the Santa Fe Fire Department now has six new gas meters — devices used daily in response to situations from structure fires to suspicious odors.
The meters were funded by a $24,000 grant from the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation. Five of them will be placed on the fire department’s front-line fire engines, while the other — a specialized unit — will be used by the heavy technical rescue team, which operates across Santa Fe County.
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All the meters can be used by the Hazardous Materials Team, too, according to paramedic Skyler Rodriguez, who heads the team.
The department identified the need for updated gas meters late last year, when an internal audit showed the old ones were outdated and unable to efficiently charge or appropriately calibrate. The city was unable to pay for new meters, so Santa Fe Fire Department paramedic and spare-time grant writer Ryan Floersheim researched other funding opportunities, Floersheim said.
Floersheim submitted the grant application in January. After it was approved, the department acquired the meters, and crews recently started using them.
“At least once across the city every day, one of these meters gets used,” Floersheim said. “And it will allow our crews to be 100% more efficient and accurate compared to the previous gas meters.”
The gas meters on the front-line engines monitor four common dangerous gases during crews’ day-to-day responses, and measure gas levels after a structure fire to determine when members of the public can safely reenter the building. More specifically, crews use the gas meters to look for hidden gasses, including hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and chlorine gasses, plus what Rodriguez called “the super nerdy stuff”: volatile organic compounds, which are produced when plastic is burned.
Heavy technical rescue personnel required a specialized unit because they are responsible countywide for every rescue of someone trapped in a trench and confined space rescue — an operation to remove someone trapped in a sewer or silo, for example — Rodriguez said.
Their new meter will allow crews to monitor the air in a confined space from the outside, without actually entering, he said.
When the Hazardous Materials Team uses the meters, it brings them all to one centralized location — the scene of a tanker rollover or the site where a suspicious package was delivered, for example. The team also performs sensitive site security, where it partners with federal entities during some big New Mexico events, like the Burning of Zozobra.
“We can kind of strip all of the front-line engines of their monitors, consolidate them, give them to the people who are experts at this, i.e. my hazmat team, and then augment those federal assets and get all of those gas monitoring into one place,” Rodriguez said.
The new meters have cellular chips and an online portal, allowing Rodriguez to look at the data they are collecting in real time, he said. Their battery life far surpasses that of the old monitors — 72 hours versus three hours, respectively.
The Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation, founded in 2005, has granted $92 million to fund equipment, training and support for first responders across the United States. Of that, $400,000 has gone to New Mexico, Floersheim said.
As far as the impact of the new meters, Rodriguez said he can now make sure the department’s crews are safe.
“I can make sure that the public is safe, and I could not do that with our old ones,” Rodriguez added.
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