With a son arriving home from the war zone in Afghanistan to attend his father's funeral, the state Fire Marshal's office is working with the Worcester County District attorney as the investigation into the fire that killed Jon Davies is heating up.
Local news outlets, such as WBZ-TV, the local CBS-affiliate, have reported there had been numerous code violations reported in the building the burned four days ago killing the 17-year veteran of the fire department. (That the State Fire Marshal and Worcester DA are teaming up seems to indicate something a little more serious could be brewing in the background that might, at least, explain the tragedy.)
Long-time veteran
Davies, a member of a two-man rescue crew on what is known as a heavy rescue vehicle, and his partner responded heroically when they heard a report there might still be someone trapped inside the burning Worcester building. They were doing their jobs when others in the department began screaming over their radios for the firefighting team to get out with flash messages. Obviously, those messages weren't heard by the firefighters and the area of he building where they were looking came apart crashing down on them, with the debris falling on Davies as his partner was fortunately pushed into a hole in the cellar and shielded from the debris. Davies wasn't as fortunate and now his family and the department mourn the death of another fallen hero.
It's as if fate has taken special aim at the Worcester Fire Department in the last dozen years as 12 years ago six firefighters perished in the collapse of a warehouse after a pair of drifters – who had been living the central MA town of Framingham for a time, but made their way to Worcester that night, a distance of only 17 miles – started a fire to keep warm and then fled when it got out of hand. The pair was prosecuted but found innocent as they couldn't have known their actions would result in the deaths of the six, but it did. Now, another her joins the ranks of Worcester's fallen, mere weeks before his planned marriage to his fiance. Davies had three grown children from another marriage.
(As if to add insult to injury, there have been a rash of false alarms in the eastern part of the state in the Woburn area that is to the northwest of Boston. It seems as if a group of teens – thinking it's a harmless prank – drove around this weekend and set up to nine false alarms. Each alarm not only endangers the firefighters on the truck as they have to go act as if the report is real and at least two engines and support speed to the site exposing the firefighters to the dangers of road traffic and accidents, but the engines are drawn away from where they are needed to cover homes and businesses, endangering residents. The kids may think it's a fun prank to stand in the shadows and watch the firefighters come out, but it's obvious they haven't developed any critical thinking skills because they were having fun and not thinking of the consequences.
(In a funny twist of fate, video cameras were mounted monitoring at least three of the fireboxes the teens had pulled and the police net has already pulled in three of them who are no doubt wondering just what they did wrong. Some scientific studies have shown that people continue growing and developing into their early 20s and that teens lack some of the crucial decision-making skills that a mere three or four years of development would have given them. In other words, they would have known the difference of a prank and what isn't a prank – the difference of right and wrong. It's great to think that kids have the ability to reason critically, but that really isn't developed fully social scientists have shown until after age 22 or 23. Why this is, we cannot speculate because this isn't the place. It's up to others than us to find those answers.)
Bringing it together
So, what does this have to do with Ham Radio and gadgetry? It's a matter of simply RF technology. RF technology or radio frequency technology is responsible for many things. Whether you know it or not, the little GPS that's sitting on your dash or in your dash is actually a two-way radio that “talks” with a constellation of LEOs (low earth-orbiting satellites) to establish your position within 50 feet or so.
Hams developed the technology through their tinkering with the first Oscar satellites of the 1960s (Ham-funded satellites that were put aloft at first to prove the concept and later to develop other technologies such as two-way communication through them. Oscars have been piggy-backed on government satellite launches for more than 40 years and it was only recently that the first of the Oscars – ham satellites went dark after quite a life. The point is that Hams proved the LEO concept and then the commercial communications and military communications system jumped all over it. The result is the GPS system you have in your car.)
Ham experimentation has led to many of the developments in telecommunications, imagery and miniaturization that we all take for granted now. The cell system, for example, was conceptually developed nearly 40 years ago when the nation's ham radio FM repeater system started to grow out. As the microprocessor developed and became more widely used, Hams leaped at this nascent technology to develop controller boards, voice store and forward systems, email systems and more and soon they were linking repeater systems across areas, cities and even states. It doesn't take a wizard to figure out that the cell system is a more sophisticated version of this system (by the way, Hams still use repeater systems regularly and they are still becoming more sophisticated as they are not linked with Voice-Over-IP capability and Internet outlets through, for example, EchoLink).
So, we have established that Hams have been using RF technology for a long time and have used it in many different ways and that commercial firms and the military have used this technology for their own purposes.
RFID a solution?
One of those purposes – which brings us full circle to Worcester – is RFID technology. Hams have experimented with QRP (low-power) transmitters and receivers for years and, in fact, there have been contests to see how far a ham's signal can be received with the least power used (in some cases microwatts of power have gone thousands of miles and have been received). This type of low-power technology is at the heart of the RFID system. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification). It consists of those little, often annoying, little strips you see at stores that are either pasted on with microbatteries and strips (essentially tape radios) or are inside larger cases that have to be removed. They set off the hooters that sound when you try to leave the stores after a purchase where a harried clerk has forgotten to deactivate the RFID strip.
Since RF technology is always a two-way technology – despite what you hear about receive-only or other security, any radio can be polled and asked to transmit its location, even if it is a microwatt strip – it's not beyond the realm of possibility (if it isn't being developed already) to have a two-way warning system developed for first responders. It doesn't have to be a voice system because voice transmissions may be drowned out by noise, but it can be a visual system that appears as a heads-up display in the firefighter's helmet visor that stays either green or red. Since it is polled it also gives command an instant location of a firefighter's location and if imminent danger is present, the head's up display can go red instantly and a trained firefighter seeing this could be saved and we could have fewer instances where a brave firefighter like Davies falls and we hear fewer chimes ringing of that heroes fall.
The pieces are there – Hams have put them out there and have used them – and now it is up to someone to take the next step, unless it has already been taken, and city budget cuts have kept them from being implemented. If that's the case, then it's the city's shame they have cut back on an area they should be beefing up.
Hams keep finding new ways to use things. We are on the cutting edge of VOIP, we are experimenting with new digital transmission techniques and frequency-splitting, even time domain slicing to get more into less space with no interference. With a clear future ahead and more opportunity all the time, the only limits that might appear are imposed by the fact that no one has seen a new opportunity to “play” with yet, but, leave it to a Ham, someone will.
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