In Rowan County, North Carolina, the Rowan County Rescue Squad and the North Carolina Highway Patrol are increasingly relying on UAS to respond to various incidents.

Each N.C. Highway Patrol troop has a single UAS to map traffic collisions, while the Rescue Squad is part of a pilot program using its UAS at fires, as well as for search and rescue operations.

The Rowan Rescue Squad received its UAS as part of the pilot program in April 2017, according to Chief Eddie Cress. The squad currently has one certified pilot, a pilot-in-training, and two others who are working on obtaining certification.

The UAS has been used for a variety of purposes thus far, including to help locate a missing teen earlier this year in January. Officials say that the girl had some mental challenges, and walked off into the woods with a dog. Fortunately, though, officials were able to locate the girl using the UAS and an ATV search.

“We saw real quickly how a drone could assist us,” Cress says via the Salisbury Post.  

Cress says that UAS can help complete missing people searches a lot quicker than conducting a land search alone.

“With a drone, we could do in 20 minutes what people do in an hour,” he says.

The UAS has also been used at a few area fires, and to assist local authorities on a foot chase with a suspect. Another potential use for the UAS is in HazMat situations for emergency responders who can’t get too close to a spill before determining the type of substance.

For the N.C. Highway Patrol, UAS are used as part of the collision reconstruction unit to map fatalities, according to First Sgt. Alex Justice, who is with the State Highway Patrol.

The UAS can also be used for riot control, as well as during mobile field force or when troopers respond during civil disorder, Justice says.

The State Highway Patrol has had UAS since March 2017, and currently has 21.

Prior to using UAS, terrestrial imaging was taking upwards of two hours, and required troopers to block the roads while they reconstruct and map the area of a particular collision. Now, using UAS technology, troopers can use photogrammetry, as the UAS flies over an overlapping grid pattern and provides 3D scales and mapping of a particular area.

“The average time takes 15 minutes,” Justice says.

The highway patrol is looking to start using UAS for search and rescue operations, which is currently done using helicopters. Additionally, there is an option to use a FLIR infrared or thermal imaging camera attached to the UAS to find a missing person.