Can't find the cold hard cash to pay for a camera that detects hot spots?

Perhaps you'll get lucky, like many Colorado departments did in December 1998 when philanthropist Rob Dixon donated 105 CairnsIRIS thermal imaging cameras valued at more than $2.6 million to the Colorado State Fire Chiefs. Then agian, maybe you won't.

Although there are generous benefactors in every community, chances are your department will have to find another way to cover the costs. With their ability to quickly identify prone victims and hot spots through thick smoke, thermal imaging cameras can mean the difference between life and death. But they aren't cheap, typically costing between $15,000 and $25,000.

For the most part, departments that already have the cameras relied on community fund-raising campaigns, soliciting contributions from local businesses and service organizations. And departments looking to purchase a camera in the near future will probably have to follow a similar tack, though extra help appears to be on the way.

As state legislatures and Congress consider new grant programs for fire departments, government assistance should increase. And as the infrared technology that drives the cameras becomes more prevalent, economies of scale should kick in, making the cameras more affordable.

A local campaign Jeff Berry, chief of the Waupun (Wis.) Fire Department, spearheaded the type of fund-raising campaign that many departments choose to run. In February 1999, Berry and his staff set out to raise the $31,000 needed to purchase two hand held Scott Eagle Imager cameras, one of which has the ability to transmit images back to a remote base.

First, they sent a letter to every business and apartment owner for whom the department had performed fire inspections.

"The letter was intended to let people know how important the cameras were to the department and how much money we'd need to raise to reach our goal," says Berry, the only paid employee of the volunteer department. "After that we started to target the town's civic organizations, groups like the Lions Club, Kiwanis Club and Masonic Temple."

The department also put a press release describing its effort in the local newspaper, which serves the town's roughly 10,000 residents. And for good measure, the department placed cans in several businesses, hoping to pick up some of the customers' spare change.

The results were impressive. "We were really surprised by how fast the money started pouring in," Berry says. "The community support was fantastic."

Berry thought it was important for the community to be able to track the progress of the campaign. "We put up a big sign in front on the fire house that had a picture of the camera on it and mapped out by percent - 25, 50, 75, 100 how we were doing."

During the campaign, firefighters conducted numerous demonstrations of the camera, obtained from a local supplier, for civic groups. And by August 1999, with the town's help and an $11,000 donation from Federal-Mogul, a manufacturer of automotive parts, the department had raised the money.

Berry says he's pleased with the cameras. "We've got a pretty good operation going here now. We use the one with the transmission capabilities in the city and use the other one for calls we answer in the country."

Corporate assistance As Berry's experience demonstrates, the support of local businesses and companies is crucial for any fund-raising campaign. One company in particular, Wal-Mart, has been instrumental in helping departments across the country purchase thermal imaging cameras. Wal-Mart doesn't keep statistics on its support, but public relations specialist Laura Pope pointed to the efforts of Lenora Sheahan as representative of the company's policy.

Sheahan, a 62-year-old employee in Wal-Mart's Manitowoc, Wis. store, led the company's first fund-raiser specifically for thermal imaging cameras. After the store's system manager came up with the idea for the campaign in the fall of 1997, she called the local departments to see if they were interested.

"They were very receptive to the idea," Sheahan says. "Right before we started raising the money, there was a situation where a little girl was killed in a house fire. She had gotten out of the house in time, but went back in to look for her brother. A firefighter was in there looking for her, but couldn't see through the thick smoke. If he had had one of those cameras, he probably could have found her."

Sheahan says the committee that was organized to oversee the fund-raiser set a $50,000 goal, enough to purchase one CairnsIRIS camera for Manitowoc, with a population of around 30,000, and one for neighboring Two Rivers, with a population of around 13,000. Through a combination of an in-store collection drive, bake sales, support from local businesses and a $30,000 donation from the Manitowoc Crane Co., Sheahan says, they had raised the $50,000 by early 1998.

The committee put together a booklet that described its campaign and circulated it to other stores. The Manitowoc model has since become the company standard for thermal imaging fund-raisers.

"We've gotten calls from all over the place," Sheahan says. "And that's very rewarding for me. My dream is for all departments to have access to the cameras."

