Despite popular misconceptions, fighting fires is a relatively safe job. From 1990 to 1998, only 133 people died fighting fires in the U.S., compared with truck drivers or airline pilots, both averaging over 100 deaths per year. But as the Pew Center for Global Climate Change reports, snow is melting earlier due to global warming, creating a longer dry season, which means more forest fires. 2009 saw 5,921,786 acres burn in wildfires. That’s the most acreage burned in the last 20 years, representing 115 percent of the 20-year average. As expected, the firefighting fatalities jumped as well, as 90 firefighters lost their lives.

As the Pew report notes, the dry soil and extended season has not increased the amount of fires but the overall size, as vast expanses of unnaturally dry brush burn out of control at a much faster pace. This report shouts the need for increased communication between firefighters to keep this noble profession as safe as it can be. This week, Radnor's American Aerospace Advisors launched a successful test of their flagship product: a robotic plane that acts as a communication hub for firemen battling forest blazes.

“When firefighters are out in this mountainous terrain, you might set up a fire camp in one valley and be fighting the fire a couple valleys over,” says AAA CEO David Yoel says. “How does the incident commander communicate with the firefighters who are out there doing the work? We can orbit above with this unmanned aircraft, acting as a communications tower in the sky.”

The unmanned aircraft device also works as an observational tool, taking pictures and safely determining the fire’s outer boundaries. A former NASA physicist who worked on numerous shuttle launches, Yoel created an aircraft based on successful unmanned aircraft drones used by the military, in the hopes of bringing that observational communication to other fields. As the technology evolves, Yoel continues to push the FAA to loosen airspace restrictions, getting his device off the ground in urban as well as rural areas. For now though, he is content providing eyes and ears to the heroes who need them most.

“Someday in the future, I envision every cop car in the country with one of these in the trunk so that when the bad guy is running through the backyards, the cop just tosses this thing in the air and follows the guy without having to chase him,” says Yoel. “As this technology transitions into civil government applications, some areas may evolve more quickly than others. Wildfires just happen to be the first of many.”

Source: David Yoel, American Aerospace Advisors
Writer: John Steele