I have known Lisa Mortimeyer for about 10 years. Back in the day when she started PolyForce, she always invited me to bring my ideas for development and she would help me out if she could.

I was really happy to see that the device I brought them has been moved along so quickly. Part of that was due to the tragedy in Charleston where 9 of our brothers died. That brought me to the conclusion that I needed to make the time to bring my idea to FireDrake so nothing like that can happen again and firefighters that are part of a RIT team carry something that can mean the difference between life and death and something that was easily manageable.

Joe and Herb are great to work with too. They did a thorough but quick evaluation of the product then Joe called me back and said that one of the companies he is working with has extended us some advanced technology that will put this way out ahead of what's currently available. I just couldn't be happier that this is getting done. It's really exciting.

Chris and his wife Jaime have been good friends of mine for a long time. Like any of the firefighters I have personally met, they are just good and nice people. Chris is also one of those people that never says no to helping people out. Chris is the Varsity Baseball Coach for Willits High School when he isn't fighting fires or running his other business, Willits Rental Center Inc. He has a bunch of nice kids to pay attention too and still seems to hold it all together. In all respects Chris is a hard worker and his idea for advancing current firefighting technology is excellent. It's my opinion that every fire department should look at current practice and understand that innovation doesn't always mean making a product more complex. Many times making products less complicated actually improve them. It's common for companies to advance products based on adding features. We call that "creeping featuritis". There are many instances where advancing the technology just means making the product better by increasing it's functionality and not the amount of features it may have.

This particular idea that Chris has is right on the mark and like all ideas that are coming from firefighters, it's obvious that they do not wish to make their jobs or equipment more complicated. We are designing his product using advanced medical gas technology that will improve safety and performance by keeping it simple and will improve the situations encountered by a RIT Team responding to a downed firefighter.