They’ll fly the river. They won’t fly the brush.

On a recent brush fire I had our law enforcement drone up and his screen next to me. I watched it the whole time as the crews were fighting the fire. The best thing that bird did was give us a picture we could not get from the hose line. Heat. Fire activity. How fast it was moving. A sense of size. On these fires I ask for a drone to be deployed quickly.

Recently the word that came back was that we should not ask for that bird unless the call is a water rescue.

By Robert Grand | Battalion Chief, Eugene Springfield Fire | 24 Years in the Fire Service

What the Screen Was For

That flight was not a demo. Companies were already on the line. What I needed from the screen was the fire itself. Where it was still live. Where it was laying down. How wide the black already was. How fast the head was walking. Those are the things you guess at from the ground and get wrong often enough to pay for them twice.

I kept the screen next to me for the whole fire because that is where the work was. That is why the ask used to go out early on this kind of call. Not to beat the engine to the curb. To see the fire while we were still in it.

Queen Creek Fire put a version of that in writing this month after thermal from their own bird showed attic heat and a sagging roof, and crews left the collapse zone before the building failed (Beyond the aircraft: Building a fire service drone program that works, https://www.firerescue1.com/uas-uav-and-drones/beyond-the-aircraft-building-a-fire-service-drone-program-that-works).

I wrote in July about drones that arrive before the first-due and quietly author the size-up (Who Owns the Size-Up When the Drone Sees It First, https://frontlineintelligence.org/posts/who-owns-the-size-up-when-the-drone). This is not that call. The first-due already had the fire. What we borrowed was a pair of eyes that could measure it.

Then the request path got narrower. I do not know if that is true in the next county. I only know what the ask looks like from this seat.

Police Rules, Fire Work

One working theory is not mysterious, and it is not an accusation. The aircraft belongs to law enforcement. Police fly under a different legal standard than fire does. A warrant. A crime. A search and rescue. A person in the water maps onto that last door without much argument. A brush fire with companies already working it can look, to the agency that owns the bird, like something else. Overwatch. Support. Not their mission.

Fire is not collecting evidence. Fire is trying to see the fire. If the aircraft belonged to the fire side, the ask would still be a fire ask. Because it does not, the answer comes back in police language. That can be true here and still be a fair reading of their rules. It can also be local. I am not writing a policy audit. I am writing what it feels like when a tool that already worked on the line is no longer something you are supposed to request.

Water rescue opens their box. A moving heat signature may not.

The need did not change. The line still has to be walked. The flank that looks quiet from the hose still has to be true. If the picture was good enough to keep next to command for the whole fire, it is good enough to request on the next one. A rule that only honors the request when someone is in the water is not really a flying rule. It is a custody rule.

Until the picture belongs to the people who have to act on it, the floor will keep doing what it did on that brush fire. Use the screen when it is handed over. Leave the next ask alone when the answer is written for a different job. The drone already proved the seat. What is missing, at least from where I sit, is a request path that can name a working fire as a reason to put it back in the air.

Robert Grand is a Battalion Chief at Eugene Springfield Fire with 24 years of service. He writes Frontline Intelligence on doctrine, technology, and leadership in Fire & EMS.

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