WALKER, Mich. — When a fire was reported at the Green Ridge Apartments on Monday, the Walker Fire Department rushed to the scene. It wasn't long after their arrival that they knew this was going to be a big event.
The fire would quickly turn into a three-alarm blaze, with mutual aid coming in from surrounding cities. Thankfully, no one was injured in the fire, but the scope of the event prompted the use of some newer technology, both by Walker and the responding Plainfield Township Fire Department.
That technology came in the form of multiple drones. Both the Plainfield Township Fire Department, and the Walker Police Department, assisted efforts through their drone teams.
Both drones were able to provide aerial coverage of the scene, but the drone from Walker had an extra feature, infrared cameras. These are used to point out hotspots in the structure and more effectively direct fire crews.
David Pelton, the Chief of the Walker Fire Department, told us, "[The City of Walker Police's] drone actually has infrared technology, to where we can see the heat signatures of where the fire's at. We utilize their drone and their viewer to see where the hotspots were and direct crews to extinguish the extent of the fire and put the whole fire out quickly."
Chief Pelton added, "You knock the bulk of the fire down like we did pretty early on, and it's all those hidden pockets of fire, you have to search out and usually it's all labor intensive. If you put your personnel in place, they're pulling wood apart, they're pulling shingles apart, collapsed material apart to try to get at fire and put it out, and you're just going by using a handheld thermal imaging camera."
He continued, "With a drone technology, we're able to fly over the building and find those hotspots and direct crews right to those hotspots. We're not just having to dig through a whole path, like searching a 20 by 20 area, we can almost go pinpoint and just do like an 8 by 10 area to extinguish that fire."
Drone Images: Green Ridge Apartment Fire
The drone team from Plainfield Township Fire also aided with aerial coverage of this fire. Kyle Svoboda, a District Chief with the Plainfield Township Fire Department, tells us the value of these tools is priceless.
District Chief Svoboda said, "It's absolutely priceless, the value of this is priceless, and the reason I say that is because it's life safety. This drone itself costs about $3,000 fully equipped, but as an incident commander myself, having the ability to see everything in real time, to see the potential things that might be happening, from up above that might impact our crews [who] are working. Again, it's priceless for us to have that technology and ability to do that."
Both the City of Walker and Plainfield Township tell us they are planning to invest more in drone technology in the years to come. It will be worth keeping an eye on what capabilities are coming to these departments in the not so distant future.
-- Meteorologist Michael Behrens
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