Posts in category: Americas – Products

Lenco Armored Vehicles, designer and manufacturer of armored response and rescue vehicles has reached a major milestone. The company celebrated 40 years in business in February, 2021. What began as a family owned and operated small business in the Berkshires, has grown to become an industry leader with more than 6,000 vehicles produced and in operation in over 40 countries around the globe.

Founded on the principles of quality, integrity and customer-focus, Lenco Armored Vehicles product line has evolved to serve police and government, military and international, and fire and EMS entities.

Len Light, Lenco president and CEO, shared some insight on the company’s roots. “I’ve always believed that, in business, you need to be better, faster, or cheaper than your competitors, or don’t even bother.  When we started Lenco, we made the conscious decision to be better on quality and faster on innovative product improvements.  We went into the field and listened to our end users, which enabled us to better design the product from an end-users point of view.”

And that mindset has been a bedrock principle for everything they do—from ergonomic, customer-focused engineering to precision manufacturing with high quality equipment, certified materials and certified technicians.  Lenco’s facilities reflect this level of expertise, attention to detail and professional, friendly customer service and technical support.  It has gained Lenco a respected name in the industry and allows the family-run business to successfully compete against much larger companies and overseas competitors.

Over the last 40 years, Lenco has earned the trust of tens of thousands of tactical operators in the United States and around the world.  While best known for their iconic BearCat, the product line has evolved into many mission specific models with proprietary features.  From Public Safety & Medical Response in hazardous and Severe Weather conditions, to Counter-IED and Combat Fire in International conflicts and Military war zones in some of the harshest environments on Earth, Lenco BearCats have proven to be durable, reliable multi-purpose response & rescue vehicles capable of the toughest performance standards in a variety of mission profiles. 

“As we transition to our third and fourth generations, we thank all members of our staff, past and present, for their many contributions and years of dedication and hard work in achieving this milestone.  We can all be proud of the work we do every day, providing Public Safety to First Responders with life-saving equipment as they perform their jobs in some very challenging, dangerous and life-threatening situations.”

 To learn more about Lenco’s company history or its line of rescue and response vehicles, visit lencoarmor.com/.

NEC Laboratories Europe has prototyped new, AI-enabled drone technology that quickly locates natural disaster victims using their mobile phones or smart devices in areas with damaged or no cellular infrastructure.

Finding disaster victims is slow and resource intensive. To locate victims, emergency response teams rely on line-of-sight or being in close proximity and mortality rates are often high. NEC’s new prototype technology, SARDO (Search-And-Rescue DrOne), greatly expands search and rescue capabilities by using an autonomous drone as a mobile cellular base station to identify signals from smart devices of victims as it flies nearby. 

Existing device tracking technology, such as GPS or standard cellular trilateration, is not suited for natural disaster situations. GPS tracking requires that a disaster victim be in possession of a GPS-enabled smart device and that GPS tracking be active at the time of the disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or snow avalanche, cellular network infrastructure may not be working, or the disaster may have occurred in an area with inadequate coverage like a remote, mountainous region. This limits or prevents network operators from locating victims using their mobile phone signals.

SARDO fills this gap by incorporating the functionality of a cellular base station into an autonomous drone. Using pseudo-trilateration SARDO, as a mobile base station, acts as a single anchor that retrieves multiple distance measurements from a disaster victim’s smart device, taken by the drone over its flight time. The SARDO drone uses machine learning to calculate the position of a victim’s device even when that person is moving. The drone continually adjusts itself based on their predicted motion until it has identified the exact position of a victim. Says Antonio Albanese, Research Associate at NEC Laboratories Europe: “SARDO brings together the increasingly higher penetration rate of smart devices in our society and the ability of drones to reach harsh locations. We can now combine these technologies to build a standalone localization system that effectively supports first responders in disaster recovery operations. Requiring no pre-deployment effort, it can be up-and-running within minutes and keep the related deployment complexity to a minimum.”

SARDO works by identifying the unique identification number of a disaster victim’s eSIM or SIM card using the resource control connection that it establishes with a base station. With required emergency approvals, the SARDO drone can search for both a specific victim and all unknown victims within a given region. In collaboration with the network operator, search and rescue teams can also communicate directly with a victim via their devices. In large disasters with many victims, multiple SARDO drones can be used to scale up search and rescue efforts.

