A long, contentious debate — filled with passions, twists and finances — over hiring new firefighters at the Camas-Washougal Fire Department hit a conversation-stopper this week, after the majority of Camas City Council members agreed the hires are necessary and the city will have to find funding, even without Washougal’s 40 percent buy-in.
- PUB DATE: 10/18/2018 1:03:56 PM - SOURCE: Camas-Washougal Post-Record

The Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority has received an increasing number of calls recently from concerned residents who have been contacted by phone solicitors asking for donations that they say support local fire departments, including Puget Sound Fire. These calls often come from a 253 area code, making them appear to be local.
- PUB DATE: 10/18/2018 1:01:19 PM - SOURCE: Covington & Maple Valley Reporter

Hotter, dryer summers have led to increased megafires and Paul Hessburg, a research landscape ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, said he fears our wildfire seasons will get much worse. A megafire is a fire that grows larger than 100,000 acres, and Washington and the western United States in general have seen a lot of them.
- PUB DATE: 10/18/2018 6:27:57 AM - SOURCE: Spokane Spokesman-Review

WILSONVILLE, OR—FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced the DroneSense–FLIR Edition, a drone flight management software platform designed for public safety applications. FLIR announced a strategic investment in DroneSense, an Austin, Texas-based unmanned aircraft system (UAS) software platform maker, in April 2018, and this is the first product under that collaboration. DroneSense-FLIR Edition is the only software platform to combine thermal and visual imaging processing with flight data planning and management capabilities across public safety organizations to help improve incident response. 

DroneSense-FLIR Edition streams FLIR thermal sensor data directly into the software, making it a single-source, fully integrated software platform for drones used in incident response applications such as fires, floods, missing person search and rescue, disaster damage assessment, and more. It includes features such as autonomous flight control, live video streaming, both on-scene and off-site, and drone asset and compliance management capabilities. The platform is hosted on a secure government cloud server and enables real-time data interpretation for a variety of drones and use cases.

The DroneSense-FLIR Edition supports the DJI Zenmuse XT2 and any DJI drone-based thermal payloads offering Thermal by FLIR^® with feature functionality including visual, thermal, picture-in-picture, side-by-side imagery, and robust telemetry feature set. It may be connected via Wi-Fi or cellular networks with multiple feed streaming capabilities or used as a stand-alone, independent communications remote ad-hoc network with automatic logging and syncing of all flight data. 

“Drones are a vital tool in various incident response scenarios, and the addition of FLIR thermal sensor data provides a powerful asset to first responders,” said Frank Pennisi, President of the Industrial Business Unit at FLIR. “The use of FLIR thermal technology on drones has earned tremendous interest by public safety organizations both due to their relatively low cost for an airborne surveillance system and rapid deployment capabilities. Now through our partnership with DroneSense, first responders can stream thermal data into DroneSense’s flight control software to transform incident response management.” 

The software will be available for purchase through U.S. authorized distributors beginning October 18.

For more information, please visit www.flir.com/dronesense.