VIDEO: Washington state firefighters are getting help from high-tech eyes in the sky.
The first of two Kodiak K-100s arrived in Olympia last month and has already flown above wildfires on Orcas Island and in Concrete.
They travel faster and fly longer than most of the state’s other aerial firefighting tools, but the selling point for state Chief of Air Operations David Ritchie is the plane’s camera. “This is going to help those fire teams out there be able to plan out how they’re going to attack those fires,” said Ritchie.
He said the Teledyne Flir camera enables the crew in the plane to send back live images and video of the fire to agency headquarters and incident commanders on the ground below.
In the past, those crews typically relied on cell phone photos, which cannot always be delivered quickly.