YORK's Rescue Boat has been given new high tech equipment which could help it swiftly find people who have gone in to York's River Ouse.

A thermal imaging camera - normally used by firefighters to help find people in smoke-logged buildings - has been donated to the rescue team by an Essex-based manufacturer, ISG Infrasys.

Dave Benson, who founded the rescue boat charity last year, said the device was worth thousands of pounds and would be a great asset to the team.

"More importantly, it means that when people go in the river at night, we can hopefully find them straight away, so it’s a great bit of kit," he said.

”One of our trustees emailed a few businesses and they said they liked what we were doing and offered to domna\te a model to us.

“It’s donations like this that keep us running and obviously with a piece of equipment like this it boosts our capabilities on the water.”

Speaking after the presentation of the equipment at the Ship Inn, Acaster Malbis, he said the rescue boat had had a busy couple of weeks. "People haven’t been going in the water though, which is good," he said.

"We have prevented a couple of people from making a bad choice but at the end of the day people are not going in and that’s a great success.”

Paul Spooner, sales and service manager of ISG Infrasys, which is owned by Lancashire-based Scott Safety, said such cameras were generally used by fire services to help detect people in burning buildings.

He said ISG had been investigating the potential benefits of such cameras to water-based rescues at night.

"We then got an email from Dave explaining what the York Rescue Boat needed and decided to donate one," he said.

He said the cameras could detect the heat from someone in the water as far as 30 to 40 metres away, who might not be spotted with a conventional floodlighting, allowing rescuers to move in and pull them from the river.