In earthquakes, damage to buildings is often extensive and rubble hampers search and rescue efforts. SARDO identifies rubble as a propagation environment and, by compensating for this, can predict a victim’s current location in it. In principle, this same technique is used by SARDO to identify channel artifacts produced by different propagation environments such as snow caused by avalanches or water in times of flooding.

Using commonly available parts, any commercial drone or UAV that meets disaster zone search and rescue requirements can be converted and deployed as a SARDO. This makes it extremely versatile in meeting the needs of different disaster response teams.

1. Economic Losses, Poverty and Disasters: 1998-2017, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) & Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)
2. SARDO: An Automated Search-and-Rescue Drone-based Solution for Victims Localization (A. Albanese, V. Sciancalepore, X. Costa-Perez) NEC Laboratories Europe, IEEE Explore, 2021

AlertMedia, the world’s leading emergency communication provider, today announced its new threat intelligence division with faster, broader, and more relevant coverage about a wide range of global and local incidents. Staffed by a dedicated team of intelligence analysts providing human-verified alerts 24/7, the division has more than doubled the volume of actionable intelligence available to AlertMedia customers concerning threats that directly affect employees and business operations.

Available immediately to customers worldwide, AlertMedia’s Global Threat Intelligence solution provides independently verified, around-the-clock, curated threat warnings for critical events across the globe—from severe weather and natural disasters to public demonstrations and public health crises—to help organisations more easily identify, monitor, and assess risks to their people and business.

Organisations face an increasing number of daily threats to employee safety, business continuity, and their ability to provide products and services to customers without disruption. To identify potential risks, operational security, loss prevention, and safety teams are often forced to sift through disparate sources of unstructured data, requiring significant labor and infrastructure to manually assess the impact to their organisation.

AlertMedia’s Global Threat Intelligence transforms today’s staggering threat monitoring environment by monitoring, identifying, and rapidly delivering analyst-vetted intelligence from trained experts to help organisations drastically reduce their response times to an incident that presents a safety or operational risk. Now, instead of spending the majority of their time manually evaluating and distributing information, they can instead focus on solving more strategic problems.

“Many of the safety and security teams we speak to today suffer from an overwhelming amount of information and an inability to quickly filter noise to find what matters,” said Sara Pratley, Vice President of Global Intelligence at AlertMedia. “Our focus is on delivering solutions that provide customers with actionable, vetted intelligence that accelerates decision making and provides clarity concerning the impact to their organisation. The combination of relevant insights alongside our suite of emergency communication tools enables any company to more quickly disseminate information and protect their business.”

AlertMedia’s Global Threat Intelligence seamlessly integrates with its emergency communication solution, enabling organisations to communicate information about critical events to employees, leadership, and other stakeholders through multiple channels.

For example, Coca-Cola Bottling United’s people team is responsible for knowing of any and all threats that could impact the company or safety of its employees.

“Severe weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and winter storms, threatens our business every year, but our ability to keep track of these events and inform employees at a moment’s notice became increasingly challenging,” said Gianetta Jones, Vice President and Chief People Officer of Coca-Cola Bottling United. “AlertMedia helps us identify and respond to disruptive events in real-time, and we’re now better able to take proactive measures to ensure our employees stay safe and out of harm’s way no matter the emergency.”

By combining AlertMedia’s emergency communication and threat intelligence solutions, organisations can benefit from the following:

• Faster, analyst-vetted intelligence: Every threat delivered by AlertMedia is independently verified by highly-trained experts and categorised by type, severity, and location, giving you the ability to easily filter and set specific alert preferences for each event type.
• Expert analysis from trusted sources: Receive vetted alerts by highly trained analysts with decades of combined experience monitoring and delivering threat intelligence for the CIA, FBI, US Army, and many of the world’s largest corporations.
• Real-time coverage of a wide variety of events: Improve situational awareness with faster detection of critical events, transportation disruptions, security incidents, public demonstrations, environmental hazards, public health emergencies, and more.
• Streamlined response workflows: Navigate the entire lifecycle of a threat from detection to resolution from a single, intuitive platform. Accelerate communication tasks with a fully integrated emergency communication solution.
• Impact assessment: Understand your organisation’s exposure with a clear picture of exactly who and what is impacted based on the locations of your people or assets.
• Automatic alerts to targeted groups: Create automatic, triggered actions that send real-time threat warnings to admins, or directly to employees in close proximity to a nearby threat.

