One of the most dangerous things about a fire is the lack of visibility due to smoke. Even in broad daylight it can get so thick that vision is severely obscured. At night you can't even see what you're feeling with your hands.
So you've placed your ladder and proceed to climb onto the roof of a burning building. A hole is punched and smoke billows out. Now you need to get back to that ladder, but where is it? In seconds the edge has disappeared in smoke so thick you can cut it with a knife. The ladder is nowhere to be found. Your heart pounds as you find the edge of the roof and search for the ladder. You're lucky to have had the time to find it. But what if you needed to get off immediately?
You think “never again!”. I'm never going to be in a situation where I don't know exactly where to go to get off that roof in a heartbeat.
Enter the ARC ladder light. Designed to be pre-mounted near the tip of any fire service ladder. Rugged and simple to use with two large buttons that can be operated with a gloved hand. Simple is its hallmark and you don't need to read a manual to learn how to operate it. And when you're fighting a fire the fewer procedures you need to remember to operate your gear the better.
It's military inspired technology includes a bank of 24 green CREE LDEs that can produce 370 lumen of light it's designed not only to illuminate and be seen up to five miles, it's frequency distribution and modulation minimizes diffraction by carbon molecules found in smoke. It's engineered to cut through the smoke and go exactly where you need it: objects near the ladder that need to be illuminated so you can see the hazards and get to where you need to go to get to the ladder.
It has a constant illumination mode and a pulse mode that gives it up to 26 hours of operation on 8 AA alkaline or rechargeable batteries.
It's rugged and survivable. Able to take the heat up to 212º F and shock that is common in a fire rescue environment. As it gets hotter the microprocessor that operates the light reduces power to prevent damage to the LEDs and extend their service life. And that is just scratching the surface on what this device can be programmed to do in future versions.
And at 2.7” x 3.0” it's designed to stay out of the way as you climb up the ladder. If you hit it with your boot then you're stepping on the wrong part of the rung. It's that small.
But as a simple, tough beacon it does more than it's size suggests.
The ARC ladder light is a beacon to safety. It's the difference between a close call story at the end of your watch or a genuine mayday.
For more information visit http://www.arc911.com.
