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County provides
fire companies with TEDs DENTON - In 1999, two firefighters died in a Worcester, Mass., warehouse fire when they could not find their way back out of the burning building and four more perished while trying to locate them. In an effort to prevent a similar tragedy in Caroline County, all eight volunteer fire companies are now equipped with a special device that makes it easy for emergency crews to find their way to safety. At an April 29 ceremony, the county commissioners presented Caroline's fire chiefs with their new Target Exit Devices (TED). Also on hand for the event was Denton-area resident William Peterson, who is the president of the company marketing the units, TEDCOR LLC. The TED is a beacon firefighters place at a burning building's exit to keep it clearly marked. The yellow box emits a series of loud tones and has a strobe light on top.
While firefighters are in a building with a TED at the door, the device's light continuously flashes and a series of loud beeps is emitted every eight seconds. When a fire chief wants to give the "all clear" signal for the inside crew to evacuate the building, he or she presses a button on the TED's remote and a different and continuous sound goes out at 124 decibels. Department of Emergency Management Director Bryan Ebling said funding for the TEDs came from Homeland Security grant money. The total cost of the units was $11,760. "Tonight, Caroline County gets to set a precedent," said Preston Volunteer Fire Company member Ron Fearins during the ceremony. He said the purchase is a historical event because Caroline is now the first county in the nation to give a TED unit to every firehouse in it. "And the volunteer firemen of Caroline County want to thank each of you for understanding our needs and stepping up to the plate for us," Fearins told the commissioners. The next day, Peterson said several metropolitan fire departments are interested in outfitting their crews with TEDs. He said Dallas is planning to purchase 25 of them. Peterson said TED replaces old methods, like following a hose or rope, for firefighters to find a building's exit through flames and smoke. "We now have little towns like Denton and Caroline County.
We've got megalopolises like Dallas. And we've got historic places like
Worcester. Everybody's wanting TED," he
said. Firm builds
device to save firefighters' lives DENTON - Firefighters often find themselves in dangerous and disorienting situations. Low visibility in smoke-filled buildings, combined with tremendous heat and limited air can cause a firefighter to become lost and unable to locate an exit. The result can be serious injury or what firefighters call line of duty death. In these situations every second counts. Bill Peterson, president of TEDCOR LLC, believes his company has a tool
that can help get firefighters out of these dangerous situations quicker
and prevent line of duty deaths. The product - the Target Exit Device
(TED) - uses unique audible and visual signals that help firefighters find
the exit quickly. TED has taken more than a decade to fully develop, but
now it is being marketed to fire departments across the country via
TEDCOR's Web site, run from Peterson's home office in Denton. Sensata
Technologies has contracted with TEDCOR to manufacture TED at its facility
in Cambridge. Origins of TED Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a high number of line of duty deaths in 1994, a New York City Fire Department lieutenant and some close friends began discussing the cause of the deaths and a way to prevent them, Peterson said. They determined the cause to be firefighters running out of air, becoming disoriented in smoke and not being able to locate the exit. The concept they developed was the early stages of TED, which they based on technology used when a fighter pilot is shot down and an audible beacon is set off to locate the pilot. The device they created was a yellow,metal box that can be transported by hand. The box emits an audible and visible beacon that enables firefighters to more easily find the exit. The sound was developed by an audiologist in New York City and the inventors patented the sound, the means to generate it and the box as a system, Peterson said. Prior to the development of this technology, a firefighter would stand at the exit and the other firefighters would find their way out by following a hose back or groping along the walls. Rapid intervention teams, which are sent in to get other people out, use a rope tied to something outside. TED went into the development, test and evaluation phase in 1994 through 1995, Peterson said. About 125 TEDs were distributed to fire departments around the U.S. to test and the results were promising, he said. Peterson first encountered TED at a trade show in Baltimore in 1998. At the time, he was president of Peterson Investment Banking and was representing a client exhibiting a product at the trade show. The developers of TED approached Peterson asking for his assistance to potentially sell the business. Six months later he was hired as an investment banker by the company, which was then known as Safety Systems Inc. He redirected them to internally reorganize and lease their U.S. patents to someone who could manufacture, distribute and sell TED.
In 2000 and 2001, the company spent seven months negotiating with Kidde PLC, a company that manufactures fire extinguishers and other products, to lease the patents. Unfortunately, the deal fell through when Kidde was found guilty of intellectual property theft, resulting in a $116 million dollar settlement, Peterson said. Several days later the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred. Safety Systems Inc., which was a New York company, was greatly affected and the business fell dormant until 2006, he said. The Rebirth of TED In 2006, Peterson was made a full partner in the company, now known as TEDCOR. He was named president, joining partners Steven H. Campbell and Dennis Petosa. Petosa has been involved with the business since the beginning and Campbell has been the chief source of funding. Petosa contributed extensively to the initial widespread distribution of the first editions of TED technology via testing sites and tradeshows. Petosa and Peterson have written operating instructions and TED Unit Training Guides for department training officers. Peterson's first goal was to update the technology. His search for a
company that could update the technology and also manufacture TED led him
to Airpax, which has a power protection, sensing and control device
manufacturing plant in Cambridge. A team of Airpax engineers reverse
engineered TED, reproducing the patented sound using updated electronics
and improving the design. The redesign took less than two weeks, but
perfecting and developing a cost-effective way to manufacture it took
several months, Peterson said.
