By Aparna Sekhargsn
East Valley Tribune
GILBERT, Ariz. — Drones, ground robots and electric trucks might seem like a technophile’s wish list, but for Gilbert Fire, they are life-saving equipment.
What’s more, the town has one of the few fire departments in the country that have spearheaded the use of these innovations on calls.
At a council’s fall retreat, Gilbert Fire & Rescue leaders proudly showcased their technological advancements in the field of protective services.
On display were Arizona’s first Pierce Volterra electric fire truck, a ground robot used for hazmat operations, and a drone equipped with specialized thermal sensors operated out of a special van.
The fire truck has already shown promising results of seamlessly working alongside diesel-powered trucks in the year it has been in commission, with a projected life span of 10 years in service, officials said.
The truck can work on battery power alone for daily operations and can be diesel-powered in situations requiring extended fire support. It is also fitted with a zero-emissions electric pumper to reduce exposure to diesel exhaust fumes.
“Fire chiefs have a responsibility to bring innovations to their departments that improve firefighter safety and increase effectiveness in the delivery of services,” said Gilbert Fire Chief Rob Duggan.
Michael Connor, the deputy chief of special operations at Gilbert Fire, said the department’s interest in these technologies and building programs to support their use has been an ongoing conversation since 2017-18.
“It was interesting because we started looking at drones in 2017 and Mesa Fire was trying to look at them, and it didn’t really get much traction here,” he said.
While Mesa Fire was looking at drones for mountain rescues, Connor said that his division’s interest faded because Gilbert Fire doesn’t do mountain rescues.
But just before the pandemic hit in March 2020, Connor was able to build a pilot drone program to use the technology to assist at fire sites.
After being invited to sit on Maricopa County’s Emergency Technologies Consistency Committee and partnering with Phoenix Fire, Connor pitched the idea to then Gilbert Fire Chief Jo Bush and it was green-lit to acquire one drone.
During Thanksgiving 2020, Connor decided to bring the drone to the site of a house attic fire in the town. With the drone’s thermal sensors, firefighters detected a fire that was still not extinguished under the home’s collapsed roof.
“The thing that we used to tell people was, in the beginning, where we would get on scene, and the battalion chiefs who are the commanders of these calls, they were like, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he said.
“We went from everybody asking, ‘Why are you here?’ to ‘Hey, how long, how quick can you be here?’”
Today, Gilbert Fire operates eight drones and recently also added an air-conditioned, specially equipped van that can keep the operating personnel cool during scorching summer weather and sends a live feed to a ground monitor for observation.
The van is also equipped with charging stations for the drone batteries. The town is the only department in the Valley that operates a drone van.
It is mandatory for each drone operator to pass a pilot test that awards them a Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 drone license.
“These are aircraft we have, we treated it as an air program — none of them are toys,” he said.
“We do pre-flight checks. We do maintenance consistently. Everything is safe because we’re putting a big piece of equipment up in the air and they could hurt somebody if it came down.”
Around the same time in 2020, the ground robot program was also beginning to take shape in Connor’s mind.
“They basically said, ‘Well, just don’t stop at drones. Why don’t you look at everything?’” he said.
Connor said the idea to look at ground robots for hazardous materials was first explored by the Peoria Fire Department after a 2019 explosion at a lithium-ion battery storage facility put four fire personnel in the hospital with serious injuries.
Gilbert’s ground robot is used for reconnaissance in hazardous material situations when it might be already risky to send in firefighters for fear of exposure to toxic gases and explosions.
“Right now, Peoria Fire and Gilbert Fire, to my knowledge, are the only fire departments in the entire state that have ground robots,” he said.
“And really across the country, there’s only a couple fire departments that are usually utilizing that technology.”
According to Connor, it is the town’s environment of striving for the best and its willingness to listen to new ideas that has made its fire department one of the frontrunners in the country for emergent technology adoption.
“I’ve been here for almost 23 years, if you have a good idea and can create a good business plan, the ears are always open — they’ll listen to you,” he said.
The key aspect that the department considers while testing the new technology is how much safer it makes its firefighters and the community itself.
“We’re not looking at replacing our people, the whole thing with our career is it’s reduce, not eliminate,” Connor said.
“We have a much higher cancer rate than the normal public, but we know that when we’ve chosen to do this career — we can’t eliminate that but how can we reduce it?”
Connor is proud as well of the fact that Gilbert was one of the departments in the country that was invited to be a part of a team the International Association of Firefighters was putting together to standardize the training for drones and ground robots in the entire country.
Alongside members of fire departments from New York City, Boston, Austin, Los Angeles, Oregon and even a fire department from Canada, Gilbert was also recognized as a team that was making leaps on the tech front.
It is from interactions with these teams that Connor realized the town’s fire department can look at newer technologies like the Boston Dynamics four-legged spot ground robot.
“They build a hazardous materials package that goes into the dog and the quadrupeds,” he said.
“I know Phoenix PD just got one, so we wouldn’t be the first, but that’s one of the things that we see in the future.”
Gilbert Fire is also currently looking into something called as “Drone First Responders,” where a drone will be placed in a climate-controlled box on top of fire and town buildings. Once there is a call for fire and rescue in its one-mile radius, it will automatically fly out within 90 seconds and hover near the fire for the pilot to connect with it.
While exciting things seem to be on the horizon for the department, Connor said that the team is still working on getting comprehensive data from these technologies, as the information is what will determine their life-saving nature.
“There’s a lot of tradition unimpeded by progress around the country, and Gilbert is not one of those places,” he said.
“There’s a saying in the fire service that ‘complacency’s best friend is a tragedy’, so we try to never get complacent.”
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