First Responders

Police, fire, and search-and-rescue teams putting drones to work when minutes matter.

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116

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Oct 22

Last updated

Jason Day of DRONERESPONDERS in a white cowboy hat and dark suit speaking at a podium marked Commercial UAV Expo, lit by blue stage lighting

ERIC TALLEY AWARD

DRONERESPONDERS Honors The Texas Program Behind 100,000 Sorties

Greg Whiting took the Eric Talley Public Safety UAS Excellence Award at Commercial UAV Expo, days after his Texas program logged its 100,000th sortie.

Haye KestelooSep 1

Drone camera view of a lost dog and a search dog meeting in deep snow in northern New York during a thermal drone pet search.

Drones For Good

FCC Wants To Ban The Lost-Pet Drone CBS News Just Celebrated

CBS Evening News showed a $17,000 thermal drone finding lost dogs in Mission Viejo. The FCC wants that drone class off the market. Comments close Sept 2.

Haye KestelooAug 30

A heavy-lift cargo drone hangs in a gray sky above Devighat, Nepal, with a bundle of relief supplies suspended on a long line beneath it

Disaster Response

Nepal Asks Abroad For Cargo Drones As China Flies 47 Next Door

Nepal ran its first 220-pound cargo drone test four days after the flood and asked other countries for heavy-lift drones. China had 47 flying by Thursday.

Haye KestelooAug 30

Orange remote-controlled rescue USV powering through breaking surf under an overcast sky.

Search & Rescue

Jersey Shore Firefighters Buy $10,000 Rescue Robot as Lifeguards Leave

Harvey Cedars volunteers are training on the Dolphin 3, a remote-controlled rescue craft that runs 15 mph, before the island drops to two guarded beaches.

Haye KestelooAug 28

Quadcopter delivery drone with a red-and-yellow chevron-marked cargo box flying against an overcast sky

WHOLE BLOOD

Hillsborough County Hasn't Voted on Its Blood Drone Program Yet

Hillsborough County commissioners decide September 2 whether the nation's first EMS whole blood drone program flies in October. The wire coverage already calls it launched.

Haye KestelooAug 18

Wildfire

BRINC Ships Free Wildfire Layers In Days, On NOAA Data That Comes With Warnings

BRINC added live wildfire detections and smoke coverage to its LiveOps software at no additional cost, shipping the feature days after an engineer prototyped it. The layers run on NOAA satellite data that the agency itself labels strategic guidance rather than tactical fire intelligence.

Haye KestelooAug 10

White fixed-wing AVSS drone banking above a turquoise glacial lake in a snow-capped mountain valley

Police

ThinkOn And AVSS Put Canadian Drone Data On Canadian Soil, Off The Hyperscalers

ThinkOn and AVSS are hosting TAK on Canadian sovereign cloud, with live drone video piped in. The data residency case is real. The 'until now' is not.

Haye KestelooAug 10

La Vista Police Department drone, as more than 1,000 agencies gain FAA clearance for Drone as First Responder flights

DFR

FAA Cleared Over 1,000 Agencies for Drone First Responder Flights in 10 Months, and the Full List Is Now Public

A FOIA release names 1,000+ agencies the FAA cleared for drone first responder flights in 10 months, more than in the previous seven years combined.

Haye KestelooAug 7

First Responders

The drone industry moves fast. Stay ahead of it.