The Payne County Emergency Management Office utilized drones to identify hotspots and coordinate firefighting efforts during a blaze near Yale this week. “The drones we’re using have a thermal on them, so we’re using them to see what’s hotter, and what’s not,” said Payne County Emergency Manager Pierce Taylor.
These drones help lead firefighters to the most concerning areas more quickly. In the fall, they were used to fight a wildfire near the town of Coyle, keeping firefighters and emergency management staff aligned as the fire burned through grass and woods.
“We were able to focus on that and give incident command a heads up on what we were looking at,” Taylor said. Despite a recent snowstorm across the state, Taylor explained that fire danger remains high and is forecasted to increase through February.
“A lot of people are thinking that just because we got some snow and the ground got wet, that fire danger has gotten better, but with the grass being dormant, it didn’t take in much of the water that went down,” he said.