Some thermal imager manufacturers have fund-raising assistance programs of their own. A couple of years ago, Mine Safety Appliances was so impressed with the results of fund-raising efforts in Ames, Iowa, that it decided to launch Operation Argus. The company put together a fund-raising kit that featured a videotape, fund-raising guide, direct mail guide, press release, and a customizable form letter and flyers. MSA is currently revising the program in conjunction with the release of its latest models, the Evolution 3000 and Evolution 4000.

Another camera maker, Safety Vision Inc., began working on a program in the wake of a recent national tragedy. "Right after the Worcester fire, one of our sales representatives contacted me, and we decided we needed to set up something to help departments buy these cameras," says Dale Jeffery, the company's marketing director. "We wanted to go all the way, set up a staff and a Web site dedicated to fund-raising. So we bought two domains, worcesterfund.org and firemanfund.org."

Due to the complicated nature of setting up a small non-profit organization, the idea has been put "on the back burner at the moment," Jeffery says, "but we're hopeful we can get something going in the near future.

"It's a beautiful idea. It's just not fiscally prudent at the moment. We need someone to go into this with us, a Wal-Mart or some other large company that can help ease the burden."

Help on hand For volunteer departments in rural areas that lack commercial support, non profit organizations can be helpful. One such organization, Kokomo, Ind.-based We Care Inc., has spent over $100,000 on International Safety Instruments thermal imaging cameras for volunteer departments in Howard County, Ind.

Jan Buechler, a coordinator at We Care Inc., says the organization is committed to buying two more cameras this year. "Fire departments have to do so much to save money for these cameras," she says. "And we started wondering why they have to do all the work. Why couldn't somebody else support them for a change? This technology isn't cheap, and I'm not sure the smaller departments can raise enough money on their own."

If a department has questions about setting up a fund-raising campaign, the camera manufacturers are generally willing to provide assistance. CairnsIRIS, for instance, refers many potential customers to Louise Keogh, one of the company's fund-raising specialists based in Duxbury, Mass. Before coming to CairnsIRIS, Keogh helped run a campaign to purchase a CairnsIRIS 2 helmet mounted camera for the department in Duxbury, a town of about 15,000 south of Boston.

The campaign, which ran from late 1997 into 1998 and featured the auction of a guitar owned by Aerosmith's Joe Perry, was a resounding success. Duxbury reached its $25,000 goal. But Keogh, the daughter of a firefighter, wasn't satisfied.

"When I finished the Duxbury campaign, I realized that my passion for helping out fire departments wasn't going to end," she says. "I wanted to take the fund raising and awareness efforts that had been so successful there to other communities."

In the spring of 1999, Keogh acquired an Internet domain and named it thermalimaging.com. Over the summer she was approached by CairnsIRIS about their sponsoring the site. Debuting on Feb. 9 of this year, the site, which is dedicated to providing fund-raising tips and information about the cameras, has received hits from as far away as India and Singapore.

When she's not working on her Web site, Keogh helps CairnsIRIS customers set up fund-raisers. Keogh says she encourages every department to get the chief solidly behind the project and to ask their state representative about potential government assistance. She also tells customers to make the most of their in town connections.

"Each town has industries that can be approached, and local newspapers and politicians are usually very helpful," she says. "It's just a matter of tapping into every medium that you possibly can."

Rebecca Scholer, a public relations specialist for Bullard, says people are naturally drawn to the cameras. "The advantage to this type of technology is that it's exciting," she says. "Everyone can relate to the idea of a child or someone they love being trapped inside a burning building. The cameras are dramatic and compelling. People can really grasp their importance."

Local government resources For a department hesitant to jump into a fund-raiser, there's always the old fashioned way - requesting assistance from a city council or fire commission. That's the course currently being pursued by Jim Evans, deputy chief of District 7 in Snohomish County, Wash., about 15 miles north of Seattle.

"The fire commissioners board is very interested in this type of technology," says Evans, whose department consists of 53 career firefighters and serves approximately 65,000 residents. "So I'm going to see what I can get done on the legislative side of things."

