By Cristi Laquer
FireRescue1 Staff
 Photo Storm King Mountain The V-Watch Fire shown in its shock-resistant NOMEX case. |
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The dangers of electrocution are often overlooked at the scene of an emergency. Each year, firefighters are needlessly injured or killed by accidental contact with power lines or other high-voltage conductors.
Good communication with utility companies is key to reducing the hazard, but there are other measures firefighters can take to improve their safety. One product on the market — the V-Watch Fire — is a personal voltage detector aimed at firefighters.
It was created by Storm King Mountain, a California company that specializes in products that directly combat fireground dangers.
The small electronic device — about the size of a cell phone or pager — can detect electrical fields up to 30 feet away and warns the user with loud beeps or blinking lights. The V-Watch Fire pinpoints the source of electric charges and as it gets closer to a charge, its warnings get louder and faster.
Storm King Mountain was founded and named after the 1994 wildland incident in Colorado that killed 14 firefighters in a burnover. Its President Jim Roth, brother of one of the fallen firefighters, Roger Roth, initially formed it after developing a new fire shelter. Then, when a firefighter was severely injured by a downed power line in Santa Barbara, Roth began looking for something that could prevent similar incidents.
“We found the V-Watch, which was produced by HD Electric, in use at utility companies,” Roth said. “It was set to operate at voltages above 14,400. We needed something different for first responders.”
Roth gave HD Electric specifications with firefighters in mind. “We needed to be able to warn firefighters at household voltages of 120 volts,” he said.
The company also packaged the V-Watch for the intense environments of firefighting by making it easily portable and putting it in a buffering NOMEX case. “We didn’t want them to have to hold it,” Roth said. “Firefighters need to be able to go about their business.”
The product has now been on the market for over two years, and Roth said feedback from users has been extremely positive. Since voltage detectors have not been adopted as a standard piece of PPE by state or federal agencies, most units have been purchased by local departments. “Some individual firefighters have even purchased them out of their own pocket,” Roth said.
Field Testing
The Hot Shot fire crew, of the Las Padres National Forest, the district where the Santa Barbara incident occurred, was one of the first to try out the V-Watch Fire. Superintendent Stan Stewart said, “It’s another chunk of insurance that keeps someone from getting hurt.”
 Photo Storm King Mountain The V-Watch Fire should be worn on the front of the body to most effectively detect electric fields. |
Roth said feedback from the crew helped Storm King Mountain adapt the product for firefighters. For instance, the current version of the device is attached to turnout gear with a plastic, rather than metal, clip, and can be detached by a single button push. This allows firefighters to move the V-Watch manually to determine the direction of a charge and avoid moving closer to danger themselves.
The V-Watch Fire is especially useful in wildland-urban interface settings, where downed high voltage power lines often spark fires, then lie hidden in grass or brush, Stewart said.
Teaching Tool
The V-Watch Fire has been incorporated into some lesson plans for electricity safety classes for firefighters including those at the Fire & Rescue Training Institute in Columbia, Mo.
Institute instructor Larry Wilson said electrical safety training traditionally teaches firefighters to stay away from power lines or other possible voltage sources, which doesn’t factor in hidden dangers. And some electrical injuries are caused by miscommunication about whether a line is powered or not,
Roth said. “Firefighters have arrived on the scene of an auto accident and used the V-Watch Fire to immediately determine that the downed wire they were seeing was live.”