Every once in a while, we learn about some very interesting new products for the fire service. I think one of the benefits of Homeland Security is that we’re seeing innovation from other industries and public sectors pushed with greater urgency to emergency services applications. It seems military and industrial technology is being adapted and accepted faster than in the past.

For example, recently we’d heard about an emergency truck with a new water filtration system that could process and produce drinking water from any water source on scene. Skepticism being a virtue for an editor, I visited H&W Fire Trucks, an apparatus builder in Hillsboro, Ore., building the first trucks with the system for emergency services. H&W’s Wink and Jeff Weber were nice enough to answer all my questions about the emergency water truck (see the December issue of FIRE CHIEF, page 86).

Briefly, the water filtration system installed in the truck was adapted from systems used in supermarkets to mist fruits and vegetables in the produce department. It uses reverse osmosis filtration and a self-cleaning filter to purify even the most brackish water from any source -- lakes, streams, floodwater or wells – in minutes. The vehicle can even produce the water in small plastic bags for distribution in disasters.

H&W’s first truck is going to the Air Force in Iraq, but there’s great potential for using this type of technology in emergency services here at home. It could be used to provide drinking water whenever our communities’ water supplies are interrupted by power outages, earthquakes, floods, hurricane, terrorism, etc. The trucks could be put to work to keep personnel hydrated at major training exercises (rather than bringing in truckloads of bottled water, as was done at TOPOFF 2), and departments could bring them out to provide drinking water at major community events, such as festivals and parades.

For more details, see the December issue of FIRE CHIEF or visit www.emergencywatersolutions.com. The system will also be licensed to truck manufacturers, so it should be widely available soon.

I suspect even more advanced products for the emergency services will evolve, particularly from the military, and this is long overdue. Advanced technology available to the military will help protect our emergency responders and help them do their jobs more quickly, and this is very good news.

Janet Wilmoth, Editor