The Paris Fire Brigade (BSPP, Brigade des Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris, in French) deployed a new Fotokite Tethered drone during a few fire operations in the last days.

Paris Fire Brigade deploys new Fotokite tethered drone

Fotokite is a company with offices in Zurich, CH, Syracuse, NY, and Boulder, CO, specializing in actively tethered UAS built for First Responders.

The Fotokite Sigma consists of the Ground Station and the Kite. A tablet runs the Fotokite Live App, which shows the real-time thermal and low-light video streams. IP55 rated, equipped with a thermal camera and an RGB camera, and both gimbal-stabilized, the Fotokite Sigma can go up to 150 feet high. Powered through the electrical tethering cable attached to the ground station, it can fly continuously for 24 hours.

On the night of February 11th, they deployed this drone during a building fire downtown Paris. They rescued five people from the smoke and fire, but unfortunately, two people died, and two others were critically injured because of the fire.

Just a few days later, the firefighters again deployed this tethered captive drone during a fire on the 8th floor of a living building downtown Paris. On February 15th, Firefighters rescued habitants of the buildings, and two persons were injured during this fire.

Since April 2020, the Paris Fire Brigade experiments with the use of drones to support operations in downtown Paris, France. They trained some firefighters to be legal, commercial drone operators.

The drone team also has DJI Mavic Pro drones, a DJI Mavic Enterprise Dual, and a DJI Matrice M200 also equipped with a thermal camera.

Drones had long supported fire operations during the disastrous Notre-Dame cathedral fire in April 2019. At that time, the drones used to stream a live aerial view of the fire to the command center were unmanned aircraft of the Paris Police Prefecture drone team.

You can find more stories about drones being used for good by clicking this link here.

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Written by Antoine Tissier, a DroneXL contributor.

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