"Sensata likes the fact that the product offers some lifesaving opportunities," McDonald said. "They pride themselves in applications that must work. This really falls right in line with their core beliefs." Sensata began manufacturing TED in November 2007 and has currently manufactured only a couple hundred devices, which are then sold to TEDCOR to distribute, McDonald said. "There is nobody I would rather have than Airpax," Peterson said. "Sensata just makes it better." How TED Works "Smoke eliminates vision. TED employs sound as the lifesaving link," Peterson said. "This is the missing link in firefighter safety." TED is a yellow, 8 1/4 pound, rugged steel box which contains a battery for two hours continuous operation, a patented sound-production and transmitting system and a receiver for remote digital commands from a handheld unit which activates a second evacuation signal. A white strobe light sits atop the box. When activated the audio beacon transmits a signal for two seconds followed by eight seconds of silence. The strobe light continually flashes. When a firefighter team enters a structure it places TED by the chosen exit. Each firefighter hears the sound and knows exactly where the exit is at all times while fighting the fire. When a firefighter's air supply gets low he can still follow the sound TED emits despite low visibility due to smoke. When a building becomes too dangerous for anybody to be inside the evacuation signal can be activated using the remote control. The evacuation signal is a continuous and louder beep. "The signal is beautiful, because wherever you go you hear it," Peterson said. TED has been tested in laboratories, fire stations, fire academies,
seminars, smoke houses and live burns with the help of several fire
departments, including FDNY, Lake Mary Fire Department and Casselberry
Fire Department in Florida. The results have shown that TED can get
firefighters out of burning buildings five times faster than other
existing techniques, Peterson said.
Worcester Fire Department in Massachusetts is currently testing and training with TED, according to Mike McNamee, district fire chief and health and safety officer with the department. McNamee was the initial incident commander on December 3, 1999, when sixfirefighters died in a cold storage and warehouse building fire in Worcester. He explains that the first two firefighters to perish that night were low on air and could not find their way out of the "evil building" that had no windows and was six stories tall. The other four died trying to locate and extract their fellow firefighters. While McNamee believes TED would not have helped the first two firefighters that died that night, he does believe the device could have helped the other four who died. Worcester Fire Department's Special Operations Taskforce has been training with TED in an abandoned mall. The firefighters were able to hear TED approximately 250 feet away and through closed doors, McNamee said. "The firefighters found it to work pretty well," he said. "It is another tool we have to work with, but it is an important tool." McNamee said he believes TED could be most applicable in large commercial buildings that can be difficult to negotiate in heavy smoke. He said the two second signal followed by eight seconds of silence allows the firefighter's brain to reset and hone in on the sound. When the firefighter hears the signal again, if it is louder he knows he is closer to the exit and if it is quieter he knows if is further away. McNamee added that the device does not need to be set at an exit, but can be set at a critical point in the building. McNamee likes the portability of TED and is impressed with the unique sound that it produces. In testing, firefighters in his department have been able to hear TED over the noise of diesel trucks, sirens, air horns and saws. He has been pleased with the tests so far and the department is leaning towards purchasing several if the testing continues to be positive. The Worcester Fire Department will test TED further with a recruit class in May in a variety of training situations. "The more tools we have the better our chances of survival are in a bad situation," McNamee said. As a result of recent firefighter tragedies, including the cold storage fire in Worcester, Sept. 11 and a furniture warehouse fire last year that killed nine firefighters in Charleston, S.C., people are looking more and more at firefighter safety, he said. The work of Peterson and others who are looking into helping firefighters is greatly appreciated, he said. Marketing Peterson has now begun heavily marketing TED to fire departments across the U.S. He has a program on his home computer that tracks everyone who has visited the company's Web site with a red flag on a map of the U.S. People who have shown a specific interest, directly contacting Peterson, are highlighted in yellow. Red flags and highlighted red flags dot the map, with the highest concentration on the East Coast. Locally, Peterson has contacted fire departments in Queen Anne's, Caroline and Anne Arundel counties, all of which have shown interest, he said. Fire departments in New York, New Jersey,Massachusetts, Colorado, Florida and Texas have expressed interest. Peterson has folders of e-mails from all around the U.S. "We have support all over the country," he said. "When I see a person from a city is checking out the page I call that area's fire department." The opportunity is huge, Peterson said. He estimates there are 93,000 or more municipal fire stations in the U.S. and an average need of three TEDs per station. At roughly $1,600 a device, 100 percent market share would equal $446 million, he said. There are a similar number of non-municipal fire stations in the U.S., including airport and private industry departments. A huge market exists in other countries too, he said. "If there was ever a ground floor of a multibillion dollar industry this is it because the product has a demonstrated need," he said. "We need to save lives." Sensata has said that 500 TEDs will equal one job at its Cambridge
plant, according to McDonald. Peterson also has some spin-off product ideas. Once TED is established he will devote his time to developing the spin-offs, he said. For information on TEDCOR LLC and the Target Exit Device (TED), visit
www.tedcor.us or call
410-479-4255.
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