Firefighting experts and drone pilots are mainly focusing on drones to deal with major problems and challenges in rural and urban areas on a daily basis and they are trying to explore the usage of drones to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their capabilities regarding firefighting and rescuing in multiple ways.
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FLYING OVER LIVE FLAMES FOR POST-FIRE FORENSICS
Firefighting drones fly over live fires and also help in post-fire analysis and forensics. Do you know about the most famous fires in current history where drones were used at the tragic fire that flooded Paris’s treasured Notre Dame? In this incident, DJI MAVIC PRO and Matric M210 drones are used to make live video recordings and to track the progression of the fire. Such drones help in finding out the best spots to tackle the blaze. As said by 75% of public safety agencies, they are pursuing some kinds of drone programs, according to the Drone responders 2019 Spring Data Survey.
FIREFIGHTING DRONES – BETTER THAN HELICOPTERs
They deploy in the wildfire, in factory fires, and in-home fires, and even these are better than helicopters because of many benefits. For example
- Firefighting drones are much easier to handle.
- It can gather real-time data automatically.
- By providing accurate information drones, responders make decisions timely.
- These are also cost-efficient as most experts buy drones that cost less than $2000 such as DJI Phantom 4, the more expensive DJI Inspire 2 with Zenmuse XT2 thermal camera, and other accessible Mavic 2.
- Drones help in determining the fastest way to put out a fire because thermal imaging indicates the hottest part of the fire to concentrate their efforts.
- It can easily and speedily locate the seat of a fire and its progress and also aid firefighting personnel while wildfire.
- With the help of advanced sensors and HD camera features drones have the ability to search for missing persons or missing survivors.
- It can transmit data and information to a control room and aid in quick decision-making in a great way.
Now we are going to talk about a Thailand-based tech supplier, Systronics, It has its own discipline team and group of drone pilots and experts who shared how drones are used in current time, devastating chemical factory explosion. In this explosion, it was declared that the life of a young firefighter forced the evacuation within a five-mile radius.
Go Through A Case Study About What Happened In The Chemical Factory Fire
On July 5, 2021, at 2:50 am, a chemical explosion that was not just a factory but the complete town of Racha Thewa, fifty tons of industrial chemicals caught fire. Racha Thewa is found around twenty-kilometers from Bangkok, Thailand. That explosion was a great power to blow out the doors and windows of nearby houses and also extremely loud to hear around five-kilometer away. As you can say that this fire was very huge, it not only destroyed the actual factory as well as so many buildings and homes to become damaged as far as the one-kilometer radius from the starting site. But the good news was only one firefighter was killed and sixty firefighters were injured.
In this bad happening, city police and firefighters were involved and a great role is played by D.R.A.T that is The Disaster Response Association Thailand, and also a specialist drone team conducted by Systronics.
Drones can easily provide complete 360-degree thermal reading fires in their given aerial vantage point. During the fire, Systronics used drones to provide quick awareness of the factory and supply live aerial data transferring information back to the firefighters on the ground. Crews can see through the substantial smoke and firefighters’ efforts and struggle to and away from threatening hotspots.
When the fire was extinguished, such amazing drones played a key role in quick analysis of the site and evidence collection. The drone can easily capture and monitor high-density point clouds equipped with high-resolution making sensors.
Which Firefighting Drones Are Used?
Because the drone’s capable of carrying different payloads, Systronics defaults roughly $14000 DJI M300 and during the fire, this drone is equipped with DJI’s H20T thermal camera that helps pilots to see through the billowing smoke to particular hotspots and after that direct the firefighter to battle the fire.
To assess the damaged part, Systronics used the DJI P1, DJI Terra and L1 to gather mapping data and to make active and fruitful decision making throughout this process. It was a piece of good news that The National Forest Service started using firefighting drones back in 2015 and now this team has grown to more than sixty-five drone operators efficiently.
“Chemical fires are some of the unacceptable threats firefighters over the world are called to handle,” as per the prepared statement from DJI. “Not only are industrial chemicals often highly flammable, but they can also be highly toxic threatening emergency personnel and nearby residents with further dangers if not beat out quickly. What’s more, chemical factory consolidations often house multiple stores of different hazardous materials placing even greater urgency on crews to bring flames under control as quickly as possible.”
