First responders use drones at Carr Fire

But a drone program collaboration between the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has been tapped to fly over the city of Redding and other areas of Shasta County over the weekend to help, rather than hinder, the response to the fire.

The Carr Fire, which started around 1:15 p.m. on July 23, has caused the deaths of two firefighters and has destroyed more than 1,000 homes as well as 19 commercial structures and 481 outbuildings. The blaze was only 39 percent contained as of this morning.

Chief Harold Schapelhouman of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District said the damage assessment his crews are doing in partnership with the Sheriff’s Office is similar to aerial documentation work they did in response to the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa and other parts of Sonoma County in October 2017.

“There’s a huge benefit in doing this stuff,” Schapelhouman said. “It can be used for insurance companies, the homeowners themselves, the state and federal government ... it helps people hopefully be able to repopulate faster.”

The fire district’s drone program started in 2014 and has also helped on fire lines, such as in the South Fork Fire at Yosemite National Park last year, when the drones were flown at night to monitor the flames and to see if they jumped containment lines, he said.

Real-time images from the drones were transmitted to the phones of firefighters and “it helped simplify their job so they could go right to where the fire was,” Schapelhouman said.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office program also started in 2014 and has been used to locate and apprehend suspects, find people in need of rescue, and document crime scenes and other disasters like the deadly Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland.

The joint program between the two Bay Area departments was picked to assist with the Carr Fire because they are both certified under the Federal Aviation Administration and have achieved a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization.

“A lot of agencies aren’t even convinced this is a technology they want to deploy,” Schapelhouman said. “It’s got a lot of negatives it needs to overcome, but the positives certainly outweigh it when it’s in the interest of the community.”

The fire district’s eight-person team arrived Thursday and started flying the drones Friday morning, he said. They are working with city of Redding officials who specialize in technology and information management.

Using special mapping software and high-resolution photos and videos, they can create a 360-degree aerial mosaic of the destroyed and damaged properties.

They will also be using a new product called Aeroscope, owned by the San Francisco Police Department, that will allow them to detect and find any drone flown unlawfully within 7 miles of their operations, fire officials said.

The fire district also has five firefighters and an engine assigned to the fire lines of the Carr Fire, as well as paramedics assisting at the Ferguson and Mendocino Complex fires elsewhere in California.