It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s a drone helping to fight wildfires.
It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s a drone helping to fight wildfires.
The U.S. Forest Service announced that drones have become an increasingly useful tool in the battle to contain forest fires. Once a nuisance to the Forest Service (the service continues to plead with civilians to keep their drones away from the fires), the organization’s drones have aided with gathering intelligence to help firefighters.
“Drones are changing that labor-intensive process to identify these spot fires, especially when an operational area can span hundreds of thousands of acres,” said Justin Baxter, the Forest Service national unmanned aerial systems operations specialist, in a statement.
The drones are capable of picking up a 2-inch-by-2-inch spot fire from a half-mile away, Baxter added. They can also fly into heavy smoke and areas where manned aircraft can’t reach.
“It's a win-win for the agencies to operate under an umbrella of this type of aircraft that can provide precise and timely info to firefighters and incident management teams, and most importantly, we can do it safely,” Baxter stated.