WASHINGTON — Toxic gas detectors that resemble tiny pagers and fit comfortably on your belt. Shirts that measure your vital signs as you work. Twelve-pound body armor made for you by the Russians. And a yurt.
Those were some of the wondrous contraptions — both cutting-edge and centuries old — on display this week at the Homeland & Global Security Summit in Washington.
All were billed as one piece of the answer to everything from preventing and detecting a terror attack to helping a community destroyed by natural disaster.
And most were presented by U.S. and foreign companies seeking a piece of the $150 billion pot to be spent this year on just such priorities by the U.S. departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Health and Human Services.
Among those slated to attend the two-day event were representatives of the American Red Cross; the Columbus, Ohio, Police Department; the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency; Indiana state government; and the embassies of France, Poland, Bosnia and Italy.
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One brand-new product was a polyurethane-related membrane developed by paint giant Sherwin-Williams Co. that prevents shrapnel from an explosion from penetrating internal walls. On the market only since January, it has drawn interest from the Air Force and commercial vehicle manufacturers, and a sale to the state of Maryland, about which national sales manager Ed Purdue could say little because of security concerns.
Brent Roden, of the Ventura, Calif.-based VivoMetrics Government Services company, faced no such restrictions about discussing his firm's "Life Shirt," which just has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
This strap-on device monitors the blood pressure, body temperature and even toxic exposure of hazmat teams, miners and firefighters to minimize casualties among such "first responders."
"They're monitoring while in the middle of an event," Roden said.
At the other end of the technology scale was a decidedly low-tech yurt — a portable hut covered with sheepskin that nomadic herders of the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan have used for centuries, lugging them via horses from one camp to another.
A skilled herder can erect the all-natural structure in 20 minutes, and fold it up in seven. It's impervious to rain and earthquakes and perfect as simple and affordable temporary shelter for victims of hurricanes or other disasters.
