People might wonder…. how does climate/wildfire models incorporate changes in wildfire suppression technology? The answer is, of course, they don’t. Aspen Fire Protection District in Colorado (Aspen is a financially well-off mountain community) is experimenting with new technologies. I heard about this from The Hotshot Wakeup who was thinking ahead to drone bases scattered throughout forests . From Aspen Public Radio.
The Aspen Fire Protection District is adding autonomous drones to its arsenal of firefighting technology.
The self-flying helicopters are made by Seneca, a northern California startup that launched in October.
Aspen Fire will become the initial customer of the company’s fire suppression drones, which it believes are the first of their kind.
“We’ve talked to every one of the chiefs from the largest departments in California,” said Stuart Landesberg, Seneca’s CEO. “We work with the former U.S. Fire Administrator, the folks at Cal Fire — if there were another player doing this, we would know.”
The mini-helicopters can be controlled with an iPad, but they find their own way to a fire using self-navigating technology and infrared sensors.
They’re light enough to be lifted by hand and can fit in the back of a pickup truck. They carry 12 gallons of water, which can either be sprayed as water or mixed with a solution to shoot out 60 gallons of foam.
That’s not enough to put out a raging wildfire.
But Aspen Fire chief Jake Andersen said it could be a “game changer” for suppressing small fires that start in places without road access.
“Historically, if there was something up the ridge that it might take you an hour or two to get there, that was just what it was,” Andersen said. “And this can decrease that time to water on the fire by a substantial amount.”
Landesberg thinks that response time can be cut to ten minutes.
“If you had a ten minute response time from the moment of first detection across Colorado, across any area, the risk profile goes down so much,” Landesberg said. “You’re seeing fire intensity increasing, but the number of firefighters is not keeping pace, so the only way that we can solve the problem is by leveraging technology, especially to get there earlier.”
Aspen will be getting a “strike force” of five drones, which it hopes to start using this summer.
The idea is that while one drone is flying back to base to get refilled and fresh batteries, the next can move toward the fire and pick up where the first left off.
“If you have a close enough turnaround rate, you can just kind of keep them going,” Andersen said.
Andersen said there’s still a lot of details to be worked out with agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service.
And since it’s unproven technology, the department is relying on private donors to fund the pilot project. Andersen said they’ve received a partial contribution from the Herd Family Foundation, but are still looking for additional donors.
Before folks get concerns about “putting out too many fires”, it seems to me that greater control over unwanted fires might also be uesful when wanted fires threaten to turn into unwanted fires. But then, I’m not a fire person.
Interesting idea. 12 gallons of water is a little more than the capacity of 2 backpack bladder bags (what we fondly called Piss Pumps in Region 5 in the ’70’s).
What would it take to increase the payload?
Big questions: How well can the drones deliver water directly to the area that’s burning? Can they drop down through the canopy to get close to the flames? 12 gallons dropped at tree top level, especially in windy conditions, is likely to do minimal good to reduce the heat / extinguish a fire. Is the drop just gravity (like a helicopter bucket) or can the drone direct the water?
>> What do the Russians, Australians or other fire services have in the way of drones?
Yes, Aspen is a very wealthy community!
It would be interesting for someone to attend an international meeting on this and report back on the different technologies.
I guess if you want to speculate on technological fixes, how might AI help improve our decisions that involve the question of “when wanted fires threaten to turn into unwanted fires?”
“Andersen said there’s still a lot of details to be worked out with agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service.”
Overall lots of questions on what implementation would look like, but I’ll focus some concerns on “details to be worked out with… the FAA.” I am not a helicopter or fixed-wing pilot, but it is my understanding that those pilots are very concerned about drones in the fire traffic area (FTA). Current policy is that if a non-fire drone is observed in the FTA, then all other aviation resources will leave (if you fly, we can’t).
Manned aviation is already somewhat uncomfortable with agency drones that they are in communication with. Once clear communication between humans is established, there is a bit more trust in the operations. I would be surprised if they were comfortable with autonomous drones flying around an Initial Attack response. Initially I would expect other aviation assets to avoid incidents with autonomous drones. Sure, the drone manufacturer says there is ‘deconfliction with manned aircraft’ but has it been tested, would a pilot just trust that?
I might have gotten a little ahead of myself in the previous two paragraphs. Backing up a bit, Aspen is in Class D Airspace, from the surface to 2500′ with additional adjacent Class E airspace. Oversimplifying here, but Class D airspace has an air traffic controller (ATC) and exists due to some complexities. Maybe having ATC will be helpful here to clear airspace, but I don’t know how happy they will be about it. Looking at the Aeronautical Chart for Aspen, there is plenty of stuff going on. This could be a difficult and complicated area to coordinate for initial attack.
So what I’m getting at, by the time the notifications are made, positive communication channels established, and airspace cleared, how big is the fire? Or if you drive outside of town past controlled airspace, how much time does that add? As OldWoodsman mentioned, how windy is it? Is the spray effective, can the drone fly in that sustained wind or with those gusts? What is the effective range, either distance or minutes, from the control module? 12 gallons of water is about 100 pounds, going up in elevation to the lightning-struck tree on the ridge will be more taxing than circling a field, so how far up and away can the drones get? Seneca has some nice videos putting out a campfire in a field. I’ll be interested when the drones extinguish a fire in a stump hole and duff 80 feet below the canopy and 5 miles from base and 2000 feet up in elevation.
Maybe there is already some framework in place with existing Part 135, although that is limited to 400 feet AGL. Or maybe ATC will clear the airspace and run this the same way they do with airtankers. I’m not saying this won’t work, just that there seems to be some large hurdles in the way still. Presumably somebody making way more money than I am has already addressed these questions. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Anon, thanks much for this helpful background!