Blackline Safety fire & hazmat customer base grows 42%
Blackline Safety's fire and hazmat customer base has grown 42% to more than 500 departments globally, up from 350 a year earlier.
The increase marks a notable expansion in emergency response, where Blackline supplies connected personal and area monitors to fire and hazardous materials teams. Growth was driven by operational deployments in live incidents and planned security operations.
Products gaining traction include the EXO 8 area monitor and the G8 wearable gas detector. Blackline began shipping the G8 in March, adding a new wearable device to a portfolio already used by industrial and emergency response customers in more than 75 countries.
Fire and hazmat teams use the devices for gas detection, radiation monitoring, and live data sharing with command teams. Blackline positions the EXO 8 Gamma and G8 combination as a way for field responders and incident managers to work from the same stream of information.
One recent deployment involved the Burnaby Fire Department in British Columbia, where responders used EXO 8 units after an equipment failure at a refinery. Blackline said the team placed monitors around the site perimeter and used plume modelling and live gas readings during the response.
"EXOs deploy as fast as you can take them out of the box and turn them on," said Deputy Chief Tyler O'Neill of the Burnaby Fire Department.
He said the data helped guide decisions during the incident.
"The plume modelling takes the guesswork out of how the plume is going to move in real time. Now that we have that data, we're able to make decisions quicker. I wouldn't hesitate recommending it," O'Neill said.
Blackline also cited the Chattanooga Fire Department in Tennessee as an EXO 8 user, saying durability and battery life were among the reasons crews adopted the monitor.
"The EXO 8 is firefighter-proof - we've dropped it, knocked it over, had it in high heat, and it just keeps going. The battery life is incredible. We can run it for entire events without worrying about charging. It gives us accurate readings we can trust, even in tough conditions," said Assistant Chief Robert Thompson of the Chattanooga Fire Department.
Olympic deployment
Italian hazmat responders also selected Blackline equipment for use during the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. The Belluno Provincial Fire Brigade used EXO 8 Area Monitors with Gamma, together with wearable gas detectors, to help protect Olympic venues.
According to Blackline, the brigade used the systems for pre-event sweeps and active crowd monitoring for gas and radiation threats. The deployment suggests Blackline is targeting not only day-to-day emergency response work but also large-scale public security operations.
Product push
The newly launched G8 is central to that effort. Blackline said the device combines gas detection with real-time communication and streams live data to its cloud platform, reducing the number of separate tools responders need to carry.
The broader offering reflects growing demand for connected safety technology in frontline services, where departments are under pressure to make faster decisions with better situational awareness. Fire and hazmat organisations have increasingly adopted equipment that relays readings from personnel and incident zones to commanders as events unfold.
Blackline is listed in Toronto and describes itself as a connected safety technology provider. Beyond emergency services, it supplies wearable devices, gas monitoring equipment, and software to industrial customers, and says its systems have reported more than 310 billion data points and triggered more than eight million emergency alerts.
The latest growth figure points to a rising share of emergency response work within that business. With more than 500 fire departments now using its products, Blackline is building a larger foothold in a specialist market where reliability in field conditions can matter as much as software features in purchasing decisions.