The Midland Fire Department wants its own eyes in the skies, a drone.
Six firefighters have already been trained, and bids for the program are coming in.
"Well, after the dams failed, we actually had some teams come up and they had a drone team and we were able to do some overwatch missions for the incident commander, and it showed the value. There were spots we couldn't get into the city, and it helped us do some damage assessments and stuff from the air,” Battalion Chief Roger Bebeau said. "We were looking for something that had the versatility of changing out the payloads, and one of them would be a payload drop to where it could fly out and drop the item to the victim that needed rescue."
For example, a mustang stick. When it hits the water, it inflates.
They'd also like regular and thermal imaging cameras for fires and search and rescue.