London Fire Brigade (LFB) has been using a thermal imaging drone to help fight a warehouse blaze.
Crews were called to the incident in a textile warehouse on Cricket Lane, in Beckenham, which erupted yesterday morning. Firefighters remain at the scene.
"The Brigade's drone is supplying pictures to incident commanders giving aerial views and thermal images," - London Fire Brigade statement
LFB has been using a drone and thermal camera - a DJI M210 and a DJI Zenmuse XT2 - to provide vital pictures to incident commanders, giving useful aerial views of the blaze and thermal images which show the fire hot-spots.
The drone helped to monitor the extent of the fire, while the bright pink, orange and red areas in the thermal image showed what LFB described as 'the deep-seated pockets of fire' that the crews were tackling.
Drones A Vital Tool For The Emergency Services
The incident once again showed how useful drones can be for the emergency services.
For firefighters, pairing a thermal camera with a UAV can help for a number of reasons, including seeing through smoke, detecting hot-spots, providing valuable information about roof integrity, flow paths, wet lines and giving useful situational awareness.
Which Tools Can Help Me?
LFB has been using an M210 and an XT2 thermal camera to help them gain valuable insights about the fire.
The drones in the Matrice series are powerful performers, capable of carrying multiple payloads, including the top-class zoom camera, the Z30, or sensors from the ViewPro range.
Thanks to this capability, these UAVs offer plenty of scope for a variety of missions, from surveillance to search and rescue, and have become a firm favourite with the emergency services.
Last month, DJI unveiled the Matrice 200 Series V2 - offering numerous benefits over and above the original iteration, including enhanced safety features.
Aside from the Matrice Series, other drones available to help the emergency services include DJI's Mavic 2 Enterprise and Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual; the latter having a thermal camera.
One of the perks of these drones is that they are small, foldable and easily transportable/deployable, and come with three accessories - a loud speaker, dual spotlight and beacon. These tools can be invulnerable in certain situations - for instance, providing vital information to an injured person from afar.
To find out more about the drones/cameras mentioned in this post, contact heliguy™ by visiting our website, calling us or sending us an email.
Leave a comment