Tacoma startup hopes to save firefighter lives and maybe provide some good jobs, too
Matt Tolentino’s “big idea” — or at least his latest big idea — is going to save lives.
That’s what people keep telling him anyway, not that he has much time to sit and fully ponder the life-or-death implications of his endeavor.
He’s been busy.
By day, Tolentino, a Navy veteran who previously spent 15 years in software and hardware design at Intel, is a professor of computer engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma.
For the last three years, he’s spent much of his free time trying to solve a big problem for the Tacoma Fire Department, and hopefully, eventually, fire departments and other emergency responders around the country.
When firefighters enter a burning building, there’s currently no precise way to track where they are, according to Tolentino. You can follow hoses and rely on counts, checklists and radio transmissions, but when the stakes are at their highest and the unthinkable happens, there’s simply not much for command staff on the ground to go on.
“I think we’ve gotten used to GPS, and being able to see where we are — outside,” Tolentino said. “But that all ends as soon as you go inside.”.
Enter Namatad, the startup Tolentino and his wife, Amalie O’Connor Tolentino, hope will change that.
Through a platform they’ve developed known as Firefly, Tolentino says he’s come up with a way to give commanders an overhead view, in real time, of where everyone is when they’re inside a burning structure.
The platform connects tablets on the outside with information transmitted by sensors worn by firefighters and pull-pin activated transmitters dropped throughout a burning building.
Additionally, the system provides fire command staff with analytics and information on smoke, particulate matter and other potentially dangerous conditions inside a fire, supplying “radar-like” visuals.
Tolentino has tested and developed the platform at UWT over the last few years with help from students and a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Amalie O’Connor Tolentino, who has a background as a budget analyst for the Navy and as a project manager at Weyerhaeuser, lightheartedly compares it to the Marauder’s Map in Harry Potter.
Such an advancement is no joke, however.
It has the potential to be “huge for us,” according to assistant Tacoma fire chief Bruce Bouyer, which is why the department and the city of Tacoma’s economic development team have taken an active role in helping to support and develop it.
The prospect of losing a firefighter — or a team of firefighters — “keeps us up at night,” Bouyer told The News Tribune.
“What if firefighters are injured or they’re down and they can’t make those transmissions, or they’re not on the hose line?” Bouyer said. “That’s when the problem comes.”
It’s precisely the nightmare scenario Tolentino believes he’s finally addressed.
“In the fire industry, our No. 1 priority is the safety of our firefighters,” Bouyer added. “Any time we can do anything to enhance that, or make the track easier … we’ll take a look at it.”
Bouyer has been with the Tacoma Fire Department for the last two decades and says he’s seen plenty of change during that time. He’s also intimately familiar with the “accountability system” the department now utilizes to track a firefighter’s whereabouts inside a burning structure, including its limitations.
Eight months ago, Bouyer was assigned to act as a liaison between Tolentino and the department, to help facilitate the technology’s testing and development. Former Fire Chief Jim Duggan was interested in the idea’s potential, Bouyer said, and wanted the department to be involved.
Over the last year, Tacoma Fire’s participation has meant allowing Tolentino to test the emerging platform and sensors at controlled educational burns, even outfitting recruits in training to gather data and refine the technology.
Bouyer said that he’s “very hopeful” Tolentino’s envisioned solution will be a significant upgrade, and so far, the results have been promising — which is why the city, Tacoma Fire and Namatad expect to finalize a $35,000 contract by early February.
The contract, which will mark the beginning of a pilot project expected to run through the next year, will outfit two ladder and two engine companies with Namatad’s Firefly technology, Bouyer said.
If all goes as planned, it will also serve as the start of something much bigger.
Tolentino can envision a day when emergency responders of all varieties wear Firefly sensors, and large buildings integrate the technology into construction.
He also believes there’s a potential to track the carcinogens and other environmental dangers a firefighter is exposed to throughout a career, which could have major implications for a profession that can carry with it an alarming cancer rate.
“We’d like to see this in every fire department, ideally. So that’s sort of the beachhead for us. From there, it’s about: ‘What other areas can we help?’” Tolentino said.
“Matt tends to be too humble. No one has been able to do this. It is completely new. People have been trying and trying and trying over the years,” added his wife, O’Connor Tolentino, who serves as Namatad’s chief operating officer.
“What he’s developed allows you to operate and know where people are without anything. It builds its own infrastructure, so it’s completely new and revolutionary.”
If the revolution comes, Tolentino said it will be based here in Tacoma. That means that one day soon, according to Patricia Beard, the city of Tacoma’s business development manager, it could bring living wage jobs in the city’s developing tech sector and an assembly plant for Firefly sensors.
Given the assistance the city has already provided, from UWT to Tacoma Fire on down, it only seems fitting, Tolentino said.
“That’s always been the plan,” he said.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 5:20 AM.
