Canadian Rescuers Avoid Risk By Using Bullard Thermal Imaging Camera
The Abbotsford Rescue Service in this community outside of Vancouver had just returned from fighting a house fire on October 1 when they got a call about a car running off a road into a drainage ditch just outside of Abbotsford.
Rescuers arrived on the scene about 20 minutes after the accident. After they identified 
the location of the partially-submerged car, they scanned the vehicle with the Bullard Thermal Imaging Camera. The image on the screen showed heat from the engine block and handprints leading off the roof of the car. They immediately knew that the victim had pulled himself out of the vehicle.
Scanning the bank, rescuers could see a heat trail of footprints leading away from the car. A few minutes later, the victim was found walking down the road, and was brought back to the scene of the accident.
Captain Dean Larivee commented on the use of the camera. “We all think of thermal imaging cameras as tools for firefighting, but they can be used for just about anything that involves heat. We learned from that incident that thermal imagers are also very good rescue tools.
“The fact that we quickly learned that no one was in the car allowed us to avoid sending one of our own guys into the water to search – so we avoided the danger involved with conducting an underwater search,” Larivee said.
The Bullard TACSIGHT thermal imager for law enforcement is a valuable tool for first-on-the-scene responders to automobile accidents. It can quickly detect whether or not all persons are accounted for, and in what direction they may have wandered or been thrown.