Colorado to launch first-in-the-nation app that could revolutionize responder safety

Colorado to launch first-in-the-nation app that could revolutionize responder safety | News [Video]

A tanker stalls on the side of the highway. A driver runs into tanker’s back end. The tank explodes. The incident shuts down the highway. Emergency personnel, firefighters, and law enforcers scramble.

If that sounds familiar, it should. A similar situation happened on I-70 on May 16, when an SUV rear-ended a stalled tanker. The black smoke from the fire could be seen all the way to downtown Denver.

As the first responders scrambled that day, Ben Miller, director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety’s Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting, watched them in real time using a technology the military first created and used by special forces.

The technology — whose use is widespread among federal government agencies — has never been deployed at the state or local level.

And now Colorado is poised to be the first state in the nation to use it.