Firefighting Technology using Drones?

I finally got my latest techno gadget and am about to learn the fine art of flying it. Yep, got myself a drone (aka quadcopter).
Since, I figu5re I am going to crash it a few times, I just got a cheap model to learn the art of flying it. Sometime later I may upgrade
to a one of the more robust versions. Oh well, the one I got has a camera on it.

So how can a drone aid in firefighting? I don't really know, but I guess if you can imagine something big on fire, like a refinery or paint factory or something, it may come in handy for identifying some extreme hazards before an engine company gets too close.

Check out what Detroit Fire has recently done with one of their drones;

Check out this article on how drones may aid fighting fires in Australia;
http://news.sky.com/story/1162844/drones-may-help-fight-bushfires-in-australia

If you want a drone for yourself, just go to Amazon and order one.  You might want
to specify the delivery method!

B.C. Ambulance Electronic Patient Records

I recently blogged about the future of epcr (electronic patient records).   (old post)

Since that time I have become aware that the B.C. Ambulance service actually does epcr.
See the news release here; BCAS News Release

Car Fires, Batteries, Hybrid vehicles, etc.

I was doing a little bit of reading recently and came across some research recently done by the NFPA regarding car fires.  How many times have you gone to a car fire and not immediately chocked the tires of the burning/incapacited vehicle?  (Hopefully none).  Anyway, after reading this research on hybrid vehicles, you may want to make chocking the tires the first thing you do at every scene - fire or mvi.

Here are the current links to the NFPA research;
Part1, Part2, Part3, Part 4
Part5

If you have attention deficit disorder or otherwise find reading 20+ megs of research papers a bit boring you may want to just find the key points like I did;
Read Part1 and compare the Current Vehicle ICE Fire Tactics on page 18 to the Current EDV Fire Tactics on page 20.

The NFPA Hybrid Vehicle extraction guide is shown in this video;  http://youtu.be/CtgaLTeoH-4