On Saturday, July 18, 2020, 120 firefighters of SDIS 44 quickly intervened and put out the fire in the Nantes cathedral. Some of the firefighters’ drone footage was subsequently shared on YouTube.
Nantes cathedral fire seen through the firefighters’ drone
During the massive fire in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris last year, drones played a crucial role. This time during what was a much smaller fire, although it created significant damage, drones played an important role again.
During the firefighting operations at the Nantes cathedral, a drone was used from the beginning to supply the command center with additional information and an aerial overview of the scene.
Using drones as part of their firefighting operations is a specialty of the SDIS Loire-Atlantique fire department and rescue service.
“The drone allows us to have a return of images on the ground and we have a transmission of the images directly to the command post”, explains Michael Guet, responsible for the drone cell of SDIS 44, according to 3 Pays de la Loire. There is an added value, it allows the commander of the rescue operations to be able to make a reconnaissance of the intervention zones in an extremely fast and visual way.
Regarding the cathedral, this enabled us quite quickly to rule out the possibility of a roof fire”, he says. Guet continues, “the superposition of the written message and the drone images allow us to quickly give a very good idea of the situation.”
“We couldn’t get to the grandstand where there was the organ at the start of the fire, there was too much smoke at the start, so the drone was able to get inside and rise to the level of the organ to have an image return above this main focus. Suddenly we did not need to send scales and personnel directly in contact with the home in a first time ” explains Michael Guet.
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