Drones Are Being Utilized In Many Emergency Situations Delaware Would Benefit A Great Deal With Drone Use For Emergency Services And Not Just On Land
Drones have become an important tool in many businesses and services. One of these is rescue and firefighting. The things that can be accomplished with a drone that a human can not do or done faster is amazing. Not to mention the safety factor, you can send a drone into a chemical fire. Drones are in their infancy as far as what they can accomplish for people and society. Unfortunately like any new technology, there are always the few that abuse them and create rules for the many. In the case of the drone I am glad to see them regulated better. They can be intrusive if used maliciously.
Not long ago Memorial Station 89 Slaughter beach used a drone for training on the fire boat. Many of our rescue services are finding out all kinds of advantages using drones. I believe drones will be and should be part of their arsenal of tools. I spoke with Russell Johnson about the drone training aboard Marine 89 (fire boat) they did at the Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse in the Delaware Bay. He sent me a great description of the training.
Russell Johnson … I am from Memorial Station 89 Slaughter Beach.
First let me note A special thank you to Asst Chief. Keith Bennett and Marine Captain Mike Barr for entertaining the idea of this training on Marine 89-1. Although the pictures are a beautiful view, they were not the real intentions for the drone training drill. Myself and Bob McMahon from Station 82 Lewes fire department. Came up with the idea to test several scenarios with a drone that could be a life saving resource.
Scenario #1 … To be able to take off and land on nonstationary platforms (boats). Along with deploying and retrieving at a rate of 6 knots. Which is the appropriate under way speed for searching during an active water rescue.
Scenario #2 … Testing the drones systems and reactions over the water. By testing the Distance from 4000 feet away at a 200 foot altitude. The possibilities of using preplanning. Also being able to find the vessel or subject whom may be in distress out in the water. When we left the deck, Bob and I decided that a good preplan scenario would be to head to the Anchorage. Where we would find two ships lightering with a possible spill. The plan was for the fire boat to circumnavigate the two tankers at that point we would establish a scene size up. Which we immediately deployed the drones. With that we were able to see the size of the incident and could call for further resources if needed. The underway deployment was the scenario of finding a vessel in distress. With unknown coordinates on the boat, we could only see so far. however with the drone in the air, we have a much wider view. We could see for miles, without hindering the rescue operations on the vessel.
The next test would be the distance test of how far we can broaden the horizons in the distance. The time of the flight is very limited at twenty minutes. The lighthouse provided us with an excellent jetty wall scenario of finding somebody on the rocks or somebody seeking refuge in the harbor. These tests were to justify having drones in the Fire Service, but not only the water rescue side.
Drones have been used in the fire service now for many years. They’ve been incorporated in fighting wildfires and house fires with flair and have gotten a lot of good information. However incorporating them into water rescues hasn’t seen much attention due to the fact of the cost versus the odds of losing drones in the water because of connection errors and pilot error. I believe drones will be a very effective resource in handling water rescues with the technology of flair which is very inexpensive versus a helicopter. Which has fuel cost and maintenance to the aircraft. At night time looking for heat signatures on the water will be a very effective way of locating an overdue vessel who is still out in the darkness of the night and is in distress.
I have used the drone on an actual incident in July 2016. Where we assisted a vessel that was taking on water. The really nice thing about that was I was able to see resources for miles that we couldn’t spot by the boat. Bob and myself are in the justifying stage to our fire companies 82 and 89. We are showing why it would be a good reason to have a drone for water rescue. Hopefully in the future all fire departments will have drones as a resource. Bob and I have worked together on this for a long time and have decided a drone would have to meet several applications. Which would include the ability to have a pilot and a copilot capabilities. Two active screens during the search and to deploy and retrieve due to deck space limitations.
The fire school actually owns drones and has crashed several they have a class on drones. Drones seem to be getting into local departments very slowly. One obstacle in the fire departments will be creating a Standard operating procedure (SOP). Let’s not forget that drones are not toys, these could cause damage or severe injuries. You can not fly over people, but we would have crews in the area. During the training exercise at the tanker exercise. I made sure I was over the water at all times for the safety of the crew.
Then there is the issue of whom would pilot and who would keep drones on hand. One issue will be keeping the batteries maintained in a ready state. I think it’s just hard for people to understand. Slaughter Beach owns a underwater sonar a very specialized piece of equipment for finding bodies that cost extraordinarily more than a drone. For an example this is a piece of equipment is not used very often. But it’s just a matter of time until it will be utilized in a recovery situation. So far all my flights have been with Keith Bennett behind the helm.
Before we deployed the drones. Bob also made an announcement on VHF channel 16 that we would be doing some drone training in the area off marine 89-1, and that we would be standing by on 22 alpha. Other incidents I’ve been present with drones was in January 2018 down in Rehobeth for a house fire. Ocean View PD had a drone overhead with a thermal imaging camera. It’s amazing what they captured, master streams were missing the fire. We were able to redirect them to make it more efficient to put out the fire in a timely manner. A second incident which was a training exercise at twin Cedars apartments in Roxanna. We were able to see every roof rafter, that had not been touched with fire. Something of a remember that drones are prohibited in any state park in the state of Delaware without special permission …. Russell Johnson
I believe Delaware needs to take a serious look at outfitting all of our emergency services with drones. Not only for the scenarios tested and conducted by The Slaughter Beach crew, but many other applications. In a few short uses they demonstrated that drones can help them expedite saving lives, putting out fires more efficiently, and saving money on assets. You don’t need to deploy a helicopter if you can use a drone, that saves money and puts less lives at risk.
Rich King