KENMARE, ND ( KXNET ) — The Kenmare Fire Department now has a second thermal imaging camera, allowing them to deploy two crews at once.

The Kenmare Area Community Foundation donated $1,500 for the camera — and it’s a good thing, too, because just one of these life-saving tools costs around $4,500.

In the last few years, during search and rescue missions and structure fires, crews had to go in and locate people using just their one thermal imaging camera. Now, the second will help them continue.

The camera itself is very high-tech. The settings include being able to change the heat signatures in it, a zoom feature, and the ability to record and take pictures.

“If we have a house fire or part of the house that was burning,” said Kenmare’s City and Rural Fire Department Chief Scot Ness, “we want to check and see if it got in the wall, up in the attic, or wherever else. We can locate that through the walls to see if the fire moved to the end of the wall.”

Department members say they were able to use one of the cameras earlier in the week at a house that had an electrical fire, where they made sure it didn’t spread through the walls.

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