In an effort to quickly fight fires in emergency situations, a big donation to the Carlton county sheriff’s office on Monday.

Two local masonic lodges from Cloquet and Moose Lake donated four portable fire suppression tools to the sheriff’s department.

When a house catches fire in a rural community, it’s not uncommon for a sheriff’s deputy working patrol to arrive before firefighters. Now with these tools, deputies will be able to help sooner by slowing down the fire rather than just standing by waiting for the fire department.

Heath Wiersma is a firefighter himself and a member of the Cloquet masonic lodge. He described how the tool works.

“What it does is it resets what we call our flashover time clock as a firefighter, which is huge for us to be able to do that. It kind of restarts the clock of a fire that’s burning. So it’s going to be a great tool for the to have in the county.”

Wiersma said when activated and thrown into a burning room, this tool quickly reduces the temperature and flames.

Having four of these means there can be one available in the county 24-hours a day, seven days a week — with whoever’s on duty.