Feniex Industries releases the Feniex ONE, the first autonomous controller in the industry. Paired with the Feniex Web, an industry-first live fleet health monitoring software, The Feniex ONE is redefining smart controllers in the emergency vehicle market. A great leap for first responders on the road or at headquarters, the Feniex Web allows direct messaging to the controllers and live updates when vehicles need to be serviced.

“We are connecting the fleet manager to the officers,” says Hamza Deyaf, CEO and founder of Feniex Industries. “Vehicle downtime can cripple a fleet and keeps officers off the road. With this amazing new technology we can reduce vehicle wear and tear and prevent maintenance issues before they even occur.”

The Feniex One Controller is powered by an ARM A9 quad core processor delivering speed and reliability. The controller has 16 customizable 5-color push buttons with 3 additional LCD touch-screen buttons on its integrated digital display. It includes a built-in 200 watt dual-tone siren with a total of 32 programmable outputs and 9 inputs on the siren relay. Plus, there is an integrated GPS that provides vehicle to vehicle global pattern sync. The relay’s data link, quad ports, and serialization reduce wiring by 80% for tremendous ease of installation. Its intuitive software makes setup lightning fast and simple. 

Feniex Industries provides American-made vehicle warning devices for first responders worldwide and continues to be the fastest-growing business in the vehicle warning market with over 100+ employees and 1,000+ dealers and distributors in over 30 countries.

Richard Paul Russell Ltd, announces the release of the Kestrel® 3550FW Fire Weather Meter. Kestrel’s newest and most affordable fire weather meter is now more capable and connected. The 3550FW has all the original features and comprehensive weather monitoring capabilities of the benchmark Kestrel 3000 plus a digital compass for wind direction, Kestrel Bluetooth® wireless connectivity for remote viewing and instantaneous sharing of weather data from a mobile device, and an extra coin cell battery to ensure you won’t lose power in the field when you need it most.

Capable and connected for continuous monitoring, and shareable reports, the 3550FW delivers the same rugged reliability and accurate performance that wildfire firefighters have trusted for years while enabling them to capture and share critical fire weather data far more quickly and easily.

The Kestrel 3550FW (£189.95 inc VAT) keeps your team connected with shareable and exportable condition reports with GPS location via text and email right from the free Kestrel App. Even when you are on the move, you can wirelessly log and retrieve data for real-time monitoring and reporting.

Unlike a traditional Weather Belt Kit, the it captures readings of ten critical weather measurements near instantly, with less reliance on user technique and instrument maintenance. Barometric pressure, altitude, dew point, heat stress index, relative humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction, wind chill and wet bulb are all measured by the Kestrel 3550FW as soon as the unit is removed from its protective cover and held into the air. Ready to be tossed in your pack, the Kestrel 3550FW is IP67 waterproof and Mil-SPEC-810G drop tested.

To order, or for additional information on the Kestrel 3550FW, please visit www.rpr.co.uk email sales@rpr.co.uk or call the technical sales team on +44 (0) 1590 641223

Command Light, a leader in emergency vehicle lighting, is introducing a new “slim” light tower design that joins Command Light’s existing Shadow Series lineup, featuring 4.5’ tower reach.

The SL Slim marks Command Light’s narrowest design yet, making this light tower perfect for tight dunnage areas or high-side aerial compartments. The SL Slim nests at 8” high x 63” wide x 11” deep, weighs only 65 lbs. and produces 57,000 lumens with (2) HiViz FireTech FT-MB-2.27 Minibrow LEDs, available in AC or DC.

When deployed, the SL Slim tower is 66” x 42” x 11”. This tower joins Command Light’s other slim light tower, the Knight Series (KL) Slim, which stows at 12” x 13” x 53”, provides 7.5’ reach and delivers 70,000 lumens, also with FireTech fixtures.

