Drone for brushfire spotting?

txdon · Mar 5, 2013

While at a large brush fire the other day I felt like I was tied up and blind. The brush and smoke was so thick that we could not drive or walk in it to get a look at the fire spread to extinguish it. The private roads were small and few. The fire jumped fence lines and roads. These are 1000 acre to 2500 acre continuous brush areas. We saw an airplane and was hoping it was a spotter plane from the TX Forest Service but it kept on going.

I was thinking today that a small drone would have helped tremendously to catch the small fires that were jumping out from the sides and head of the main fire. It would have also given us fast information of any structures, best areas of cutoff, how fast and where the fire was moving to help deploy the trucks.

There is one that I found some info on, but we might need one a bit more rugged than the Parrot AR Drone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJbQuEUrUg
I'm also thinking the wind might be a problem since all the bad fires happen when the wind gets above 20mph.

Does anyone have any experience with a small drone and know it's capabilities?

(We finally got it contained with the help of a couple of dozers and a bit of luck with the wind.)

creekbend · Mar 5, 2013

The March issue of National Geographic - the Magazine - has a well documented and illustrated report on "Drones". The story is at the last part of the issue. Very good reading.

Western · Mar 5, 2013

Dont know much about drones, only one I've seen in person was flying around the military base outside of Alamogordo NM last summer. I was surprised at how slow they can move.

I could see where it could benefit firefighters, but wonder about deployment time versus other means, then you have the quality of camera and monitor to consider to get the information that would actually benefit the fire crew..I'm thinking major $$

jinman · Mar 5, 2013

Oh boy! The conspiracy theorists will be all over this. They'll say the government is setting fires just so they have an excuse to put them under surveillance. Of course it's wacky, but you just know it's gonna happen.

groundcover · Mar 5, 2013

10News - New firefighting drone makes debut at San Diego conference - 10News.com - News

txdon · Mar 5, 2013

Thanks groundcover that is exactly what I had in mind and they already make it. Of course the $50K is the deterrent now, but if they make them less expensive in the future and we can get one for the county or tri-county or with grant monies then it could be a possibility. I'll keep my eye on them and if anyone gets an opportunity to use one please report back.

forgeblast · Mar 5, 2013

I remember that there was a thread about fighting fires and people were talking about building firefighting rigs. I just saw that gemplers has different firefighting rigs on skids,
this one 7.8 GPM 200-gallon Firefighting Skid Sprayers - GEMPLER'S goes in the back of a pickup truck.

RobertN · Mar 6, 2013

My concern would be that a drone would not be deployed by any of the first in engines; it would be after an incident command was set up.

MikeFarm · Mar 6, 2013

Hiya

Have a look here: DIY Drones
Drones like the arducopter will lift a good camera easily. Also search on youtube for arducopter for nice examples of the video one can get. It would be excellent for fire spotting and checking fence lines, weeds etc. [Also lots of people should get them so that when the govt wakes up that they don't want people to have them by that time nearly everyone will know someone that has one for a good purpose - even if just for fun.]

Mike