Thermal Imaging Camera Helps Save Three Kids

Firehouse.Com News (April 26, 2001)

With the help of their thermal imaging camera, firefighters noticed a small arm on the bottom bunk and realized someone was hidden between the bed and the wall.

"At that time I instructed Toth, 'Behind the bed.' He moved the bed, grabbed the child and passed him to Donafrio, and underneath was the third victim."

This is what happened when New Jersey firefighters used a thermal imaging camera to locate three children in a burning home in Irvington early Monday.

The call came in at 3:07 a.m. while a five-alarm fire raged a mile away at a chemical plant. Despite the strain on area resources, Irvington and Hillside firefighters got to the house fire within three minutes of the call.

The firefighters learned seven residents were inside and forcibly entered the two-and-a half story wood-frame home, bringing along Hillside's Bullard Thermal Imager.

As Irvington firefighters handled the flames in the master bedroom, where two adults and a child had died, Hillside's Capt. Nicholas Crosta and Firefighter Greg Donafrio worked their way to another bedroom.

Crosta said the room was full of smoke from top to bottom, but he could identify just about everything in it with the help of the TI. He first saw bicycles and lots of clutter, and thought he was in a storage room. But then saw the bunk bed.

Crosta went over and did a sweep of the bottom bed, but found nothing. On the top bunk he found one victim, four year-old Jimmy Montalmant. "I grabbed him and we exited the building," the captain said.

They handed the child off to paramedics and returned to the room with two more firefighters, Joseph Zlotek and Michael Toth. "I knew there had to be more kids in that room somewhere," Crosta said.

That’s when they noticed the arm of seven year-old Julisa Adams on the bottom bunk, and pulled her and five year-old Gerard Montalmant Jr. out from behind the bed.

The children were all in respiratory arrest. They were immediately treated by paramedics and then hospitalized for smoke inhalation. They are now in stable condition, Caswell said.

The people who perished in the master bedroom were the children's father Gerard Montalmant, his unidentified girlfriend, and Montalmant's four year-old son Marck. The fire was caused by the overheated extension cord to their window air conditioner.

The seventh resident of the house, an elderly woman, safely escaped her basement apartment.

Both Crosta and Hillside's Chief Frank Caswell said the rescue of the three children may not have been possible without the assistance of the TI. Valuable time had initially been lost while firefighters forced their way past iron bars on the home’s windows and doors.

Caswell said they got the camera through New Jersey's recent state program that gave at least one TI to every department.

"If they didn't have the camera they would have gotten to those children eventually," Caswell said, "but the room was pretty cluttered and it would have taken time to climb over things."

Crosta said this was the first time his department's TI was directly responsible for saving lives, although they have used it to locate fires behind walls, which once helped them save a row of townhouses.

"They're just the best things. In the fire service, they're probably one of the best things they've ever come up with next to SCBA or fire hydrants," Crosta said.

  Article courtesy of Firehouse.com News

HEATHER CASEY
Firehouse.com News