Wayne Township Fire Department has trained and certified several UAV pilots to operate the drones on various calls. <\/p>\n
They operate the aircraft from their cell phones or iPads attached to a controller. <\/p>\n
From there, they can see high definition imaging of what\u2019s on the ground. Or in the case of infrared photography, firefighters can attach a FLIR thermal imaging camera to search for missing persons or detect hot spots from the air.<\/p>\n
The video can be watched live and even recorded. <\/p>\n
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Search and Rescue:<\/strong> Initially, Pruitt said they weren\u2019t sure when they should take drones up. The technology was still in its early stages for public safety and the department feared privacy violations. But with more working incidents, the Wayne Township Fire saw the benefits of drone usage quickly grow. <\/p>\n Pruitt says the more practice they get with the technology, the more effective it becomes. That\u2019s why Wayne Township\u2019s drones aren\u2019t just used in the district, oftentimes they\u2019re answering requests from other agencies throughout Central Indiana. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for us to get a call in the middle of the night, or any time for that matter,\u201d said Pruitt.<\/p>\n Like on June 20th, 2017: Indianapolis Metro Police Department requested Wayne Township\u2019s infrared UAV to assist in the search for a missing teen with autism.<\/p>\n The drone flew over the dark wooded and water areas where police were searching on foot, and because it\u2019s camera was equipped with thermal imaging capabilities, it was able to clear large areas in a shorter period of time.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the missing teen was found in a nearby superstore, but the drone technology still helped eliminate difficult areas to check with ground crews.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are much more expensive items out there that we\u2019ve spent money on that probably don\u2019t give us our return as much as our UAVs on a daily basis,\u201d Pruitt added.<\/p>\n Ambassadors for Drone Technology:<\/strong> \u201cWe\u2019ve received calls from not only agencies in the United States but Canada also calling and asking questions about how we\u2019re running our program, how we set it up,\u201d Pruitt says federal training requirements necessitate training and certification, but the technology itself is not as expensive as one might think.<\/p>\n The department now has seven working drones. Some are used for training and certification, while others are taken out into the field.<\/p>\n At the beginning, Wayne Township Fire invested roughly $14,000 on the equipment and certification. The technology has its own internal software updates, and there are always newer and better cameras they can adopt with time.<\/p>\n Pruitt says other departments often decide to consider investing in drones after they request Wayne Township Fire Department\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think this is something that every county should have access to,\u201d Pruitt added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Please enable Javascript to watch this video<\/p>\n INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.\u2014Are drones the public safety tool of the future? Wayne Township Fire Department certainly thinks so. For the past three years, the department has invested in, and expanded, the used of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to a point where they\u2019re second nature on many calls. <\/p>\n \u201cOnce we got the aircraft and we started using them, we immediately saw a huge benefit,\u201d said Cpt. Michael Pruitt, public information officer with Wayne Township Fire Department.<\/p>\n The first immediate benefit Wayne Township Fire saw was giving commanders new \u201ceyes\u201d on incidents without needing helicopters or putting personnel in harm\u2019s way. That goes for fires, hazmat situations and severe weather. <\/p>\n In one case, Pruitt said the department was called to a tanker leak. When they arrived on scene it was unclear where the leak was coming from and what it was. They flew the department\u2019s drone close enough to read the label on the tanker and identify the liquid..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
When Wayne Township Fire Department adopted the technology roughly three years ago, it was one of the first departments in the state to do so.<\/p>\n
Wayne Township Fire Department was inspired to adopt UAV technology after a firefighter conference several years ago. Since then, they\u2019ve not only been ahead of the curve when it comes to usage, they\u2019ve been inspiring other departments to consider adopting it as well.<\/p>\n