By Wes Bowers
Lodi News-Sentinel
WOODBRIDGE, Calif. — Seven fire departments converged on the Woodbridge Wilderness Area Tuesday morning, utilizing drones to locate two missing people and investigate the report of an illegal fire inside the park.
While there was no fire, and the two missing people were actually mannequins, crews still guided their drones inside the park as part of a training exercise organized by the San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services.
The exercise gave firefighters the opportunity to hone their piloting skills and improve emergency response and recovery capabilities.
Mountain House Fire Chief Marty Cornilson, who leads the exercises for OES, said Tuesday’s operation was the largest so far, as representatives from Woodbridge, Mokelumne and Waterloo-Morada fire districts were on hand, along with Manteca, South County and French Camp fire departments.
“It’s an opportunity to come together and see what we have, what were doing what were capable of doing,” he said. “So that way when we do have a large-scale incident, we can bring ourselves together and it’s not going to be the first time we see each other and see what our capabilities are.”
Training exercises have already occurred in Mountain House and Ripon, and Cornilson said the goal is to visit each community in the county and make sure fire departments and districts are well-versed in drone rescues operations.
“This gives us an opportunity because ( Woodbridge Fire ) does have the wooded area, and they do have the water,” he said. “So it gives us the ability to do two different types of scenarios where we wouldn’t be able to in some areas.”
Woodbridge Battalion Chief Eric Edwards said the department was excited to host the session because it has yet to purchase drones, and Tuesday’s exercise gave crews the chance to observe how to implement the technology when needed.
Currently, the department reaches out to OES or the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office when drones are needed to search the area for missing persons or to determine the location of a fire.
“It’s something we’ve kind of been looking at, but don’t have anything yet,” Edwards said. “To be able to host an event like this is pretty special to us because we have a lot of wooded areas in the surrounding Lodi area.”
Edwards said the technology was helpful in finding two lost kayakers on the Mokelumne River near Highway 99 a few years ago.
“A civilian was on scene with a drone, they found the victim with it and they actually had our crews follow the drone in and get him out of the water,” he said. “We have people that float the rivers where we could absolutely could use drones to help us facilitate finding people. And if there’s a fire down there ... this is huge.”
Kia Xiong , spokeswoman for OES, said the agency used $101,000 in grant funding to kick-start the drone program last year.
It currently has three pilots who have used three drones in emergency situations, and will have a fourth aircraft in the coming months.
In addition, two pilots are currently being trained on the technology.
So far, OES has flown 20 drone missions for mitigation and preparedness efforts, aiding in recovery documentation, and assisting first responders during incidents, among others.
During these missions, the drones have helped identify levee seepage and boils, provided real-time data to firefighters on the ground, and mapped potential burn scars for documentation and future mitigation efforts.
Mokelumne Fire has employed drones in its operations for about a year, and engineer Logan Baer is one of the more experienced pilots who participated in Tuesday’s training.
Baer became familiar with the technology while attending Sacramento State to initially earn a degree in filmmaking.
However, during his senior year he felt his calling was as a first responder and joined the Mokelumne department.
“I’ve been operating drones for about six years,” he said. “I took a break for a few years, but now that we’ve got one at the department, I was like ‘hey, I can fly it around just because I’ve done it before.’
Baer said the goal at the department is to get everyone trained on the technology in the event Chief Mark Weber isn’t available during an incident.
“It’s fun to do, but a lot of times — we’ve used ours on a lot of water rescues in our district — but a lot of the time it’s the chief who flies it and I’m on the boat pulling people out of the water,” he said. “When we’re on calls I’ll probably be out there getting more hands-on.”
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