While working a house fire in 2010 as a paramedic firefighter for the Pattonville Fire Protection District, Jason Cerrano got an idea that would change his life.
“It's not a great hero story,” Cerrano said. “It was just a little bit of smoke rolling out the eaves, and [the crew] wasn’t asking for water very quickly, and I just spent a lot of time running circles around the truck.”
Cerrano wasn’t running out of mere urgency. The fire panel that controls the truck’s water flow was facing the street — obscuring his view of the fire. He was in charge of operating the pump, but he felt isolated from the rest of the crew.
“You can only listen to the radio,” he said. “And it was probably my fourth trip around the truck, and I was like, ‘Man, there has got to be a better way.’"
He believed the solution would be to install a pump panel on both sides of the truck. “The only way to do that was to digitize it, and once I got to that point, I realized you can now automate it now that it's all connected.”
That thought set Cerrano, a native of Quincy, Illinois, and current resident of Lake St. Louis, on a multiyear journey that led to him inventing the SAM Control System. Similar to a tablet, the all-digital interface controls how a firetruck pumps, intakes and discharges water.
The SAM Control System — SAM stands for simple apparatus management — is now used in more than 120 fire departments across the country. Many of those departments are concentrated in the St. Louis area, including in Cahokia Heights, New Athens, Mascoutah, Glen Carbon, Rolla, Maryland Heights and O’Fallon, Missouri.
The SAM Control System in Freeburg, Illinois
Hans Mueller, the fire chief of the Freeburg Fire Protection District in St. Clair County, Illinois, first encountered the SAM Control System at a trade show about eight years ago. He wasn’t immediately on board.
Relying on a new, all-digital piece of technology was a hurdle. “It’s a lot of electronics, and I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got a lot riding on this. We have people going into a burning building, and I'm relying on a computer,’” Mueller said.
But as the technology evolved, Mueller recognized its potential. Not only did the control system automate what firefighters previously did manually, it would, he knew, help his volunteer fire department in Freeburg’s rural areas where there aren’t hydrants.
Specifically, Mueller was excited that it would make drafting water easier. That’s when firefighters have to suck water out of a pool, lake or other water source.
“One of the hardest things we can ask an engineer to do is draft water to supply water to a barn that's on fire or something like that. It's kind of hard to do,” he said. “And then you take a guy and put him on this truck, versus another truck and it makes it more complicated.
“With this system, it has a button you slide that says ‘I want to be in draft mode.’ I swipe that. It knows that it needs to suck water versus pressure coming into it, but it does all that priming and everything for you,” he said.
The system can also automate switching between different water sources.
“Watching that system do everything for you, it's like, ‘Oh, that's really good,’” he added. “Those are moments in an officer or a fire chief whenever they're on those rule structure fires where you're crossing every finger and toe you have [hoping] that everything's going to work out alright.”
Jason Cerrano’s entrepreneurship journey
Cerrano’s path to the fire service began in the late 1990s when he was a student at Missouri S&T pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering.
“What’s that on your belt?” he asked a friend at a college party, referring to a bulky pager on his belt. “That’s my fire pager,” the friend responded.
“So you're telling me I can just go sign up tomorrow [to volunteer] and they'll give me the clothes and put me on the trucks? And he's like, ‘Yeah.’”
“I loved it,” Cerrano said. “Once I did it and got on the department — it's hard not to love that job.” He even quit the Missouri S&T baseball team to spend more time volunteering at the fire department in Rolla.
After graduating from college, Cerrano turned down an engineering job and instead became a paramedic firefighter. He had every intention to retire as a firefighter until his journey toward invention began at the house fire in 2010.
“It starts with the patents,” Cerrano said. He worked with patent attorneys from Armstrong Teasdale in Clayton for almost eight years. “You almost become family with your patent attorneys.”
With patents secured, Cerrano worked with another local company to develop a video game that demonstrates how the technology worked. But it wasn’t until at a large trade show in Indianapolis when firefighters from the St. Louis Fire Department stopped by his booth that things took off.
“[The St. Louis Fire Department] was in the process of upgrading all their trucks to go digital, and they were like: ‘Well, that's interesting. Maybe you could play around with one of the older [trucks] first, and they actually gave me a 1999 Smeal out of Engine House No. 10, and they gave me the truck.”
Cerrano built a prototype of the SAM Control System. The truck was back in service five months later. “It's not easy to get a fire truck, especially one that you're going to have to do severe alterations to. So it was really brave of St. Louis City to help us out with that,” he said.
Cerrano sold his business to Illinois-based IDEX Fire and Safety in 2018. He continues to work for the company as its commercial director of research and development. After the company built a track record of reliable delivery of the SAM Control System, the next step is to get the technology on more fire trucks.
“Our next biggest challenge is getting adoption in the fire service,” he said. “Nobody likes change, and the fire service is world renowned for its resistance to change.” That’s partly for good reason, Cerrano said; a firefighter’s muscle memory in stressful situations is paramount.
“If there are enough benefits, they’ll find a way to like it,” he said.
Listen to inventor Jason Cerrano and Freeburg Fire Chief Hans Mueller discuss the SAM Control System on St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