Raising money in his district, which has only one small commercial center - Mill Creek, a town of about 10,000 - would be difficult, Evans says. "We don't have one main newspaper to contact. We've got five school districts, six water districts and 13 zip codes. There are plenty of businesses we could reach out to, but we don't have a centralized way of doing it. I'd probably have to put notices in five different newspapers just to get the message out."

Of all the equipment his department could use, Evans says thermal imaging cameras are particularly vital. "The fire service, in general, spends a lot of money on very costly equipment and training that is basically used for 'special operations' scenarios," Evans says. "A thermal imager, which could be used for numerous situations during day-to-day operations, is as justifiable in a budget proposal as equipment and training for trench and confined-space rescues."

Ted Brookman, assistant fire chief of the paid 76-person department in Lima, Ohio, says he thinks most local governments understand the importance of thermal imaging cameras. "Cities know there's a need for this technology, they just have a hard time paying for it," says Brookman, whose department serves a population of around 46,000. "We were fortunate enough to have the city pay $25,000 for one of our cameras, a Lifesight from Fire Research."

Legislative windfalls Receiving state or federal assistance to purchase the cameras could get easier in the near future. New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman included a $7.5 million provision specifically for thermal imaging cameras in her fiscal 2000 budget. The ensuing legislation, bill A-3073, signed by Whitman last October, guarantees that every department in New Jersey will have at least one camera.

William Kramer, deputy director of the New Jersey Division of Fire Safety, says Bullard, which turned in a low bid of $7,695 per camera, was awarded the contract. Kramer estimates that Bullard will deliver around 900 cameras to departments over an eight- or nine-month period. Departments interested in purchasing a non-Bullard model would be reimbursed up to $7,695.

"I look at the program as a tangible 'thank you,' a real measure of appreciation for firefighters," Kramer says. "The governor and legislature understand that these cameras are very expensive and that it's very difficult, especially for volunteer departments, to raise the funds necessary to purchase them."

Federal help could also become a reality. Two bills pending in Congress would allow fire departments to apply for grants to purchase thermal imaging cameras, according to Craig Sharman, a government affairs representative for the National Volunteer Fire Council.

Sharman says the first bill, H.R. 1839, introduced in May 1999 by Rep. Bob Franks (N.J.), would give fema $100 million to run a thermal imaging grant program. The second bill, H.R. 1169 and S. 1941, was introduced in March 1999 by Rep. Bill Pascrell (N.J.) in the House, and by Sens. Christopher Dodd (Conn.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio) in the Senate. Also known as the fire Bill, the legislation would give fema $5 billion over five years to run a grant program covering a variety of fire department needs, including the purchase of thermal imaging cameras.

A price drop All of this attention paid to thermal imaging cameras should benefit fire departments. Jay James, marketing and sales director for Raytheon Co.'s Infrared Commercial Camera Group, says that as government and public awareness of the cameras grows and as consumer use of similar infrared technology increases, the price of the cameras will decrease. "I have no doubts that prices are dropping already. Economies of scale are working as we speak."

Raytheon, which produces the infrared sensors inside most thermal imaging cameras, including International Safety Instruments, Scott Aviation, E.D. Bullard, ISG Thermal Systems and Fire Research Corp., has teamed up with Cadillac and included similar technology in the 2000 DeVille. Offered as an optional package, the car's Night Vision system eases night travel by allowing drivers to see objects in the road at a great distance.

"You've got firefighters who are wondering why they have to pay $20,000 for a camera when virtually the same thing only costs $2,500 in a Cadillac," James says. "And I would respond by saying that if they ordered the same amount of units as Cadillac, they would see a drop in the price, too."

Emerging technologies could also help drive prices down, says John Major, a Safety Vision Inc. account executive. "Especially with the second- or middle generation infrared technology, which includes a piece of equipment called a microbolometer, we expect to see prices decrease. That's the very latest kind of technology and almost every camera manufacturer you see is putting it in their cameras." The company's Fast Attack camera, which costs around $20,000, includes a microbolometer.

James adds that a shift in pricing, if not already under way, is inevitable. "Within three years, the price of these cameras will be half of what they are today. You can see it already in the Bullard bid in New Jersey, and we'll contribute to that drop. We're going to make our automotive venture work and pass the benefits on to firefighters."