My name's Tom Madigan I'm a commander
with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.
The Alameda County Sheriff's Office
was requested to respond
to Redding,
California, Shasta County to
assist with disaster response
efforts after the tragic
Carr fire.
We've been utilizing UAVs for the
past few years
and so we've been called to a number
of devastating scenes.
For example the
Santa Rosa
and Sonoma fires that occurred last year.
Initially,
Cal Fire Air Boss was very
apprehensive about letting us come in.
I'm talking to me lead planes, he's talking to the tankers, I'm talking
to my helicopters, talking to the incident commanders down on the
ground, I'm talking to divisions and branches.
Once we proved
a safety track record
I think now they feel a lot more at ease
and more willing to,
one,
let us in to start operating
and two, to widen our missions.
First thing we needed to do was
get a waiver from the FAA
to fly with Cal Fire's
TFR. And we arrived
with four of our drone teams
and we were supported by
UAV teams from Contra Costa
County
and also Menlo Park fire.
I worked for the city of Redding GIS division.
We were on the phone with these guys,
Alameda County sheriff
and Menlo Park fire
and they were ready at a moments notice and
here we are at the end of the day
with data.
We've been assisting by creating 360
degree panoramic videos
and photos of the
neighborhoods that have been devastated.
We've also been doing a mapping
missions where we're creating orthomosaic
and 3-D maps
and models of neighborhoods that have been devastated
up here.
The usefulness of the maps
and the images that we're getting are
pretty powerful
and give decision makers kind
of situational awareness very rapidly.
Its one thing to get fire perimeters on
a nightly basis, but when you
can deploy UAV technology
and get 360 views of this nature and then put that out to the public
in short order.
You're talking about the epitome of rapid
response in my mind.
Within about a five minute span of time
we can hit multiple locations
quickly as we first get here
and start giving them that
aerial perspective that they don't have.
I think that drone technology
is really going to
enhance the way in which first
responders do their jobs.
We are the boots on the ground.
We can go out and do the mapping
missions
but we need help on the backend
processing the data making sense
of it all. We have public private partnerships
with Scholar Farms.
Airbus has been supporting us.
Hangar 360, Pix4D
and
a company called Survae.
I really appreciate the opportunity to come out
and support the team.
I think this is the future
of really disaster response that you have
a digital first responder team
that comes in and captures the data.
We saw it in Sonoma County,
we're seeing here and it's the kind of data
that we're gonna need in recovery.
So we
have our utilities electric utility water utility.
This is a terrible situation.
But what I will say I know
on behalf of our team we're
honored to help out in
in these type of disasters.
These are so tragic.
You know we walk around here
you see lives just completely
uprooted.
It's as you can see here it's apocalyptic.
These are beautiful areas where
a lot of residents
and homes are within the
trees and it did just devastates
communities when these fires take
off
and there's very little time to get out.
We met a woman yesterday who had lost
her childhood home
and she was so thankful that we were
there
and gave us a hug
and she just told us that she
was glad that her family survived.
And they can rebuild.
My street in particular is a small cul-de-sac of tens homes.
Nine out of ten homes are gone.
I lived here on Footbridge Court. Total loss. Palm trees are still
there, they were probably lit up during the fire.
You can still see my barbecue.
These disasters seem to be becoming
more and more frequent.
The other thing that we're trying to do more
and more of is bringing in other
UAV teams,
either fire or law enforcement
and expose them to this
experience because they're going
to be involved in it more
and more in the future.
It's just been an amazing coordination.
I think we're learning a lot of lessons
here unfortunately
and really we'll be better prepared for
for fires to come. Definately.
I mean this is the kind of things that people lose
sleep over wondering if there home is still there.
If we put their minds at ease,
hopefully to show them that their home made it.
In other cases at least
let them know right away
what the status is so they're not wondering.
It's huge.
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