Tech company helps fire dept. track crews during Super Bowl

With the system, the department also was able to pinpoint hundreds of game-related events around the county and share that information with other fire crews

February 08, 2016 09:06 AM

The Gazette

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — For some, preparing for Super Bowl Sunday meant stocking up on chips and dip. But for a Colorado-based tech company, it meant helping a California fire department greet an onslaught of football fans.

For months, the Santa Clara County Fire Department readied for Sunday’s game, which brought tens of thousands to its home turf at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. And the Castle Rock company Intterra gave the department an edge by designing a computer system that let the department track its crews Sunday night. With the system, the department also was able to pinpoint hundreds of game-related events around the county and share that information with other fire crews.

Co-founded by a former member of the Colorado Springs Fire Department, David Blankinship, Intterra has long been in the business of collecting computerized information for fire crews. In 2014, the company brought Colorado into the world of tech-savvy firefighting when it designed software for two state-owned planes equipped with remote-sensing thermal technology designed to better detect wildfires.

But Intterra’s additional Super Bowl tools are unique.

“We’ve been in contract with Intterra for about two years,” said Chris Ingram, a firefighter with the Santa Clara County Fire Department. “Probably close to about a year ago, we started brainstorming ideas as far as how our tool could help us specifically for the Super Bowl.”

First responders in Santa Clara County were expecting potentially more than a million people to flood the region for Super Bowl 50, Ingram said. Fire departments such as Santa Clara expected the number of incidents to jump by 20 percent. The increase in calls started Saturday, when the number jumped to 18 percent.

The department isn’t a large one; with 15 stations, it serves 235,000 people. But within Santa Clara County, San Jose’s population measures more than 1 million. The department’s chief, Ken Kehmna, was in charge of coordinating Sunday’s first responder resources - crews, trucks and law enforcement officers. With Intterra’s system, the department could track every emergency incident in the county, Ingram said. The system could be used on computers, tablets or smart phones, and gave anyone with access an immediate snapshot of Santa Clara County while the crowds raged inside Levi Stadium.

And Intterra wasn’t the only Colorado company helping out, Intterra CEO Kate Dargan said.

“We partnered with DigitalGlobe based out of Longmont. They shot a satellite image that showed the stadium in real time,” Dargan said. The imagery was put into Intterra’s system, to be shared with fire responders around the county.

“That’s unique for the Super Bowl,” she added.