Kenosha County Fire Department Takes AcuRite on the Go

The Kenosha County Specialized Response Team is a technical rescue team, responsible for community safety in a variety of types of emergency incidents, based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We perform complex, high-risk, low-frequency technical rescues such as:

• Confined space
• Trench collapse
• Structure collapse/urban search and rescue
• Grain bin
• High/low angle rope rescue
• Tower rescue

Because of all the different types of rescues we perform, we must be ready for anything and everything, including any type of severe weather. Our jobs vary, and one incident can have us 500 feet in the air, hanging by a rope, while another might call for tunneling and stabilizing a building complex that has collapsed. This level of diversity requires us to have a lot of different specialized equipment — now including our professional weather station!

Our AcuRite Atlas® wireless weather station helps us monitor past, current, and future weather in the area that we are working. Using the local news or websites isn’t accurate enough for us because the weather stations reporting to major stations can be more than 10 miles away from where we are working. When we are trying to stabilize a house, it’s important that our emergency responders get the precise wind speed and direction for our exact location because those measurements will determine whether or not we need extra stabilization. Wind speed and direction can negatively impact our rescue attempts and create huge safety problems, sometimes resulting in further collapses.

We are able to bring our AcuRite Atlas weather station with us when we are responding to an incident and quickly set it up on-site. We situate it on a tripod and connect it to Weather Underground, which allows us to monitor the weather conditions anywhere we can go. After we arrive, we have it up and running in mere minutes. Keeping track of our weather data through My AcuRite® provides us peace of mind, as we know it is continuously monitoring the area in the background and alerts us when bad weather is on the way or when lightning strikes are detected within a 25 mile radius. Due to the nature of our responsibilities, weather is something we always need to be aware of; with our wireless and portable weather station, we can be sure that we’re always getting the most accurate weather data to ensure the safety of ourselves and our community every time we respond to a call.

To learn more about our team and for more information about fire safety, check us out on our Facebook page!