Essex Fire and Rescue introduce new drone
The state-of-the-art technology provides aerial intelligence across the county
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS) have introduced a new drone to their team of 12 pilots, which will be used to provide aerial intelligence from live incidents across the county.
The drone has several special features and can feed any of the information gathered into a control centre for all partner agencies. Thermal imaging cameras, additional lighting and a loud speaker, which can be used to give instructions or reassurance to members of the public are all also included.
It will also enable those in charge at incidents to decide whether they can close an incident or escalate it, or even order further resources, by being able to view the fire from above.
The drone is also there for firefighter's safety and public safety as well, and enables cordons to be put in place faster than before. The drone can be flown into places that other people can't see and that could be dangerous to place firefighters.
Crew Manager Bryn Jones said: "We can zoom in over about half a mile onto a number plate of the vehicle and things like that. So if we don't need to get close because of something like high rise buildings, things like that.
"We can zoom in like we don't need to be right on top of the fire and equally we don't want to damage our drone by being in the smoke or the flames or anywhere near it.
"They handle more wind, they cope with better rain, and the team of 12 pilots, we've got so multiple incidents, multiple fires, whether it's a lot of field fires or whether it's industrial fires, what they're going to bring is that safety factor and decision models and we can close down incidents quickly. We could either upscale them if we need more resources or we could be just looking to say right with contained it.
" I do think the future obviously is the drone flying in the air, it's given us that 360 degree awareness of what's happening, the safety for the firefighters and the members of the public really just having a quick cordon in and making those reactive decisions."
The introduction of the drone comes from report recommendations following the tragic events of the Grenfell Tower fire. Drones are already being used by many UK fire services who report the benefits are including; monitoring fire spread, gathering information of the structural integrity of the building and confirmation of safe areas.
The drone pilots at ECFRS are hoping to expand their team.
Bryn, who is one of their pilots in the Urban Search and Rescue Team, said: "We've got 12 pilots already. We've got a lot of people in training now coming through and they're gonna be reactively working from their home stations and homes so we can get these drones to fires as quick as possible and any kind of search activity."
Bryn also told Greatest Hits Radio about the benefits for other authorities across the county that could come from the drones:
"The drones also give us the capacity to watch people, protect public and protect property and incidents. We also have dogs in our team as well, so we can monitor where the dogs are searching and stuff like that.
"So also for safety for them, dogs are a busy when they're looking for people. They potentially could run into something that a drone will spot, and we can inform the handler quite quickly that you wanna pull your dog off of that bit, that there's an early edge there. You won't want a dog falling off and you wouldn't want a dog getting into trouble at a certain point.
"The Urban Search and Rescue team, we have all manner of kit and assets such as the dogs and stuff like that, so the drones can monitor the people the dogs loads of other things."
The drone has already been deployed to a couple of large industrial fires, providing live aerial footage.