r/interestingasfuck • u/Red_Lotus_Alchemist • 2d ago

/r/all A Chinese earthquake rescue team deployed drones to light up the night and aid search and rescue operations after the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar.

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u/2xtc 2d ago

How do these things exist and work then?

https://youtu.be/11enxgxsanU?si=lZZtSfdXmf5wssKi

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u/s1ugg0 2d ago edited 2d ago

Please notice I said "putting water on a fire in a meaningful way". These drones are for such specific circumstances they are practically useless.

In the wildland fires they do not have the range or capacity to do suppression in any meaningful capacity. By the sheer volume of miles it would have to cover it could never respond to the scene fast enough to be useful. The fire will have grown too big for it's small reservoir of suppressant to work.

Take note that wildland firefighters all over the world aren't asking for suppression drones. They're begging for things like the Canadair CL-415. Which can put more suppressant on a fire faster than anything else.

In structures fire it only works in these sterile commercial tests. Two things to know about structure fires. With typical, normal class A combustibles the fire can double in size in as little as 60 seconds. That's not an exaggeration. Here is an actual demonstration of what I am describing. In this video from spark to flashover is 3 minutes. From room temperature to over 1000 degrees in 3 minutes. A flashover will burn or kill anything or anyone virtually instantly. Even firefighters in full PPE. Sadly it has.

Now ask yourself do you think that any of these drones could make it to a fire faster than 3 minutes or have enough suppression do anything meaningful against an +1000 degree fire? Well I don't.

Also the weather. We have to respond no matter what. There are extremely few instances where FDs stop operating. There is no such thing as a rain delay. It doesn't matter if there is 6 feet of snow and it's -50 degrees. Or the wind gusting. Or when it's 100 degrees and we start passing out. When I did my window bailout training I did it during a snow storm. The instructor blindfolded me and then ordered me to escape out of a five story window in a snow storm. This not me bragging. Every firefighter has a story like this. It wasn't even that dangerous to tell you the truth. The point is how effective do you think these drones will be in bad weather? A time when our services are most requested.

If you would like to see a real fire suppression drone in action please allow me to introduce you to Paris FD's "Colossus" This is the real deal and gets used all the time. And as you can see it's a firefighting tank. Because that's what it takes to make it to the seat of a structure fire sometimes.

By the way quick shoutout to Paris Fire Brigade. They're excellent firefighters. They're actually a department of the French Army and were formed by order of Emperor Napoleon in 1810. All of their firefighters are technically sappers. Their motto is "Sauver ou périr" or in English "Save or Die"

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u/FloridianfromAlabama 2d ago

They’re fucking massive.

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u/Craspnar 2d ago

Isn't that video AI generated?

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u/Far_Tap_488 1d ago

Because ypure average alcoholic pisses out more fluids in an hour than these drones can put on a fire.

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u/GIC68 1d ago

This is probably not water, it's foam or CO2 extinguishers. And these only work on a rathermlimited distance and limited size of fires.