NFPA Journal - July/August 2017 - 48
REAL
GUIDANCE
industry expertise-we realize that the
FAA can't solve this on our own," Ryan
said during a recent panel discussion at
the annual Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)
conference in Dallas. "We need to collaborate closely with industry partners
Times. "Moving forward, technology like
this is a terrific advantage for us and for
fire departments around the country."
York County, Virginia, has had a
joint police and fire UAS team offering
support to various county agencies and
jurisdictions since November. The team
" I DON'T THINK THEY ARE
KNOWINGLY DOING IT
ILLEGALLY, IT'S JUST THAT
THE INFORMATION ISN'T
OUT THERE. "
to bring about standards development
that allows everyone to roll out this
new technology in a controlled way."
TAKING FLIGHT
Even as guidance for public safety drones
takes shape, there are already hundreds
of examples of the robots successfully
working in the field. Their numerous
applications include searching for missing persons and locating disaster victims;
inspecting hard-to-reach locations, such
as the underside of bridges; scanning
hundreds of square miles of forest for
early signs of wildfire; securing buildings
and rooftops ahead of parade or large
public events; and allowing incident
commanders to see important details of
fire scenes.
The technology seems to be working in Austin, where over the last two
years membership on the robotics team
has grown from eight fire department
employees to 21. And it has also been
effective in New York City where, in
March, the FDNY launched its first-ever
drone at a fire incident in the Bronx.
The tethered drones-which remain
connected to a ground base via a small
cord supplying power and therefore
unlimited flight time-reportedly cost
$85,000 apiece and are equipped with
both regular and infrared cameras.
"That tool for a chief is just night
and day from what it was not just 30
years ago when I started, but 15 years
ago," Daniel A. Nigro, the New York
fire commissioner, told The New York
48 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 7
has used drones to search for murder
suspects and escaped convicts, conduct
tornado damage assessments, provide
intelligence during fire incident management, and even as part of its active
shooter trainings, Sadler told me. Like
any new venture, it's been a learning
experience, but the results have been
overwhelmingly positive. The hardest
part has actually been moving past old
habits and convincing agencies to take
advantage of the team's new capabilities.
"It's been pretty interesting-half of the
agencies are very excited about it and
want our resources to come out and
help them, and half say they don't feel
we can provide anything," Sadler said.
In those cases, the UAS team usually
convinces the jurisdiction to let it show
up anyway so it can use the incident for
training and to determine how well the
concept is working. "One hundred percent of the time, after we show them our
capabilities, they've completely changed
their minds," Sadler said.
A recent example involved a large
marina fire in a neighboring jurisdiction.
A state police helicopter and fixed-wing
aircraft had already been deployed, but
the state called in the UAS team, too.
But when Sadler made contact with the
local jurisdiction, the initial response was
thanks but no thanks.
"I guess they were thinking that
they already have millions of dollars in
assets in the sky, so why do they need
[a UAS team]," Sadler explained. "But it
was one of those incidents where they
allowed us to come out, prove our concept, and practice. Within five minutes
of showing up, we were able to provide
live video feeds to their emergency
operations center, the state emergency
operations center, the fire chief's
administration offices-they were absolutely blown away that we had those
capabilities."
When the fire marshal's office caught
wind of what was going on, they called
Sadler over. "There were areas of the
marina they couldn't see by boat and
definitely not by aircraft-the aircraft
was flying at 500 feet-but we could
come down 10 feet off the water and
shoot video up inside the marina, and
underneath the covered boat slips in
the marina buildings-they couldn't get
that any other way," he said. "Then we
gave them an iPad that had our video
feed on it so they could tell us exactly
what they wanted us to zoom in on and
take pictures and video for investigative
and evidentiary purposes."
Werner, the chair of the NFPA 2400
committee, told me that these examples
are just a small fraction of the vast possibilities for drones. "UAS can impact
every business model we have in public
safety-they're going to be ubiquitous,"
he said, predicting that in five years 90
percent of public safety agencies will
either have UAS capability or a way to
gain UAS capabilities, and all of them
will use NFPA 2400.
"Just like we went from the horse to
the car, I think these things are going
to be buzzing around in the sky everywhere," he said. "It's something we're all
going to be used to. It's exciting to be
here for the creation of this standard."
Sadler, who has seen what drones can
do up close, has no doubts about any of
that. He believes change in the fire service comes in cycles and that today's fire
service is poised for a great change.
"In the 1980s, HAZMAT was the big
thing going on. In the 1990s it was
technical rescue. In the 2000s it was
integration of more EMS into the fire
service. In the 2010s leading up to the
2020s, it's been technology," he said. "This
will be the decade known for UAS."
JESSE ROMAN is NFPA Journal associate editor.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2017
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NFPA Journal - July/August 2017 - Cover1
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