Thank you for your input!
Los Angeles County Fire Dept. covers an area of over 4,000 square miles with much of it wildland brush areas.
One of the primary uses of our M2ED’s will be for wildland fire reconnaissance since our fire season is quickly approaching.
Other uses will be mapping for damage assessment such as mud flow after the fires. We do plan to use the M2ED’s for Search & Rescue missions, (especially with our Baywatch Lifeguard Division), and also HazMat missions.
I think that our Baywatch Lifeguards would have a better success rate with the M2ED thermal imaging camera locating a drowning victim in 55-70 degree water.
We definitely plan on purchasing the more robust Matrice 210 system fully equipped with both the XT-2 and Z-30 cameras but we are not sure when we will secure grant funding for it since the majority of our UAS funding is secured through grants so the purchase may be as distant as a year from now.
Other issues that we may have to deal with in the future is the strategic housing and quick deployment of our drone resources. We have over 178 fire stations and 22 battalions spread out over a huge geographic area where it can take as long as two hours to travel from one end of Los Angeles County to the other so obviously we would need more than the two M2ED’s and twelve Part 107 certified pilots in our program. FUNDING is a critical issue with our drone program, so right now we will need to make the most out of what we have. Although we are one of the largest fire departments in the U.S., unfortunately, we don’t have very deep pockets to devote to our UAS program...right now.