Macon-Bibb County Government Wants $5.7 Million Drone Fleet For Emergencies

McGruber writes: Macon-Bibb County, Georgia is considering a $5.7 million project with manufacturer Olaeris to deploy 15 to 17 drone aircraft. The aircraft, each bigger than a king-sized bed, would operate out of individual hangars strategically placed across the county. The drones would be able to get to most places in the county within a few minutes. They would be available to the county's Emergency Management Agency, sheriff's office and fire department. "It's highly technical, and having the ability to be the first with Silicon Valley-type technology is unique," said Don Druitt, director of the Macon-Bibb County Emergency Management Agency.

Olaeris claims that for every $1 spent on their drones, a government will save $6 to $8 worth of manpower. "Ninety-five percent of all fire alarms are false, but fire departments have no choice to go, and you may have 15 (firefighters) responding," Olaeris CEO Ted Lindsley said. Lindsley also promises to work with local organizations to address any privacy concerns from residents. People will be able to track the aircraft online whenever they're used in order to learn where and why they were deployed.

Comments

Shiny Drone Fleet

[smittyoneeach]

Shiny drone fleet
Oh Confederate meat
Your Civil War beards
Go down in defeat
Burma Shave

Might make sense

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I mean its kinda hard to say if the economics really do make sense or not, but its at least plausible. And frankly, if the location and purpose of use for each drone is available in near-real-time, then its hardly a spying tool, though it could still be used for surveillance in some sense. That would seem to address the bulk of the privacy issues, and its difficult to be too sympathetic with most of the other ones.

Re:Might make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean its kinda hard to say if the economics really do make sense or not, but its at least plausible. And frankly, if the location and purpose of use for each drone is available in near-real-time, then its hardly a spying tool, though it could still be used for surveillance in some sense.

The economics do not make sense. They are trying to save money on already sunk costs. Here's the problem:

They say 95% of the fire calls are false alarms. Fine. 95% of the time, their firefighters respond and - nothing. Wasted trip. However, the firefighters were already on duty. They are getting paid whether or not they're on a call. All you did was waste some diesel. So....you say cut the number of firefighters. Ok, problem is when you do have an event, you need all of those firefighters. So....you can't cut them. They're assuming the mean will cover all cases...when they really have to staff for the worst case scenario. Then, supposing you do use the drone for one of those real events, you have now lost that amount of time to respond. (e.g. if the drone takes 4 minutes to fly somewhere, the real equipment will be delayed by that amount of time.) This could be a big deal as a house fire can double in size every 1-2 minutes and a person can drown and suffer brain damage in 4-6 minutes.

Yes, I was firefighter and paramedic for ten years, and I saw this kind of corner-cutting all the time. It will come back to bite them.

Re:Might make sense

[tompaulco]

I mean its kinda hard to say if the economics really do make sense or not, but its at least plausible. And frankly, if the location and purpose of use for each drone is available in near-real-time, then its hardly a spying tool, though it could still be used for surveillance in some sense.

The economics do not make sense. They are trying to save money on already sunk costs. Here's the problem:

They say 95% of the fire calls are false alarms. Fine. 95% of the time, their firefighters respond and - nothing. Wasted trip. However, the firefighters were already on duty. They are getting paid whether or not they're on a call. All you did was waste some diesel. So....you say cut the number of firefighters. Ok, problem is when you do have an event, you need all of those firefighters. So....you can't cut them. They're assuming the mean will cover all cases...when they really have to staff for the worst case scenario. Then, supposing you do use the drone for one of those real events, you have now lost that amount of time to respond. (e.g. if the drone takes 4 minutes to fly somewhere, the real equipment will be delayed by that amount of time.) This could be a big deal as a house fire can double in size every 1-2 minutes and a person can drown and suffer brain damage in 4-6 minutes.

Yes, I was firefighter and paramedic for ten years, and I saw this kind of corner-cutting all the time. It will come back to bite them.

Well, I figure that the firefighters and paramedics will still have to respond despite the drone, or they will lose precious minutes. So, the drone just adds another dollar to the equation. There is no way to cost justify the drones. What they really should say is "we want shiny drones".

I've Been to Macon-Bibb County

[Greyfox]

I'm pretty sure the entire county's not worth $5.7 million. Clearly the county is just trying to more than double its value.

Re:I've Been to Macon-Bibb County

[amiga3D]

I live one county over. I can tell you that Bibb desperately needs to spend that money elsewhere. Their schools are sad and the police there are some of the lowest paid in the state. All the places they desperately need money and this is what they come up with. It's typical of Bibb county. A friend of mine I worked with grew up there and moved to Houston county when he was in the 11th grade. He was an A student in Bibb schools and he said he was about a year behind when he moved. He had to work his ass off to catch up.

Opening themselves up to liability?

[hawguy]

“Ninety-five percent of all fire alarms are false, but fire departments have no choice to go, and you may have 15 (firefighters) responding,” Lindsley said. “In most cases the drone can see if there is a heat signature or flames. Maybe you send one vehicle to monitor it and can send the other (firefighters) to a major wreck on a highway.”

If someone calls in a fire or accident and the first department sends a drone first to see if the caller is lying, I forsee some big liability lawsuits if someone dies because the fire department was delayed by the time it takes to get a drone in the air and verify the fire. Or worse, if the drone flies out, doesn't detect the fire in the basement, and the call is cancelled as a false alarm.

