New York City’s Fire Department, better known as FDNY, is giving geek a go.

Fire chiefs and commanding officers are using a system they designed to be smarter about fighting fires and responding to major incidents and acts of terrorism.

It looks a lot like a TV news ENG truck: A central command system takes in video feeds from remote cameras set up around the site of a fire or other event.

“We use it at building collapses, train derailments, and God forbid, another terrorist incident, it’ll be there,” says firefighter Ray Pfeifer.

The central command sends those live video feeds to commanding officers’ laptops, so they can make decisions on the way to the incident or from a safe distance.

According to Mr. Pfeifer, it’s intended to minimize the number of first-responders put directly in harm’s way, while still effectively battling a blaze. “On 9-11, all our generals went to the scene, and once they went [there], a lot of them were killed,” he says.

The chiefs also have access to pictures of every roof in the five boroughs of New York, giving them crucial building-structure information when fighting fires at night.

The FDNY is arming chiefs with a fleet of Panasonic Toughbook laptops, which they say are durable enough to sit in standing water and take other harsh treatment. They are quick to praise the brightness of the screen.

I recently spent a day with FDNY firefighters as they set up a mock fire to give the system a go.