Today starts the annual “convention” of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) that is being held in Denver this year.  Many organizations have dropped the term “convention” from their vocabulary because the word immediately brings up a mental picture of a bunch of drunks wearing funny hats weaving down the sidewalks and singing old songs.

So now the annual conclaves are called things like “conference,” “exposition,” and “seminar.”  The IAFC just leaves off the descriptor altogether calling the 3-day event the Fire-Rescue International.  But do you know where they are?  They’re at the Colorado Convention Center.

Seriously, though, I hope they have a successful meeting.  There is always a lot of good, new ideas exchanged and solutions to common problems worked on.

Speaking of Denver, as I understand it, the emergency ambulance service is part of a separate agency called Denver Health and it works in partnership with the FD in responding to medical calls.  Denver Health is a unit of a large medical center and operates 34 ambulances.

Well, somebody at Denver Health thought it would be a good idea to look at ways to make the ambulances operate more efficiently and asked the University of Denver to help design an ambulance that could utilize solar power to help run the rig.  Political reality of the moment says that if you wave a flag that says “Green!” on it at anything, then the municipal budgeteers will scramble to fund it.

In order to help infuse a sense of need, the Denver Health hospital director Patti Gabow tossed out this, according to Ward Lucas of tv channel 9:

She wondered if there was a way to build an ambulance that didn’t need to be kept idling during its shift.

Ambulances are notorious energy hogs. Because they are filled with medical and communication equipment that has to be constantly kept at full charge, ambulances are parked throughout the city spewing fumes and consuming diesel 24 hours a day.

Now I’ve never been to Denver.  And I’ve never played Denver citizen on TV.  But I am willing to bet that they don’t leave their ambulances idling in the stations non-stop while waiting for the next call.  But it worked, they got their funding.  They have come up with a design and are currently building a unit with solar panels on the roof and hope to have it in service sometime this month.

The solar panels will provide enough current to keep the onboard medical equipment charged while the unit is not being used.  Personally, I’m always glad to see innovation and new ideas being tried.  That is a form of progress and these early attempts usually open the path to new technology that ends up helping in other ways that we can’t yet imagine.  So let’s hope the experiment works and see what happens next.  Read the full story from Channel 9 HERE.  And then don’t forget our article from last March HERE about the San Rafael, Californina, FD successfully using solar panels on their fire engines to keep the radios and computers topped off.

We’d better get this equipment checked out now.  And since the coffee maker isn’t yet solar-powered, I’ll go get it started.

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