Oswego, N.Y. (NCC News) – Drones seen scattering across the sky are not just for shooting cool visual footage. Now, emergency services like the Oswego Fire Department are starting to use drones in their everyday operations. The City of Oswego owns about five drones so far that help speed up the process for locating fires and missing people.
Chief Paul Conzone of the Oswego Fire Department said that they have broadened their drone program so it now is a joint program between the fire department, the police department, and the information technology department.
Depending on what the emergency situation is, determines who is best positioned to pilot the drone.
“So if it’s a law mission, like the police are looking for somebody or having a barricaded subject, then it’s pretty typical that somebody from the fire department would pilot the drone to free up the law enforcement officers to handle the emergency. And conversely, if it’s a fire, then it’s typically a police officer or somebody that’s available to fly on our behalf,” said Chief Conzone.
The main drone that the Oswego Fire Department uses is the DJI Matrice 300 RTK. The bigger the drones are, the more kinds of attachments you can add.
“You can put a drop attachment on, you can put a thermal camera and you can put a zoom lens on, you can put a spotlight on…” Mark Bender, a New York State Trooper and drone pilot said.
Drones have been proven to be useful in many circumstances with the Oswego Fire Department. Most recently, the department used a drone to speed up the process of taking out a fire at 39 West Bridge St.
“We used a drone to figure out where the fire actually was and then we directed our water stream to it. So we have a thermal imaging camera that we can see and basically broadcast an image on tablets or whatever we have at the command post, and then we can make real time decisions from there,” said Conzone.
Drones have not only been proven to speed up the process for firefighters, but they have also been an asset to their safety.
Conzone said that before having an aerial perspective showing the hotspots, they would have to throw a ladder and put personnel on the roof. Now with this technology they are able to gauge if it’s worth putting people up there.
“Certainly if a roof was burning away, we can see that it would show up red on the screen…so if something is really hot or dark red, it saves me from a fireman falling through the roof,” said Conzone.
Conzone said that emergency services use thermal imaging most often because it illuminates anything that is warmer than the environment around them.
“If somebody is in the water or if somebody is in the woods, that person is going to show up,” said Conzone.
Ken Dolan, a firefighter and drone pilot at the Oswego Fire Department, said the spotlight attachment on the Matrice 300 drone is able to illuminate about 20-30 feet very brightly, and then a couple hundred feet around it when it’s at 400 feet in the air.
Firefighter Dolan said that wherever the camera is looking at is where the spotlight on the drone will point.
“We do that predominantly for law enforcement and it would be perfect for a nighttime water rescue…if we’re trying to explain to the people on the boat, ‘Hey the person is right here,’ instead of explaining it to them, I turn the spotlight on, just look for where the light is shining and you’ll find the person” said Dolan.
One of the Oswego Fire Department’s partners, Novelis, a local aluminum plant has their own fully staffed fire brigade and indoor drone.
Marc Wrolsen, the day shift captain and coordinator for their drone program at Novelis said that their indoor drone is the DJI Avata and it is much smaller in comparison.
“We got [this drone] to fly inside the buildings or confined spaces. Roughly it’s about the size of a notebook or even smaller, it can fly in all these tight spaces, bounce off walls and it can recover and it really helps,” said Wrolsen.
Bender said that on his debut flight after graduating from the state police program, he was able to clear the house of a barricaded gunman with an indoor drone in 12 minutes while other personnel had been there for six hours.
“It was kind of an ‘Oh wow,’ moment for the bosses. They said look at the technology and what this can do and it has been completely, utterly welcomed by our tech tactical guys, our SWAT guys, because it is such a time saver and not only a time saver, but it puts eyes inside very dangerous situations that we don’t have to go into,” said Bender.
Wrolsen said that part of their operating plan is that anytime they respond to mutual aid, they will try to bring their drones with them. He said they have been working on the plan to get that set up and have talked to neighboring departments.
“It’ll be very prevalent. I think a lot more departments and counties and states will be getting them and getting more involved,” said Wrolsen.
As for the future of drone technology in emergency response, Chief Conzone said that there will be drones in the next couple of years that will be strategically located around the county on top of garages and rooftops called drone-in-a-box.