The SL Slim can be spec’ed with optional strobe, optional camera or custom color. This new light tower touts Command Light’s patented (US Patent #5303621) movement, which allows the SL Slim to be raised and rotated into endless positions to illuminate dark ditches, mountain slopes and other terrain.

The SL Slim is also able to overhang the side of a vehicle in Command Light’s exclusive streetlight position to light work areas and prevent shadows near the side of the apparatus.

All Command Light towers deploy in less than 15 seconds with the push of a button, and the light tower stows just as quickly and easily with the unit’s standard one-touch auto-park feature.

For a virtual demo of Command Light’s patented design, visit commandlight.com/demo. In addition to this new slim design, Command Light offers a full lineup of light towers in varying tower heights, color options, power source, head quantity and light fixtures. To configure your
own light tower, visit commandlight.com/build.

National Foam has discontinued the sale of all PFAS based foam concentrates into the State of Maryland effective March 1, 2021.

More than 20 states have implemented legislation restricting the sale or use of firefighting foams manufactured with intentionally added PFAS chemicals.

National Foam will continue supplying Maryland with its award-winning synthetic fluorine free product offering for various end uses.

UniversalF3 Green 3% x 3% synthetic fluorine free foam UL/ULC and LASTfire listed with hydrocarbon and polar solvents in fresh and saltwater for fixed systems and fuel in depth fires.

MuniF3 Green Plus 3% (Class A/B) municipal firefighting synthetic fluorine free foam concentrate UL/ULC listed with hydrocarbon fires and covers various blends of gasoline including E15 (15% ethanol/gasoline blend) with fresh and brackish water.

Muni F3 Green 3% (Class A/B) municipal firefighting synthetic fluorine free foam concentrate UL/ULC listed formulated for hydrocarbon spill fires and can be used as a wetting agent combating structural and wildland fires.

AvioF3Green KHC 3% (ICAO C) is the industry’s first fluorine free film forming synthetic firefighting foam concentrate designed for ARFF vehicles, oscillating monitors and handlines on Jet A and Jet A1 fuels.

These National Foam synthetic fluorine free concentrates are 100% biodegradable as well as GreenScreen Certified. GreenScreen chemical hazard assessments require a comprehensive toxicological review of 18 human health and environmental hazard endpoints, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, acute and chronic aquatic toxicity, endocrine activity, persistence, and bioaccumulation.

National Foam “RED ALERT” 24/7 emergency firefighting foam service will continue to support Maryland’s municipal and industrial firefighters with its UL/ULC and LASTfire listed UniversalF3 Green synthetic fluorine free foam concentrate.

National Foam previously announced that it will discontinue the sale of all PFAS based foam concentrates into the State of California effective January 1, 2021.

TheNational Fire Protection Association (NFPA) have launched Outthink Wildfire™, a comprehensive strategy to address America’s wildfire crisis. The strategy lays out five policy changes that must occur at all levels of government to end the destruction of communities from wildfire in the U.S. in the next 30 years.

In just the past three years, the country has seen 40,000 structures destroyed, 100 fatalities, and has paid out nearly $40 billion in insured losses due to wildfire. Each year, the U.S. spends at least $2 billion supporting fire suppression yet structure loss due to wildfire has increased more than 160 percent. Communities must adopt practices to lower the risk to lives, homes, businesses, and overall prosperity, or face greater loss of life and property.

“While there is widespread destruction from wildfire, there is not widespread regulatory action and a concerted effort to put in place policies to reverse the dangerous trend,” said Jim Pauley, NFPA president & CEO. “Without a new approach we will not be able to dramatically change outcomes from wildfires in the wildland/urban interface. Outthink Wildfire puts forth key strategies that will make it easier for communities to foster collaboration, enact change, achieve resilience, and protect themselves from wildfire.”

Outthink Wildfire is rooted in two realities – wildfires are going to happen, and the fire service will not be able to extinguish these fires at a pace to save people and property in their path. While voluntary individual and community actions continue to play a role in overall efforts to reverse the course of loss, this action alone is not enough to stem the tide of losses from wildfire. All levels of government must support these key policy changes if the nation is to reduce the billions in losses that wildfires generate for the U.S. each year.

