Fire crews use drone to help fight Beckenham warehouse blaze

Case Studies

Published on 28 Mar 2019

James Willoughby

Fire crews use drone to help fight Beckenham warehouse blaze

London Fire Brigade has used a DJI M210 drone and XT2 thermal camera to help fight a major blaze at a warehouse in Beckenham. ... Read More

London Fire Brigade (LFB) has been using a thermal imaging drone to help fight a warehouse blaze.

Crews were called to the incident in a textile warehouse on Cricket Lane, in Beckenham, which erupted yesterday morning. Firefighters remain at the scene.

"The Brigade's drone is supplying pictures to incident commanders giving aerial views and thermal images," - London Fire Brigade statement

LFB has been using a drone and thermal camera - a DJI M210 and a DJI Zenmuse XT2 - to provide vital pictures to incident commanders, giving useful aerial views of the blaze and thermal images which show the fire hot-spots.

A tweet from London Fire Brigade last night.

The drone helped to monitor the extent of the fire, while the bright pink, orange and red areas in the thermal image showed what LFB described as 'the deep-seated pockets of fire' that the crews were tackling.

A tweet from London Fire Brigade this morning.

Drones A Vital Tool For The Emergency Services

The incident once again showed how useful drones can be for the emergency services. 

For firefighters, pairing a thermal camera with a UAV can help for a number of reasons, including seeing through smoke, detecting hot-spots, providing valuable information about roof integrity, flow paths, wet lines and giving useful situational awareness.

Which Tools Can Help Me?

LFB has been using an M210 and an XT2 thermal camera to help them gain valuable insights about the fire.

A Matrice Series drone with an XT2 camera.

The drones in the Matrice series are powerful performers, capable of carrying multiple payloads, including the top-class zoom camera, the Z30, or sensors from the ViewPro range.

Thanks to this capability, these UAVs offer plenty of scope for a variety of missions, from surveillance to search and rescue, and have become a firm favourite with the emergency services.

Last month, DJI unveiled the Matrice 200 Series V2 - offering numerous benefits over and above the original iteration, including enhanced safety features.
Aside from the Matrice Series, other drones available to help the emergency services include DJI's Mavic 2 Enterprise and Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual; the latter having a thermal camera.

The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual and original Mavic 2 Enterprise

One of the perks of these drones is that they are small, foldable and easily transportable/deployable, and come with three accessories - a loud speaker, dual spotlight and beacon. These tools can be invulnerable in certain situations - for instance, providing vital information to an injured person from afar.

To find out more about the drones/cameras mentioned in this post, contact Heliguy by visiting our website, calling us or sending us an email.
James Willoughby

James Willoughby

Written By

James joined heliguy™ in 2018 following a 13-year stint in print and online journalism, having worked on regional and weekly newspaper titles. He is responsible for spearheading heliguy™'s content strategy and social media delivery. James collaborates with DJI Enterprise's European marketing team to coordinate and produce case studies and helps organise events and webinars.