The engineering department at Texas Tech University headed down to the Lubbock Fire Rescue Training Facility to gain first-hand experiences as a firefighter for their latest project.
Suman Chowdhury, with the Department of Engineering at Texas Tech, says the project isn’t actually for a grade, it’s about the safety of firefighters.
“Department of Homeland Security is interested to develop a firefighting helmet,” Chowdhury said. “So, right now, the firefighters’ activities and roles have changed a lot throughout the years. Only 7% of their activities that are mainly fire extinguishing, but mostly respond to the vehicle extrication, automated accidents and, and also, like there are active shooting incidents firefighters are responding to, but they do not have a ballistic helmet.”
These researchers are trying to improve one the most important pieces of safety equipment a firefighter can have: helmets.