As the average number of acres burned in wildfires each year rises over time, communities in wildfire hazard zones cannot continue down the same path. Through collaboration that begins with policy implementation, the U.S. can better protect its neighborhoods, citizens, and first responders. The key to ending the destruction of communities by wildfire is to start now.

MSA and the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) are working together to provide the most innovative and up-to-date technology to help first responders improve their health and safety. Three volunteer firefighters that are NVFC members will receive a personalized MSA Cairns® XF1 Fire Helmet in 2021.

To be eligible to enter, applicants must be an active U.S. volunteer firefighter and a member of the NVFC; learn about member benefits and join at www.nvfc.org/join. Members will have three opportunities to enter to win an XF1 helmet throughout the year. One recipient will be randomly selected during each entry period.

“Many volunteer departments often work with limited budgets, where providing top-of-the-line PPE isn’t an option,” said NVFC chair Steve Hirsch. “We are grateful to MSA for this helmet donation program and their organization’s continuous commitment to the volunteer fire service and the health and safety of our first responders.”

The jet-style design of the Cairns® XF1 Fire Helmet reduces snag hazards, provides a personalized fit, and houses its own integrated light module. Plus, the soft goods are removable, washable, and replaceable, helping firefighters align with cancer awareness programs as written by the Firefighter Cancer Support Network. Approvals include NFPA 1971-2018 Structural Firefighting and NFPA 1951-2013 Rescue and Recovery. The first entry period is open now through March 31, 2021. Learn more and enter to win at www.nvfc.org/helmet.

Everbridge, Inc. have announced the launch of its new crisis management app, ManageBridge. The app includes enhanced crisis management and reporting features that allow organisations to effectively anticipate and respond to natural, manmade and digital critical events in real time from a mobile device.

The ManageBridge App represents a significant advancement in technology and user experience. Dispatchers and incident managers can use the app to more effectively orchestrate incident resolution and communication with senior management and technical teams, including scheduling on-call personnel, rapidly communicating with responders, conducting analysis to improve the response for future critical events and more.

“Everbridge’s latest ManageBridge App allows our business, healthcare and government customers to more seamlessly manage a crisis from their mobile devices, when every second counts,” said Ajay Nigam, Chief Product Officer at Everbridge. “The enhanced app makes Everbridge’s core critical event management capabilities even more accessible to those in charge of disaster response for their organization.”

The new ManageBridge App offers the following new features:

• Crisis Management capabilities enabling teams to manage a critical event completely on the mobile device with oversight on task lists, incidents, documents, notes, and event updates
• Reports to surface details on notification delivery, safety events, and incident response
• Inbox to view real-time updates from contacts who trigger Safety Connection functionality such as SOS, Check-in, Safe Corridor, and more

“Technologies to support employees working from home and to stay safely connected were pioneered by Everbridge – because critical events can happen anywhere, and they need to get managed rapidly,” said John Maeda, Chief Experience Officer at Everbridge. “Our next generation, state-of-the-art mobile app lets responders easily manage the entire lifecycle of critical events securely from their pocket or purse anytime and anywhere.”

Available through both the Apple App Store and Google Play, ManageBridge brings the same set of rich communication features available in Mass Notification to administrators who frequently use smartphones and tablets. The free, native mobile application is available to Everbridge clients, providing them with more control than ever before over their critical communications.

“In today’s remote environment, the ability to initiate standard operating procedures, response protocols and emergency notifications anywhere using your smart phone or tablet enables organizations to be ever resilient, nimble and efficient to best manage a crisis,” said David Metcalfe, CEO at independent analyst firm Verdantix.

The new ManageBridge App follows close on the heels of other Everbridge product news. In January 2021, Everbridge launchedCOVID-19 Shield™: Vaccine Distribution, an extension to its CEM platform supporting the full spectrum of organizations that develop, manufacture, transport, distribute, regulate, and administer the coronavirus vaccine.

The offering also provides governments with a single, unified platform to expedite vaccine coordination, communication and distribution for residents. With Everbridge’s COVID-19 Shield™: Vaccine Distribution, customers gain capabilities to: coordinate the number of residents or employees who have been vaccinated, manage population density and access to office buildings based on vaccination status, and receive timely alerts when someone report signs of illness so they can quickly respond to safeguard the community.