Fire and Rescue already has at least three people trained to fly drones and hopefully will be getting two or three more pilots trained, said Fire Chief Micheal Despain.   

City leaders are also looking at changing the city drone policy, which now requires the mayor’s approval before any drone use.

That prior approval will be tricky when the fire department needs to use a drone at 2 a.m., Despain said.

Drones have many uses for the fire department — apartment fires, wildfires, grain elevator issues, flooding.

Their new truck cost $250,000 and is built to go off of the road.  

The fire chief says it can hold 1,500 gallons of water, compared to a normal truck that can only hold 250. This truck is the first in Virginia and the second on the east coast.  

They were able to get it by saving, fundraising, and with some help from Campbell County kicking in about one-third of the funds.

Austin-Travis County EMS said multiple emergency assets responded to the scene, including STAR Flight. ATCEMS said there were ten total patients involved in the crash. EMS said two of the eight patients were transported to the hospital with serious potentially life-threatening injuries and the other eight went to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Lake Travis Fire Rescue confirms that two Lake Travis firefighters were taken to the hospital via STAR Flight while two others were taken via ATCEMS.

Derek Jokay-Szilagyi, 45 of Nikolaevsk, was arrested at around 5:30 p.m. on May 14. Troopers said he impeded fire trucks from responding to the fire when he "laid down in the middle of the road and impeded a fire truck which was responding to a wild land fire."  

That fire was eventually calmed by fire fighting efforts including helicopters dumping industrial bucket loads of water as well as fire retardant being spread on nearby homes. However, for a good portion of the response time, authorities considered the fire to be "threatening occupied residences in Nikolaevsk."

Jokay-Szilagyi was arrested and remanded into the Homer Jail for multiple charges, including disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment, as the fire was threatening homes.