Cd'A looks at drones as fire 'eyes'

COEUR d’ALENE — The City Council will consider allowing drones to be used by the fire department to reconnoiter and more quickly assess emergency scenes.

Deputy Chief Bill Deruyter asked council members at Monday’s general services meeting to give the thumbs up to a plan to test the use of drones by the department.

“When a call goes out for a big fire or a boat accident or something like that,” Deruyter said, “a drone would be dispatched and send us video feed on our computers and in our engines and on our first-response vehicles.”

Drone technology is employed by many departments, Deruyter said, but usually drones are dispatched to record the response by firefighters or law enforcement at a fire scene.

“This (drone) would actually get there before any of us do,” he said.

Using a drone to be the first eyes at the scene would allow firefighters sitting at a computer to assess a situation and dispatch the necessary resources. Or, firefighters could call a false alarm instead of sending vehicles to a call of smoke that may have been caused by an overly smudgy barbecue.

“We found value in it,” Deruyter said. For example, if the department receives a call “for a wildland fire on Tubbs Hill, it could fly over, do a thermal imaging camera video, show us the hot spots, show us how big it is, if it is an actual fire or something else.”

The proposal includes building a drone garage at Station 4 and to use the station as a test site.

General Service committee members approved bringing the proposal before the City Council, even though some members had concerns about privacy.

“This thing can’t go above 500 feet,” Council member Dan Gookin said. “So you’re going to have it zipping over people’s yards.”

The city has no regulations or codes yet for flying drones in town, although the FAA has rules regarding drones in airspace.

“I would like to see this put on the council agenda … so if the public has any concerns they would know about it,” Gookin said.

The City Council will hear the proposal at its first August meeting.