The city is considering the purchase of new high-tech equipment to aid workers at disaster scenes, and officials will listen to suggestions for other improvements from Chicago firefighters who joined rescue efforts last week in New York, Fire Commissioner James Joyce said Tuesday.
The revelations came at a news conference where Joyce displayed new trucks, recently delivered, that were ordered long before last week’s terrorist attacks on the East Coast in an effort to upgrade the city’s aging fleet of firefighting equipment.
New hardware being considered includes heat-detecting thermal imaging cameras that can find hidden sources of fire and “human beings who we could not find visually;” laser devices to detect shifts in buildings that could signal dangerous structural problems; and “snakelike” cameras that can be fed into crevices to look beneath rubble for survivors, the commissioner said.
Joyce said his department also is studying the possible purchase of a special truck that could pump large volumes of water to the top floors of even the city’s tallest high-rises.
More than two dozen firefighters who returned from volunteer rescue efforts in New York early Tuesday have been debriefed by Joyce and Mayor Richard Daley, officials said.
“Our people … felt pretty strongly that we stack up well, but we can become more efficient,” Joyce said. The volunteers will offer a list of suggestions based on their experiences, he added.
Daley hinted at a news conference, meanwhile, that the city may ask managers of high-rises to conduct evacuation drills.
“I think we have to,” he said. “We are going to work with them.”
On another front, Meigs Field remained closed Tuesday, to the consternation of supporters of the little lakefront airport slated to shut down permanently early next year.
“The Department of Aviation is still working with the FAA” on a plan that would permit Meigs to reopen, said Rod Sierra, a mayoral spokesman. But he could not predict when operations will resume.
Also on Tuesday:
The U.S. Coast Guard recalled a dozen reservists for up to 30 days to patrol Lake Michigan and the harbors near Chicago. They will join five reservists who volunteered for active duty last week.
Dozens of area residents and state employees attended a ceremony at the Thompson Center to remember the victims of last week’s terrorist attacks. Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood asked the crowd to pray for government leaders who must make difficult decisions in the wake of the attacks. A spokeswoman for Wood, a Republican candidate for governor, said the service was “absolutely not” connected to politics.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the security of charter jets needs to be re-examined in the wake of last week’s hijackings, because lax oversight of passengers and their luggage could lead to more tragedies.
“This afternoon, if I wanted to, I could call and charter a jet,” Durbin said. “And when I get on that jet, nobody asks who I am or what my background is, whether I’ve been involved in criminal activity. Nor do they look at the bags that I’ve put on the plane.”
