Calgary-based Blackline Safety has grown its fire and hazmat customer base by 42 per cent over the past year, surpassing 500 fire departments worldwide that now use its connected gas detection and monitoring technology.
“The EXO 8 is firefighter-proof — we’ve dropped it, knocked it over, had it in high heat, and it just keeps going,” said Assistant Chief Robert Thompson of the Chattanooga Fire Department in Tennessee. “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.”
The company’s customer count in the sector grew from 350 departments to more than 500. Blackline’s product lineup for fire and hazmat teams includes the EXO 8 area monitor — a portable gas detector designed for deployment at incident perimeters — and the G8, a new wearable gas detector that began shipping in March 2026.
Olympic deployment
Italian hazmat responders selected Blackline equipment to protect venues at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics this past winter. The Belluno Provincial Fire Brigade used EXO 8 area monitors with gamma radiation detection paired with wearable gas detectors to conduct pre-event sweeps and monitor crowds for gas and radiation threats.
How the technology works in the field
The EXO 8 connects to a cloud-based platform that includes plume modelling — a tool that projects how a gas cloud will move based on live sensor readings and environmental conditions. Deputy Chief Tyler O’Neill of the Burnaby Fire Department in British Columbia described using the system after an equipment failure at a refinery.
“The plume modelling takes the guesswork out of how the plume is going to move in real time,” said O’Neill. “Now that we have that data we’re able to make decisions quicker. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending it.”
O’Neill’s team deployed EXO 8s around the refinery perimeter, using the live data and plume modelling to make a decision not to evacuate the surrounding area.
The G8 wearable
The G8 wearable device combines gas detection with real-time communication and streams live data to the cloud. The company describes it as intrinsically safe — a certification that means the device is designed to not ignite flammable gases or vapours in hazardous environments.
Together, the G8 and EXO 8 Gamma are positioned by Blackline to give fire and hazmat teams coverage from individual responders up to the incident command level.
