Reserve writes
software that monitors location of emergency workers
By AMYJO
BROWN of the East Oregonian
Staff photo
by AmyJo Brown
Steve McCoy, a reserve officer at the Stanfield Police Department,
volunteered his time and expertise writing computer software that will track
the safety of first responders in emergency situations.
STANFIELD — Steve McCoy,
a volunteer reserve officer in the Stanfield Police Department, told his
superiors he didn’t want to do any computer office work when they brought
him on staff little more than a year ago.
“It didn’t excite me,” he said, adding he wanted to help people in
a more tangible way.
But McCoy, who has decades of experience as a computer engineer,
wasn’t able to maintain his hands-off position for long.
While sitting in a meeting several months ago, McCoy learned of a
need for a tool to track emergency first responders, particularly in the
event of an accident at the Umatilla Chemical Depot where the workers are
in protective suits with set limits for working and resting. The depot is
scheduled to begin burning weapons filled with chemical agents in July.
“I said I can do this,” McCoy recalled.
Using basic computer office programs, such as Microsoft Excel, McCoy
then very quickly wrote software that has left local emergency planners excited
and in awe.
“It’s a very, very powerful tool for us,” Casey Beard, director of
Morrow County’s Emergency Management, told the Governing Board of the Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program earlier this month. “It’s the most
advanced in the nation.”
It’s also a system that has saved the communities thousands of dollars,
according to Bryan Hopkins, public health emergency manager for the Oregon
Department of Human Services.
“We knew we had to do this but we didn’t know how,” Hopkins said.
“We probably would have had to hire someone.”
McCoy worked voluntarily on the project for the challenge.
“I wanted to see if I could do it,” he said.
What McCoy constructed was a system by which safety officers in charge
of certain decontamination sites around the Umatilla and Morrow counties
could more effectively keep on eye on their staff, if there were a chemical
accident at the depot.
In that case, responders would be dressed in protective suits and
would be in danger of overheating while they worked.
“What we were doing before was keeping track of everyone manually,
using a white board or paper,” Hopkins said. “The safety officer would have
had to keep on eye on his watch.”
Now, each first responder will have a card with a bar code containing
their personal information. Safety officers can quickly scan each individual
into a computer system and then keep track of where each responder is and
how long they have been working.
The computer counts down the timing for each individual’s working
minutes and resting minutes, flashing green when the responder’s ready to
go, orange when the responder has just minutes to stop working and red when
the responder should be resting.
That information makes it easier to account for everyone’s whereabouts
and ensures that no first responder will work in protective gear longer than
he should, Hopkins said.
“It’s a fairly simple system,” Hopkins said.
But one that has many perks.
Not only will it be useful in the event of depot accident, but the
system is also going to be utilized by the local fire departments, who also
deal with heat stress management, Hopkins said.