Will taxpayers really get $6M of value out of the fleet?

Re:Opening themselves up to liability?

[Sowelu]

Well, it could still help with triaging emergency calls. And presumably you still dispatch the firefighters, you just get more power to recall them early if it's obviously a false alarm, or (maybe even better yet) you give them eye-in-the-sky information about what the fire looks like. I could see a view like that improving outcomes in some proportion of calls: either they fight things more effectively, or they save fifteen seconds trying to locate that basement fire on foot and get the water on it faster.

I'm pretty willing to believe what they say about heat signatures. Hot air has a way of escaping. A couple minutes after an alarm goes off, there's got to be heat showing SOMEwhere, even if there's not necessarily a lot of smoke yet. If the experts say you can affirm where there's a fire or not the vast majority of the time, I'm inclined to take their word for it, especially if (going back to triage) there's more fires than manpower at the moment and the opportunity cost of making sure is measured in lives lost at another call.

Re:Opening themselves up to liability?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yes, garbage all the way down. If an alarm goes off, they don't just send firefighters to cruise around the outside of the building; they have to go inside and verify that there's no fire. I can't imagine what a drone could report that would prevent a truck from rolling.

This doesn't even begin to pass the sniff test.

Re:Opening themselves up to liability?

[hawguy]

I'm pretty willing to believe what they say about heat signatures. Hot air has a way of escaping. A couple minutes after an alarm goes off, there's got to be heat showing SOMEwhere, even if there's not necessarily a lot of smoke yet.

911: what's your emergency?
Homeowner: I called 30 minutes ago for a firetruck because of an electrical fire in my basement, where are they!?
911: Oh, we sent a drone to look at your house, it didn't see any fire from the air.
Homeowner: Well my basement is still full of smoke, and I can hear electrical arcing
911: Can you see smoke or flames from the outside of your house?
Homeowner: No, just the basement
911: Wait until the flames have burnt through the roof or walls of the house then give us a call and we'll send another drone. If we see a fire at that time, we'll refund the $99.99 "false alarm" fee from the first drone. Please make sure that you really see flames this time, as you only 3 false alarms before we stop sending out the drone. Those things are expensive to operate, you know.... maybe go down and try fanning the flames to see if you can really get the fire going you call us again.

If the experts say you can affirm where there's a fire or not the vast majority of the time, I'm inclined to take their word for it, especially if (going back to triage) there's more fires than manpower at the moment and the opportunity cost of making sure is measured in lives lost at another call.

Have any fire fighting experts claimed that you can reliably detect an early stage house fire with a drone? Will you be as inclined to take their word for it if you call in a fire, and the fire department says they couldn't see it from the air, so you must be lying about it?

Re:Worst possible example.

[rahvin112]

You forgot the fuel, maintenance and spare parts. I'd be willing to bet daily operating costs will be equivalent to having a plane up.

A plane is a plane, doesn't really matter if it's manned or not, it's still going to cost about the same, unless you think you can train bob the high school drop out to fly a drone and the drones operate on hugs and happy thoughts.

Re:Worst possible example.

[rahvin112]

He's saying "use drones to be able to use your limited resources more intelligently" - for example, focusing on getting that jaws-of-life to a potentially critically injured car accident victim rather than diverting to a probable false alarm house fire.

If you honestly think that such a thing even happens you are as foolish as him. You are creating a straw man with an event that's as rare as unicorn sightings.

The fact is that budgets are limited and you can't have an infinite number of rescue workers responding to everything.

Many of these budgets have fixed costs, for example you have 20 firefighters sitting around 24/7/365 (multiple shifts). And these firefighters aren't in new york responding to calls every few minutes. They spend 90% of every day sitting on their ass, just like every other sub-urban/rural firefighter.

And compared to the salaries and overheads of humans, drones are very cheap.

I see your malfunction now. You seem to think that drones fly themselves. That the guy sitting there flying the drone is invisible and doesn't cost salary and overhead. That the drone itself doesn't require maintenance, fuel, parts or will need a ground crew. You are WRONG. The drone is going to cost almost as much to operate as it would cost to put a plane up (except it's cheaper to buy than a plane). And the guy flying it? He's going to cost as much as a highly trained pilot because he's going to be one. This thing is the size of a fridge, it falls out of the sky and lands on someone it's going to kill them. The FAA isn't going to allow anything that size to be flown without someone with a pilots license behind the controls, as they've already decreed BTW.

You also seem to be of the view that drones are miraculous and can spot people in a gutter or a lost child in a forest. People in manned helicopters have a hard time spotting that stuff, how on earth do you think a drone could do it so easy?

Drones aren't miracles. You seem to think they are. This plan is nothing more than some jackass with a hobby that wants the taxpayers to fund it.

Re:Worst possible example.

[adolf]

The Macon-Bibb Fire Department gets 13 thousand calls per year and has to respond to all of them.

I don't see that number anywhere in the link you provided.

What I do see is that it has a population of 156,462, over 266 square miles. The FD has a budget of $25.6 million. None of that seems unreasonable.

13,000 fire calls, though? Detroit, Michigan is blatantly famous for its ongoing and recurrent structure fires with its population of ~688,000 [citation]. Even Detroit only sees 30,000 fire calls a year, of which 7,000 involve fires that are actually fought.[citation]

Give me a citation that actually supports your claim, or GTFO.