LOS ANGELES (KABC) — In the wake of the Palisades Fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department will now be monitoring many burn scars with drones to cut down the chances of another hot spot turning into a devastating inferno.
7 On Your Side Investigates got a look at the expanding drone program as crews checked on a hillside for flowing debris after a recent rainy day.
Firefighter Chase Mendenhall watched the feed, while firefighter Stephen Hamilton handled the controls. They are two of the 16 drone pilots now in the ranks of the LAFD.
The drones not only feed back HD video, they’re also equipped with thermal imaging.
“It’s very accurate, very successful at finding hot spots,” Mendenhall said.
Given that we now know a hot spot from the New Year’s Day 2025 Lachman Fire is the source of the Palisades Fire, LAFD policy now states the drones must fly over any burn scar larger than an acre.
They’re also running thermal images the drones capture through AI analyzing software.
“That will run a sophisticated model through super computers up in the servers that will show us and pinpoint those particular hot spots,” said Hamilton.
Captain Richard Thompson leads the drone program.
“They were able to actually find a small 20 by 20 smoldering fire in a canyon that otherwise would have been missed. And then we were able to direct crews immediately to that site and extinguish it.”
The small drones can also be a life-saving tool inside a collapsed building or a land crack from an earthquake.
“Just when you think you have it figured out on the amount of uses for the drone, you realize that there’s other stuff that exists,” Hamilton said.
And in just another sign of how cash-strapped the city of Los Angeles is, we’re told most of the LAFD drone team got their pilot licenses on their own time and on their own dime. Most of their equipment was paid for from past grants and from donations from the LAFD foundation.
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