COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - El Paso County Search and Rescue has a new tool to help the team search for missing people.
El Paso County Search and Rescue has a new thermal drone.
It’s a drone with a thermal camera that can be used during the day and when it’s dark.
“So this will allow us to fly at night and be able to see people’s body heat if we have say, maybe a dementia patient who walked away from a facility and is out in the middle of a field somewhere,” said Grant Durham, EPCSAR’s UAV coordinator. “It’ll allow us to see that a lot easier at night.”
The drone has already been put to use. Durham said the team used it the night of Jan. 25 to help search for a missing hiker. Luckily, that person was able to find their own way back to safety.
Before getting the new drone, Durham said it was a lot harder to look for people at night. The group often used flashlights and did ground searches or used an older-model drone with a spotlight attachment.
“That took battery a lot quicker, you had to fly a lot lower, so it’s a little bit less safe,” Durham said. “So this will allow us to fly a lot higher and longer at night.”
Of the roughly 70 search team members, Durham said there are four pilots certified to fly the drones and one pilot who’s training.
The new drone cost about $3,500 and was just delivered this month. Durham said the group was able to pay for the new technology through fundraisers and donations.
“This is really an entry-level drone,” Durham said. “So we are hoping to expand to a better drone. This one is fairly low resolution, so we’re hoping to get one that’s much more expensive in the next few years, and we’re hoping that this one helps us with that fundraising process, too.”
Durham said the drone pilots train with the search team’s K9s.
“Those are the guys we’re going to be searching with during searches,” he said. “So the dog teams will be out there searching for people and then we just go out there and search for them.”
The search team responds to roughly 160 missions a year. Durham estimates the new drone will be used weekly.
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January 30, 2020 at 09:45PM
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New thermal drone helps EPCSAR search at night - KKTV 11 News
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